WinVN Help Index

Click the mouse button on definitions or cross-references.  To learn more about Help, press F1.

General

Usenet News

Overview of WinVN

Usenet Etiquette

History of WinVN

The NEWSRC file

Types of Windows

Main Window

Newsgroup Window

Article Window

Posting Window

Mail Window

Procedures

Configuring WinVN

Mailing a Message

Posting an Article

Subscribing to Newsgroups

Marking Articles as Read

Authorizing Yourself to the News Server

Getting a Copy of WinVN


Main Window

The main window, initially in the upper left corner of the screen, displays a list of newsgroups.  Double-clicking on a newsgroup name causes WinVN to display a list of subjects of available articles in that newsgroup in a group window.

Clicking on a newsgroup name "selects" that newsgroup and displays it in reverse video (light on dark).  Selecting a newsgroup is useful only for subscribing to it; see Subscribing to Newsgroups.  Subscribed groups appear in black; unsubscribed groups appear in red.

The first character of each newsgroup line in the main window gives information about that newsgroup:

space	 indicates either that WinVN has no information on the status of this group, or that no new articles have appeared in this group since your last WinVN session.

>	indicates that this newsgroup has been selected as the result of the previous Find operation.

*	indicates that new articles have appeared in this newsgroup since your last WinVN session.

Group Menu CommandsOptions Menu Commands

Help Menu Commands


Usenet News

The Usenet News, or Netnews, system is a kind of distributed bulletin board system run on thousands of computers world-wide.  Users of Usenet News exchange views and information by writing articles, which are then transmitted automatically amoungst the computers in the network.  Once posted, an article can by read by others days, hours, or even minutes later, depending upon their computer's type of network link to Usenet.

Articles are organized by topic area into newsgroups, of which there are currently over 3000.


Overview of WinVN

WinVN is a Microsoft Windows-based news reader.  Like other news readers, it can be used to select, view, and write Usenet Newsarticles.  WinVN can also be used to send (but not receive) electronic mail messages.

WinVN offers a more visual approach to Usenet News than most other news readers.  WinVN allows you to easily navigate amoungst newsgroups and articles via its point-and-click interface.

In normal operation, WinVN displays three types of windows:  the main window, which displays a list of all newsgroups; one or more group windows, each of which displays a list of the articles in a newsgroup; and one or more article windows, which each displays an article.  Double-clicking on a newsgroup or article name causes that item to be displayed in a separate window.

When you want to write an article, WinVN displays a posting window for that purpose.  See Posting an Article.  Similarly, when you want to write an electronic mail message, WinVN displays a mail window to accept your text.  See Mailing a Message.

WinVN offers a number of configuration options; see Options Menu Commands.


History of WinVN

WinVN was written at home as an own-time project by me, Mark Riordan, a systems programmer at Michigan State University.  The program and its source code have been placed in the public domain.  WinVN is not a product of MSU or any other institution.

Serious development of WinVN began in September 1989.  It continued in fits and starts until roughly Fall 1992, when Sam Rushing (rushing@titan.ksc.nasa.gov), Jim Dumoulin (dumoulin@titan.ksc.nasa.gov) and others took over development.  (I still contribute occasionally.)  In addition to adding many useful features, Sam has also developed a Windows NT version.

A Macintosh version was developed, but it is no longer in sync with the latest Windows version and is not being distributed (I think!).  The release of a number of good Macintosh newsreaders convinced me long ago to cease development of the Mac version.

You can correspond with the authors of WinVN via the mailing list winvn@titan.ksc.nasa.gov.  It's best to send your remarks to this mailing list.  However, I can be reached at mrr@ripem.msu.edu or  riordanmr@clvax1.cl.msu.edu.

Mark R.   Lansing, Michigan    December 1993


Bulletin board system
bulletin board system (BBS)

An electronic system in which users participate in discussions by leaving public messages for each other.  Most BBS's are run on personal computers and are accessible only by dialup modem.  Many have additional features, such as online games and a file repository.

Usenet News is not a BBS in the usual sense of the word, but it provides the messaging features of a BBS on a much grander scale than found on any existing BBS.


Usenet

A loosely-organized network of over 200,000 computers worldwide.  These computers are linked in a number of ways, including modem and TCP/IP.  The best known service provided by Usenet is Usenet News.


