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Text File | 1995-06-19 | 34.8 KB | 837 lines

This is my attempt at generating/maintaining a Frequently Asked Questions document for the usenet newsgroup reader, "News Xpress." DISCLAIMER: The information contained within this document was mostly extracted from public posts made to alt.usenet.offline-reader, alt.winsock, news.software.readers, and alt.winsock.trumpet and thus has only the credibility of the original poster (although I will try to verify and correct all information included). I will try to give proper credit where credit is due. THIS DOCUMENT IS PROVIDED "AS-IS" AND ANY USE OF IT IS AT YOUR OWN RISK. I MAKE NO CLAIM THAT THIS DOCUMENT IS COMPLETE, ACCURATE, TRUTHFUL, USABLE, OR ANYTHING ELSE THAT WOULD MAKE ME LIABLE FOR YOUR SCREW-UP. FURTHER, I MAKE NO CLAIM TO THE OWNERSHIP OF ANY RIGHTS TO ANY OF THE INFORMATION IN THIS DOCUMENT. Having said that, please consider affording me the courtesy of allowing me to be the sole person to maintain this FAQ simply to prevent 267 different versions floating around in cyberspace. I am actively soliciting comments, clarifications, and requests for changes to this FAQ. Either questions, answers, or both may be submitted. Of course, the bulk of this information has been, and will continue to be, extracted from the newsgroups as time goes by. This FAQ is written for News Xpress version 1.0 beta #3. This FAQ is valid for June/July 1995. Please look for an updated version if today's date is Aug 1, 1995 or later. TABLE OF CONTENTS: 0.0.0 Who wrote News Xpress 0.1.0 NX Copyright Information 0.2.0 Reporting Bugs 0.3.0 Upgrades and manuals? 1.0.0 Guided Tour 1.1.0 The Main Window 1.1.1 HELP on the Menu Bar 1.1.2 Config, Setup and Preferences on the Menu Bar 2.0.0 Selecting the specific newsgroups you wish to read. 3.0.0 NX crashes regularly and other bugs or bad behaviour 4.0.0 Operations 4.1.0 Opening and Closing NX and its Various Windows 4.2.0 Follow-up, Post, and Reply 4.3.0 Find and Find-Next 4.4.0 Reloading Old Articles 4.5.0 Fonts 4.6.0 Multiple Users, Multiple Providers 4.7.0 Offline capabilities? 4.8.0 Folders 4.9.0 Spawning auxilliary programs 4.10.0 Batch article selection ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 0.0.0 Who wrote News Express W.L. Ken, Ng Rm F, 5/F, Odeon Bldg., 26-28 Shu Kuk St., North Point, Hong Kong E-Mail: kenng@hk.super.net 91465589@cityu.edu.hk 0.1.0 NX Copyright Information Permission to use, copy and distribute this software and its documentation for any purpose and without fee is hereby granted, provided that it is not modified. THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND WITHOUT ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. 0.2.0 Reporting Bugs Mail your bug reports to Ken Ng <kenng@hk.super.net>. Please include the steps to reproduce the bugs, and any other information that might help the developer locate and correct the cause. 0.3.0 Upgrades and manuals? Q. Is there a FAQ for NX? The Help file offers no hints about its operation. Q. Is there a site to download the operating manual? Q. When is the next upgrade? Q. Where can I get the latest version of NX? A. So far, there is no operating manual and the author, W.L.Ken Ng, is a busy college student. Please consider that NX is essentially free, has relatively few benign bugs, so he *may* feel he has no obligation to complete the NX package or establish a production schedule to upgrade the program. Try to obtain the program from: ftp.hk.super.net/pub/windows/Winsock-Utilities as well as several other places that has a windows/winsock directory. 1.0.0 Guided Tour News Xpress can be started without a winsock compliant stack protocol having been activated first. News Xpress, when started, will activate the winsock protocol for you. And if this is the case, then you don't have to be connected to your provider either. If you are not communicating with your provider, after a 5 minute time delay, News Xpress will process the NEWSRC file which then immediately afterward the winsock message: [11004] Valid name, no data record of requested type will appear on the screen. But even before the NEWSRC file gets processed, you may perform all appropriate functions (those that are not greyed out). One function is File, Connect which will immediately get you the above error message as you still haven't established communications with your provider. Clear the winsock error message by clicking on OK. Now that the NEWSRC file has been processed, the Main window now contains the Newsgroups window, listing all subscribed newsgroups (or all newsgroups depending on how the NEWSRC file was built). Once this window pops up, more functions will become available. 