NNTP

Network News Transport Protocol.  This is the network protocol used by WinVN and most other newsreaders to carry Usenet News information.  There is also a program named NNTP that implements the NNTP protocol and runs on many news servers.  (The program NNTP is being replaced by the program INN at many sites.)


article

A message written by a Usenet News user and posted to the network.  Articles are similar to electronic mail messages, but are not private.  They are intended to be seen by potentially hundreds of thousands of people.  Also called "postings".


newsgroup

A collection of articles on a given topic.  When you write an article, you specify to which group or groups it should be sent.

Each newsgroup has a hierarchical name which suggests the topic of that group.  Names consist of several words separated by periods.  The first word in the newsgroup name states the general category covered by that group, the second, a subcategory of that general category, and so on.

For instance, the newsgroups sci.chem and sci.math are scientifically-oriented groups which are dedicated to chemistry and mathematics, respectively.  soc.culture.indian is sociologically-oriented group devoted to the culture of India, and so on.


news reader

A computer program through which you interact with the Usenet News system.  News readers allow you to select and read articles written by others, and to write and post articles of your own.

A number of news readers have been written over the years, many of them for computers running the Unix operating system.  The best-known news readers are probably rn, vn, nn, tin, and xrn.


posting

The act of sending an article to the Usenet network, to be seen by potentially hundreds of thousands of individuals.

Also, a synonym for "article".


header

A series of lines at the beginning of an article or electronic mail message that contain such information as the article's or message's author, its subject, its date and time of transmission, and so on.  The header is separated from the actual text of the article or message by a blank line.


electronic mail message

A message sent privately to one or more explicitly-named individuals.  Electronic mail is not provided by Usenet News per se; electronic mail messages are not the same as news articles.  However, many news readers provide the capability of sending (but usually not receiving) electronic mail because it is often desirable to respond privately to an article.


news server

A computer that runs special software to exchange news articles with other computers in the Usenet network, and makes these articles available to local users.  News readers require access to a news server, but they do not require you to have an account on a news server.


definition

A type of hypertext link in Microsoft Help.  A definition is a (usually) brief description of a term.  Definitions appear when you press and hold the mouse button on a term that appears in Help as green text marked with a dotted underline.

Some definitions contain hypertext links, because they are also available as cross-references.  It is usually possible to reference a definition as a cross-reference via the Help Search button.


Cross Reference

A type of hypertext link in Microsoft Help.  A cross reference is a topic that appears in the Help window when you click on a term that appears in Help as green solid underlined text.


Group Menu Commands

Find...

Searches the main window for a newsgroup name that contains a specified text string.  Find brings up a dialog box into which you enter the string for which you want to search.  Click on OK to start the search, or Cancel if you decide not to search after all.

If a newsgroup is found which contains the specified string, the main window will be scrolled so that the newsgroup name is visible.  The selected newsgroup name will be marked with a ">".  If no such newsgroup can be found, WinVN says so via a message box.

Find Next

Continues the search started by the previous Find... or Find Next.  The next newsgroup name containing the string, if any, is displayed.

Subscribe selected groups

Subscribes to the currently-selected newsgroups.  See Subscribing to Newsgroups.

Unsubscribe selected groups

Unsubscribes from the currently-selected newsgroups.  See  Subscribing to Newsgroups.

Move selected groups to Top

Subscribes to the currently-selected newsgroups if they are not already subscribed, and moves them to the very top of the newsgroup list.   See Subscribing to Newsgroups.

Deselect all

Clears all newsgroups in the main window, so that no newsgroups are currently selected.

Exit

Terminates WinVN, and writes a record of your activity to the NEWSRC file.

Quit; don't save NEWSRC

Terminates WinVN, and leaves the NEWSRC file unchanged.


Options Menu Commands

Configure Comm...

Brings up a dialog box allowing you to select communications/networking options.

An earlier version of WinVN allowed you to choose between TCP/IP and straight serial connections.  Unadulterated serial connections are no longer supported; you must be running some brand of TCP network driver on your PC in order to use WinVN.  The network driver must be loaded before you start WinVN.  WinVN supports network drivers that conform to the Winsock interface; this includes products from a number of companies, including FTP Software, Inc.  A separate DEC Pathworks version of WinVN is available.

The Configure Comm... dialog box requires you to fill in the Internet address of a news server.   Obtain this information from your system administrator.  You must also fill in the TCP port number of the news server program.  Typically this is 119; other values can be used if your local news server is so configured.

Fill in the Internet address of a mail server if you plan on using mail from within WinVN.

Some NNTP news servers require you to provide an authorizing username and password before they will allow you full access to some or all newsgroups.  If you plan on connecting with such a server, you should fill in the appropriate username and password for the server you have selected.