1.1.0 The Main Window A standard MS-Windows type window, the title bar and menu bar act just like any other. Below that is an unmodifiable hot-button bar. It duplicates from the drop-down menus the most common and heavily used functions of NX. By placing the cursor over any hot-button, after a few seconds a small flag will identify its function. At the bottom are three status windows. First window: Number of groups listed in the Newsgroups window .AND. for which, as far as NX knows, there are new messages available for viewing // total number of groups found in the NEWSRC file. Second window: Number of articles which are available for viewing .AND. for which you have not yet read this session (decrements for each message viewed) // Total number of articles that is the difference between the highest message number read and the highest message number available to view (which, if there has been a significant amount of time between sessions, this number may be quite large, but since some messages may have "rolled off" the system, this number will eventually get updated to reflect the *actual* number of unread messages available). Third window: These numbers, displayed during article header retrieval, represent the internal (your provider's) message numbering system. Although not yet verified, using a current NEWSRC file (which holds the message numbers of all the messages you've read or, by using the catch-up function, declared as having been read) with a different provider (as if who has more than one provider?) may cause some confusion. So you may see article numbers 500345-500394, but these numbers are internal references, not the actual article IDs. This window additionally serves as a fuel gauge type of indicator, growing dark grey as article headers are read in or an article is loaded, decoded, or stored to a file. Select Config, Preferences, [Articles], Max Hdrs per Read to set how many article headers are read per request to the server (and while you may press the big red stop button at any time, NX will continue to finish collecting the requested number of article headers). Q. NX's tendency is to have problems with maximized windows. What are the general rules for controlling window sizes in NX? What part of the NX.INI file is responsible for window sizes? Q. Some windows leave their checkboxes after closing them. A. (Luu Tran)This is a known bug. Select Config, Preferences, [Articles], "New Window for Each Article" and uncheck it. A. These windows behave like any other MS-Windows windows. To maximize a window, click on the up-arrow in the upper-right corner of the window. To restore a window to its not-full-screen size, click on the double arrow in the upper-right corner. If the window is full screen, yet there is no double arrow, then the window was "stretched" to fill the screen. The window dimensions are stored in the [GEOMETRY] section of NX.INI. Please consult a reference on MS-Windows for an explanation of these numbers. 1.1.1 HELP on the Menu Bar I won't include a text translation of NX.HLP here, although there is just a bit of extraneous material not accessable with the MS-Windows HELP facilities. It is as follows: =================== Procedures Attachments To attach files to your post or mail, you can click on the Attachment field to bring out Attachment dialog box. Decoding Multipart Files/Multiple Files To decode multipart files and/or multiple files, you have to tag the articles in order by either clicking the right mouse button or holding down SHIFT key plus clicking the left mouse button. A yellow box with a sequence number will be displayed for each tagged posts. Once you have completed, press the Decode button on the toolbar or select Article, Decode on the menu. NX will truncate long filename automatically and retain the extension if possible. If the filename is duplicated, it will insert a sequence number within the filename. Filtering Articles )Kill( =================== 1.1.2 Config, Setup and Preferences on the Menu Bar Please select Help, Index or press F1 to read about configuring NX. All configuration information and settings are stored in the NX.INI file (my copy is located in the C:\Windows directory, yours might be elsewhere). I've included my personal NX.INI file as an example: =================== [Config] NNTPServer=news.csus.edu NNTPPort=119 SMTPServer=csus.edu SMTPPort=25 TZ=PST8PDT Fullname=Brian Smither Email=sac75191@saclink.csus.edu Organization=CSU, Sacramento Signature= HomeDir=C:\WINSOCK\NX NewsRC=newsrc Logfile=history.log MaxIncLines=50 MaxHeadersPerRead=50 IncPrefix=> Options=63356185 Template=%s - %f [%p/%t] DecodePath=C:\WINSOCK\NX CutSize=2000 TimeFormat=%m/%d %I:%M %p RefreshRate=0 WrapSize=78 DecodeDir=X:\PMVIEW\BINARIES Headers=FROM,SUBJECT,DATE,ORGANIZATION NewsRCUpdate=950527 213529 [Auth] Username= Password= [Geometry] Frame=17 34 849 704 1 Newsgroups=1 0 779 584 1 Articles=8 34 813 511 444 479 591 1 Article=14 67 839 439 1 Edit=-10 37 871 473 1 Outbox=17 7 825 183 350 1 [Article Font] FaceName=Courier