See Saving Configuration Information and Authorizing Yourself to the News Server.

Configure Personal Info...

Brings up a dialog box allowing you to specify personal information:  your name, electronic mail address, and organization name.  The organization name is typically the name of your employer or educational institution.  This information is used to construct headers for articles and electronic mail messages that you write.

See Saving Configuration Information.

Configure Miscellaneous...

Brings up a dialog box allowing you to specify miscellaneous preferences regarding the operation of WinVN.

If New window for each group is checked, WinVN will attempt to create a new group window for each newsgroup selected from the main window.  If this option is not checked, WinVN will reuse an existing group window to display newly-requested newsgroups.

If New window for each article is checked, WinVN will attempt to create a new article window for each article selected from the main window.  If this option is not checked, WinVN will reuse an existing article window to display newly-requested articles.

Checking Append saved articles affects what WinVN does when you attempt to save the contents of an article to an existing file.  If this box is checked, WinVN will append the article to the file.  Otherwise, it will ask you what to do.  See File Menu Commands.

The Check for new groups on startup option determines whether WinVN queries the news server for newly-created newsgroups.  Checking for new newsgroups also allows WinVN to determine which groups have received new articles since the last WinVN session.  The Yes and No options are self-explanatory; Ask means that WinVN will ask the user whether to check for new groups every time it starts up.  The Yes option is recommended for Ethernet-attached PCs.  Checking for new groups can take a very long time on serially-attached PCs, though.

See Saving Configuration Information.

Reset server protocol

Resets the state of the communications session between WinVN and the news server.  This option is used to work around problems with WinVN, the communications connection, or the news server.

Compose mail message

Creates a mail window to be used to send a mail message.  See Mailing a Message.


Saving Configuration Information

When you have finished specifying configuration information in one of the configuration dialog boxes, you must click on one of the three buttons in the dialog box:

OK & Save	accepts the changes that you have made, and records your preferences on hard disk.  These changes will apply to future WinVN sessions as well as the current session (if applicable).  The [WinVN] section of the WINVN.INI file is used.

OK (no save)	accepts the changes that you have made for this session, but does not record them for future sessions.

Cancel	causes WinVN to ignore the changes you have made.

See Options Menu Commands


Help Menu Commands

Index

Starts the Help system with WinVN's main Help index.

About

Displays a dialog box containing WinVN version information.


Group Window

Group windows contain a list of subjects of articles in a given newsgroup.  Double-clicking on the subject of an article causes that article to be retrieved into an article window.

Group windows initially appear in the upper right area of the screen.  It is possible to have up to 4 group windows open at any one time.  See Options Menu Commands.

The first character of each subject line in a group window gives information about that article:

space	 indicates either that WinVN has no information on the status of this article, or that this article was available in a previous WinVN session and you chose not to view it.

>	indicates that this article has been selected as the result of the previous Find operation.

s	indicates that you have already seen this article.

n	indicates that this article has appeared since your last WinVN session.

Articles Menu Commands

Search Menu Commands


Articles Menu Commands

New Posting

Creates a Posting window for the purpose of composing a new article for this newsgroup.

Exit

Closes this Group Window.


Search Menu Commands

Find...

Searches the article subjects in this Group Window for an article whose subject line contains a specified text string.  Find brings up a dialog box into which you enter the string for which you want to search.  Click on OK to start the search, or Cancel if you decide not to search after all.

If an article is found whose subject contains the specified string, the  window will be scrolled so that the subject line is visible.  The selected article subject will be marked with a ">".  If no such article can be found, WinVN says so via a message box.

Find Next

Continues the search started by the previous Find... or Find Next.  The next article containing the previously-set subject string is displayed if it can be found.


Article Window

An article window displays the text of an article.  The article is initially positioned in the scrollable window to the beginning of the article text, with the article header scrolled out of sight.  (If you scroll the window manually during the short time that the article is being retrieved from the news server, the article is not repositioned.)

File Menu Commands

View Menu Commands

Respond Menu Commands


File Menu Commands

Save

Saves the article in this Article Window to a file.  The filename from the most recent Save As... is used.  If no Save As... has been done in this session, Save acts just like Save As....

Save As...

Brings up a dialog box asking the user for a file name to which the current article should be saved.  The dialog box also contains a check box labelled Append to this file.  If this box is checked, WinVN will write the article to the end of the specified file.  Otherwise, WinVN will overwrite the file with the article.