Height=-17 Weight=400 Width=0 Escapement=0 Italic=0 Underline=0 CharSet=0 PitchAndFamily=49 [Listing Font] FaceName=Helv Height=-15 Weight=400 Width=0 Escapement=0 Italic=0 Underline=0 CharSet=0 PitchAndFamily=0 [StatusBar Font] FaceName=Helv Height=-12 Weight=400 Width=0 Escapement=0 Italic=0 Underline=0 CharSet=0 PitchAndFamily=34 [Printer Font] FaceName=Helv Height=-12 Weight=400 Width=0 Escapement=0 Italic=0 Underline=0 CharSet=0 PitchAndFamily=34 [Folders] Count=0 [Edit Font] FaceName=Fixedsys Height=-15 Weight=400 Width=0 Escapement=0 Italic=0 Underline=0 CharSet=0 PitchAndFamily=49 [MailHeaders] Count=3 Head0=Subject, Head1=To, Head2=CC, [PostHeaders] Count=5 Head0=Newsgroups, Head1=Subject, Head2=To, Head3=Keywords, Head4=Summary, =================== The [CONFIG], Options line is calculated as follows: Feature is active: Add to total ............................ ............ Update Subscribed Newsgroups 33554432 2^25 Hide Groups Without Articles 16777216 2^24 Suppress "Re:" 8388608 2^23 New Window for Each Group 4194304 2^22 New Window for Each Article 2097152 2^21 Menu Bar: View, Expand All Threads 1048576 2^20 Prompt for New Groups 524288 2^19 Skip Old Articles 262144 2^18 ==== Retrieve Active Groups (ASK) 131072 2^17 Retrieve Active Groups (YES) 65536 2^16 .ELSE. Retrieve Active Groups (NO) 0 ==== Menu Bar: View, All Articles 32768 2^15 Confirm on Post or Send Mail 16384 2^14 Generate Message ID 8192 2^13 Menu Bar: View, Indent Threads 4096 2^12 Connect on Startup 2048 2^11 Word Wrap 1024 2^10 Display Headers Except: 512 2^9 Include Headers 256 2^8 Prompt to Include Original Message 128 2^7 Execute After Decoded 64 2^6 Prompt for Directory 32 2^5 Thread by References 16 2^4 Thread by Subject 8 2^3 ==== Sort by Date 4 2^2 Sort by Author 2 2^1 Sort by Subject 1 2^0 .ELSE. <Unknown how NX will behave> ==== Q. When a subscribed newsgroup is selected, NX sits there for the next 15, 20 minutes and grinds away reading all the headers (or whatever). Is something not set up right? A. Select Config, Preferences, [Articles], and check "Skip Old Articles". A. (Luu Tran)If reading a high-traffic group which hasn't been read in a while, NX will take a long time loading lots of unread article headers. Unfortunately, NX doesn't have a feature to let you load the latest X-number of articles. When enough headers have been retrieved, click the STOP hot button (and wait until NX actually stops retrieving headers). Read the desired articles. Select Edit, Select-All (or CTRL-A) then select Article, Mark Read (or CTRL-R). When NX is shut down, these articles will be annotated in the NEWSRC file, the article headers not retrieved will be available at the next session. Selecting Group, Catch-up (or ALT-K, or the catch-up hot button) will cause NX to consider all available articles, retrieved this session or not, as having been read, and will only retrieve new article headers during the next session. During this session, after Catch-up, select Group, Reload Old Articles (ALT-R) to retrieve the most latest articles made available to the provider. Press the STOP hot button when enough article headers have been retrieved. 2.0.0 Selecting the specific newsgroups you wish to read. Q. When NX connects to the newsgroup server, NX updates the entire newsgroup list. Is there a way to update just the subscribed newsgroups. Q. The darn thing reads in ALL 12,000+ newsgroups! A. In Config, Preferences, [Groups], make sure that "Retrieve active groups" is checked either <No> or <Ask>. If checked <Ask>, News Xpress will confirm with you whether you wish to update your list of newsgroups available from your provider. Q. Each of three times I've connected NX to the provider, it reads the entire 10,000+ list of newsgroups. It says it's updating the NEWSRC file, which is 208,844 bytes in size. A. Not unusual for a NEWSRC file this large as NX gives you the choice of displaying only the subscribed newsgroups (further limiting the list to only those newsgroups with new messages) or all the newsgroups available at your provider. Hence, NX must have a NEWSRC file which lists all available newsgroups. Depending on how the NEWSRC file was built, every newsgroup name may be suffixed with a colon (:) which means that this is a subscribed newsgroup and NX will request an update on whether there are any new articles available. The format of the Newsgroups window when all available newsgroups are listed is for each line: a box on the left- empty if not subscribed, crossed if it is; a dash if this newsgroup has not been updated as yet, a number which is the updated count of unread articles available; then the newsgroup name. By clicking on the box, it will either add or remove the cross. This is the same as selecting Subscribe or Unsubscribe from the menus or hot buttons. If the NEWSRC file is properly written when NX is terminated, the status of newsgroups subscribed or otherwise is there for the next NX session. Q. How can I look at subscribed news groups only? I'm having a problem going back to "subscribed groups" after checking all newsgroups. Is a folder needed for subscribed newsgroups? Are groups moved to that folder? A. (Mike J. M.)There is a folder for subscribed groups. It's called "Newsgroups." When the hot button "Show all groups" (second from the left) is pressed, it shows all groups. Unpressed, it shows only subscribed groups. Make sure that nothing is entered in the Filter field. 