Press OK to actually save the article; press Cancel if you have changed your mind about saving the article.

Exit

Closes this window.


View Menu Commands

Next Article

Causes WinVN to fetch and display the next article in this newsgroup.  If there is no next article, WinVN says so.

Next with same Subject

Causes WinVN to search the subsequent articles in this newsgroup for an article with the same subject as the current article.  (Leading "Re:" notations are ignored.)  If a matching article is found, it is retrieved and displayed in the current Article Window.  Otherwise, WinVN informs you that there are no more articles with that subject.


Respond Menu Commands

Followup Article

Creates a Posting Window with the appropriate header and text to compose an article that responds to the article in the current Article Window.  See Posting an Article.

via Mail

Creates a Mail Window with the appropriate header and text to compose an electronic mail message to the author of  the current article.  See Mailing a Message.


Posting Window

The posting window allows you to compose and then post an article to the network.  See Posting an Article.

Posting Menu Commands

Edit Menu Commands


Posting Menu Commands

Post completed article

Sends your  completed article in this Posting Window to the news server for propagation throughout the network.

Cancel

Closes this window.  If you haven't already posted this article, its contents are lost.


Edit Menu Commands

Undo

Reverses the effects of the most recent change to this window.

Cut

Deletes the selected text and saves it in the clipboard.

Copy

Copies the selected text into the clipboard.

Paste

Retrieves the text most recently copied or cut to the clipboard into the current window.  The text is inserted at the current cursor position.

Clear

Deselects all text in the current window.

Select All

Selects all text in the current window.  Generally used just prior to a Copy operation to save the contents of the window to the clipboard.


Mail Window

The mail window allows to you compose and then send an electronic mail message.  See Mailing a Message.

Mail Menu Commands

Edit Menu Commands


Mail Menu Commands

Mail completed message

Sends your completed electronic mail message to its recipient(s).

Cancel

Closes this Mail Window.  If you have not already sent the message you were composing, it is lost.


Posting an Article

You can post an article either as a followup to a previous article, or as a "brand new" article.  Note that often it is preferable to respond to an article via an electronic mail message rather than by another article; see Usenet Etiquette and Mailing a Message.

An article contains a header followed by the text of the article.  Each article is directed to one or more newsgroups by a "Newsgroups:" line in the header.  If you want to send an article to more than one newsgroup, type the names of the newsgroups on the "Newsgroups:" line, separated by commas.  The text of an article is separated from the header by a blank line.

Followup Articles

A followup article has the same "Subject:" line as the article which inspired it.  (The notation "Re:" is added.)  This makes it easier for other Usenet News users browsing the newsgroup to follow the discussion.  Also, a followup article typically selectively quotes the earlier article, again to make the discussion easier to follow.

You start composing a followup article by selecting the Followup Article option of an article window's Respond menu.  (See Respond Menu Commands.)  WinVN creates a posting window.  The header of the article in this window is filled in with information taken from WinVN configuration options and from the header of the referenced article.  (See Configuring WinVN.)  The full text of the referenced article is also included in the posting window, with each line preceded by a ">" to indicate that another article is being quoted.

Fill in the text of your response.  You should delete irrelevant quoted lines in your followup article.

New Articles

You start composing a "brand new" article by selecting the New posting option from the Articles menu of a group window.  (See Articles Menu Commands.)  WinVN creates a posting window for your new article.  The "Newsgroup:" line contains the name of the newsgroup of the group window; you can edit this if necessary.  Other information is based on the way you configured WinVN.

You must fill in an appropriate subject for the new article.

Sending the Article

When you have completed composing your article, you can send it to the network or cancel it.  See Posting Menu Commands.  After you have posted the article, you can close the posting window.


Mailing a Message

You can use WinVN to send an electronic mail message either as a personal reply to the author of an article, or as an independent message.

A message contains a header followed by the text of the message.  A message is directed to one or more recipients by a "To:" line in the header.  If you want to send a message to more than one person, type the electronic mail addresses of the recipients on the "To:" line, separated by commas.  The text of a message is separated from the header by a blank line.

Reply Messages

A reply message has the same "Subject:" line as the article which inspired it.  (The notation "Re:" is added.)   Also, a reply message typically selectively quotes the article which inspired it, to give some context to the recipient.

You start composing a reply message by selecting the via Mail option of an article window's Respond menu.  See Respond Menu Commands.  WinVN creates a mail window.  The header of the message in this window is filled in with information taken from WinVN configuration options and from the header of the referenced article.  (See Configuring WinVN.)  The full text of the referenced article is also included in this window, with each line preceded by a ">" to indicate that an article is being quoted.