3.0.0 NX crashes regularly and other bugs or bad behaviour Q. How is the maximum size of a retrieved article increased? When an article of 1000 lines or so of text is retrieved, NX says the article is too long and dropped what it couldn't read. A. NX appears to have a limit to the size of article it can hold, whether reading or writing. It seems to be about 718 lines of text. To read the entire lengthy article, highlight the article header then press the SAVE hot button and give NX a filename to save it under. Later, read it using a different file viewer. Q. Twice when starting News Xpress, all subscribed newsgroups were lost and had to be re-subscribed. It was as if News Xpress was just installed. When a different NEWSRC is used, everything works. Q. Sometimes NX ignores the NEWSRC file. Why? A. Waiting for any information. Q. The "Preferences" window is too big for the screen. A. Yes, it is, unless the display is at 1024x768 resolution or larger. Q. The "Stop" hot button and selecting File, Stop doesn't work. A. It certainly doesn't work as expected. NX will not stop retrieving an article or a multi-part decode in the middle of the download. NX will not stop retrieving article headers in the middle of a "packet." Please select Config, Preferences, [Articles], Max Hdrs per Read. The value here is how many article headers per packet will be requested from the provider. For example, if the number is 50, and 162 headers have been retrieved when the STOP hot button was pressed, NX will finish the current "packet" of 50 headers for a total of 200 headers retrieved (there may be many more headers available). Setting this value to zero or one will defeat the capability to stop retrieving headers. If stopping the retrieval process is important, set this value to a real low number greater than 1. There will be a slight performance trade-off as NX must now send packet requests to the provider much more often. Q. All of the sudden, every time NX is started, Windows gets a GPF stating: "NX caused a General Protection fault in module USER.EXE at 000B:01F7" Q. With V1.0b3, it's practically impossible to access newsgroup article headers where there is a non-standard character in the subject line. NX gives Windows a GPF in USER.EXE then quits. Q. NX hangs when retrieving new headers about 40% of the time. It can't even retrieve 30 article headers without crapping out. C. <Harvey Padden> I've resorted to saving the NEWSRC file regularly to limit loss of catch-up data because of the same problem. I can't even tell what causes the crash because it occurs when loading the "offending" header, so I never get to see the header's data. A. Try deleting the KILLRC file found in the NX home directory and allow NX to build another one. A. (Brian Hillegass)The problem that crashes NX is improper 'From:' fields in the article header. A. (Jonathan Kliman)Also, when your provider keeps articles with invalid article numbers, NX will crash. That is, if the NEWSRC says article numbers 1-12655 have been read and article number 3 or an article with no number at all shows up in the data stream, NX will bomb and will continue to bomb until the article either expires or you remove it by hand from the NEWSRC file. Q. When News Xpress starts to connect to my newsgroup provider, I get an "Authorization Error". A. In Config, Setup, [Authorization Information], these two fields should be blank unless your provider specifies that you need authorization (such as for access to alt.binaries.erotica.*). Q. But what if they are blank and I still get that error message? A. Verify from your provider that you do *not* need to send authorization information. Maybe you do. Q. In attempting to open News Xpress the following message is displayed: "This application uses CTL3DV2.DLL which has not been correctly installed." This file is in the Windows\System directory. If it does not belong there, where should it be moved to? A. Delete all copies of CTL3DV2.DLL wherever they may be except for the one in Windows\System. Q. When NX closes, it has stopped updating my NEWSRC file (using Win95). A. It may have something to do with the order of the groups (getting out of alphabetical order). Try deleting your NEWSRC file and letting News Xpress rebuild it. Use the filter to re-subscribe to the groups you wish. A. (Dean