Fill in the text of your message.  You should delete irrelevant quoted lines.

New Messages

You start composing a "brand new" message--one that does not reference an article--by selecting the Compose mail message option from the Optionss menu of the main window.  (See Options Menu Commands.)  WinVN creates a mail window for your new article.  Your name and organization are filled in based on the way you configured WinVN.

You must fill in an appropriate subject for the new article on the "Subject:" line, and a recipient on the "To:" line.

Sending the Message

When you have completed composing your message, you can send it or cancel it.  See Mail Menu Commands.  After you have sent the message, you can close the mail window.


Subscribing to Newsgroups

What is "Subscribing"?

"Subscribing" to a newsgroup means telling a news reader that you are interested in tracking, selecting, and viewing articles in that group.  Most news readers support the concept of "subscribing" to newsgroups as a means of simplifying the way that you interact with the news reader.  There are probably over 1000 newsgroups in which you are not interested; if you are not subscribed to these newgroups, a news reader need not bother prompting you with information on these groups.

WinVN also supports the concept of subscribing to a newsgroup, but primarily as a means of providing compatibility with other news readers.  WinVN's windowed, point-and-click interface makes it less necessary for it to resort to the somewhat artificial distinction between newsgroups in which you are interested and newsgroups in which you are not interested.  You can always access any newsgroup simply by scrolling to its name and clicking on it.

Subscribing to New Newsgroups

When WinVN starts up, it can check the news server to see if any new groups have been created since your last session.  (See Configuring WinVN.)  If WinVN checks and finds that new newsgroups do exist, it displays their names in a scrollable list in a dialog box.  You select the groups to which you want to subscribe by clicking on their names.  When you have finished making your selections, click on the OK button.  Alternatively, you can click on the Cancel button and WinVN will ignore the new newsgroups altogether.

Subscribing to Existing Newsgroups

Newsgroups to which you are subscribed are displayed in black at the top of the main window.  Following these groups are all of the unsubscribed group names, in red and sorted alphabetically.

You subscribe and unsubscribe to newsgroups by selecting them in the main window and using Group Menu Commands.  Select groups by clicking on their names.  A selected group appears in reverse video (black background).  The Subscribe selected groups, Unsubscribe selected groups, and Move selected groups to Top menu options operate on all currently selected newsgroups.

Subscribing to a newsgroup moves its name to the bottom of the list of subscribed groups in the top portion of the main window.  Unsubscribing to a newsgroup causes it to be moved to its proper alphabetical place in the unsubscribed portion of the main window.


Marking Articles as Read

Normally, WinVN keeps track of which articles you have read.  (See Group Window.)  Sometimes, you may want WinVN to think that you have read articles when you have not.  You may have read the articles with another newsreader or with a different copy of WinVN, or you may have been on vacation and want to ignore the articles that accumulated in a newsgroup while you were away.

You can manually mark articles in a group as having been read by double-clicking the right mouse button on an article in the Group Window.  This marks all articles from the beginning of the newsgroup to the cursor as having been read.

To toggle the "read" status of a single article in a group, point the mouse cursor at the article subject and click on the middle mouse button.  You can also hold the shift key down and use the left mouse button.


Authorizing Yourself to the News Server

Some Usenet news servers require you to present a username and password in order to gain access to certain features.  For instance, you may need a username and password to be able to post to any newsgroup, or to be able to read certain newsgroups.  The process of providing a username and password, and the subsequent checking done by the server, is called "authorizing".

WinVN supports the AUTHINFO NNTP command for authorization.  You can provide a username and password; see Configure Comm... under Options Menu Commands.

If you have saved a username as part of your WinVN configuration, when WinVN is launched, it attempts to authorize you with the news server.  If you have saved a password as well, WinVN provides the username and password to the news server without prompting you.  If you have saved a username but have left the password field empty, WinVN brings up the Configure Comm... dialog box to allow you to enter your password before completing authorization.

If you choose to save your news server password, WinVN encrypts it before recording it in the configuration file.  However, given the availability of WinVN source code, a determined attacker with access to your configuration file could decrypt your password without too much effort.  Therefore, for the best security, force WinVN to always prompt you for the password by never saving the password, as described above.

Note that because WinVN attempts to authorize you to the server only when WinVN is launched, you cannot be authorized the very first time you run WinVN.  You must configure your username, click on "OK & Save", exit WinVN, and restart it.


Getting a Copy of WinVN

WinVN is distributed via anonymous FTP from the hosts  titan.ksc.nasa.gov  and  ripem.msu.edu.  The definitive version is always on  titan.  Copies of WinVN can often be found at other sites, but they are sometimes badly out-of-date.  (The  ripem  site  tends to lag behind  titan  by several days.)

Both source code and binaries for various platforms are distributed.  The WinVN source code can be compiled for a number of platforms, including several different Windows versions (for different vendors' networking suites), and Windows NT on Intel and Alpha AXP machines.  Distributions are in the form of .ZIP files; be sure to use binary mode FTP to do the transfer.

As of this writing, WinVN source code distributions have file names starting with WINVNSRC,  binary distributions for Winsock (a Windows networking API supported by a number of TCP/IP vendors) have names starting with WINVNSTD, and binary distributions for DEC Pathworks have names starting with WINVNPWK.  See the FTP sites for other files.

Here is a sample FTP session.  User-typed entries are in bold.

$ ftp titan.ksc.nasa.gov

ftp: connect to address 128.159.1.1: Host is unreachable

Trying 128.159.4.20...

Connected to titan.ksc.nasa.gov.

220 TITAN.KSC.NASA.GOV MultiNet FTP Server Process ...

Name (titan.ksc.nasa.gov:mrr): anonymous

331 anonymous user ok. Send real ident as password.

Password: fred

230-Guest User FRED logged into DISK$SHARE:[ANONYMOUS] at ...

230 Directory and access restrictions apply

ftp> binary

200 Type I ok.

ftp> cd [.pub.win3.winvn]

250 Connected to DISK$SHARE:[ANONYMOUS.PUB.WIN3.WINVN].

ftp> dir

200 Port 9.250 at Host ww.xx.yy.zz accepted.

150 List started.

DISK$SHARE:[ANONYMOUS.PUB.WIN3.WINVN]

WINVNPWK083_2.ZIP;2       170   8-DEC-1993 19:35 [NASA,DUMOULIN]

WINVNSRC083_2.ZIP;1       657   8-DEC-1993 15:14 [NASA,DUMOULIN]

WINVNSTD083_2.ZIP;1       167   8-DEC-1993 15:15 [NASA,DUMOULIN]

WINVN_DOC.ZIP;1           192  23-FEB-1993 11:33 [NASA,DUMOULIN]

...

ftp> get winvnstd083_2.zip

200 Port 10.196 at Host ww.xx.yy.zz accepted.

150 IMAGE retrieve of DISK$SHARE:[ANONYMOUS.PUB.WIN3.WINVN]WINVN...

226 Transfer completed.  xxxxx (8) bytes transferred.

...

ftp> quit

$


Usenet Etiquette

The ease of posting Usenet News articles causes many inappropriate articles to be sent to the network.  An article can be inappropriate if it:

--	Is devoid of useful information or ideas.

--	Is sent to inappropriate newsgroup(s).

--	Is really intended for a particular individual, rather than the entire Usenet community.

--	Contains rude or insulting remarks.

Please compose your articles thoughtfully.  Consider sending an electronic mail message rather than posting an article, if appropriate.

Be aware of the fact that many sites must pay long-distance telephone charges to receive your article.  Also be aware of the fact that some of the popular newsgroups have tens of thousands of readers.  10,000 people each reading your article for 20 seconds spend a total of 55 hours reading your article.

See Posting an Article and Mailing a Message.


The NEWSRC File

In order to keep track of your viewing history, WinVN records information about newsgroups in a file named NEWSRC.  This file contains a list of all newsgroups.  For each newsgroup, WinVN records whether it is subscribed and which articles have been seen.

Many Unix-based news readers record this information in a file named .newsrc.  WinVN uses a similar file format to provide compatibility with these programs.  Some extensions had to be made to the file format to provide features not found in ordinary Unix newsreaders.

See Group Menu  Commands.


Configuring WinVN

WinVN offers a number of configuration options.  All are accessible from the Options menu of the main window.  The Configure Comm... option allows you to set communications parameters.  These parameters must be set properly for WinVN to work.

The Configure Personal Info... and Configure Miscellaneous... options allow you to specify information about yourself and to set WinVN preferences.  This information is not vital to the proper operation of WinVN.

By default, configuration information is written to the file WINVN.INI in the current directory.  The curious may wish to examine this file with a text editor.  If the WINVN environment variable is defined, WinVN will use the value of this variable

See Options Menu Commands.