Richardson)NX doesn't handle excessively long newsgroup names very well. The same crash will happen in Windows 3.x. Q. Config, Preferences, [Groups] "Connect at Startup" is checked, yet I have to select File, Connect to connect with the server. A. That's how mine is configured, and it works fine for me. Are you sure the Setup settings are valid? Q. When posting articles, the following error message is displayed: "NNTP Error 441 Article posted in the future." The article never gets posted and the edit window remains open. Q. When NX is started, an error message is displayed: "you need to specify time zone in TZ environment variable for correct time stamp". Please explain what this is all about. Where is the TZ environment variable? Where is the time zone set? A. Select Config, Setup, Time Zone: and make sure that it is correct. Select Help, Index, "Setting Up NX" for details on the format. A. (Malcolm Hoar)Alternatively, set a DOS environment variable line: SET TZ=<time zone format, such as PST8PDT> in AUTOEXEC.BAT. News Xpress and quite a few other applications will automatically check for a TZ environment variable and configure themselves accordingly. C. (Conrad Sabatier)The Time Zone: field is only in version beta#3. In version beta#2, the TZ environment variable must be set manually. Q. NX appears to have a problem in that it sends an approved document to the newsgroup moderation address with all headers intact. If posting the same file with unix's "INEWS -h", the file is posted normally. Is there a solution or alternative for this problem. A. Sorry, don't quite understand the exact nature of the problem. Q. After NX hits an error in the downloading and decoding process, is there a way I can disable the error message so that it just jumps to the next file? A. Don't know. Q. Does NX have a poison pill where, unless it is registered, that after so many days of free usage you can never use it again (or another copy)? I can not get it to start from either the icon or the NX.EXE file. A. NX is freeware, there's no penalty for not registering nor is there a beta expiration date. After closing NX, it might not restart unless MS-Windows is shut down and re-engaged. No error messages...nothing gives a hint as to what is preventing a re-start of NX. A. (Bill Urton)Occasionally, while quitting winsock, the message, "Quitting Winsock may cause instability in network applications" is displayed which would mean that something is still loaded and running even though there isn't. Quitting windows and rebooting clears this problem up. Perhaps at times, when NX is terminated, it leaves enough of itself in memory that MS-Windows thinks it is already loaded and refuses to start up another copy. C. (William Musto)Running NX under WIN-OS/2..never had a problem. C. Running 1.0b3 under OS/2 WARP for Windows (meaning WARP installed MS-Windows support from the Windows installation disks), and there is this problem. 4.0.0 Operations 4.1.0 Opening and Closing NX and its Various Windows NX and all its windows follow standard MS-Windows opening and closing protocols as well as a few additional methods. NX may be started by double-clicking the News Xpress icon. Eventually, assuming you have established communications with your provider, NX will request an update regarding what messages are available for subscribed newsgroups and will display a Newsgroups window. To open the Article Headers window for a particular newsgroup, 1) double click on any newsgroup name or, 2) use the cursor keys to move the highlight bar to a newsgroup name, then press "enter". NX will then retrieve article headers from the provider and open the Article Headers window. To close the Article Headers window, 1) double click on the dash in the upper-left corner of the window or, 2) single click on this dash, then click on the menu selection Close or, 3) press ALT-F4 or, 4) press ESC. NX will close this window and shift focus back to the Newsgroups window. To open and close the Article Text window, follow the same procedures as above. 4.2.0 Follow-up, Post, and Reply Q. Please explain the operation of FOLLOW-UP, POST and REPLY. A. (Mike J.M.)FOLLOW-UP is for sending a response back to the newsgroup currently being read. REPLY is for sending a response by e-mail to the author of the article currently being read. In the FOLLOW-UP template, the To: field lets you redirect follow-ups to other newsgroups. Therefore, if blank, follow-ups will be sent to the newsgroup(s) listed in the "Newsgroups" field or if a different group or groups are entered here, they'll be sent to those groups instead. POST is for an original article sent to the specified newsgroup(s). A. NX appears to limit the size of a post, whether reading or writing, to about 718 lines. For example, Press the Post hot button then select File, Include. Enter the name of a text file known to be longer than 725 lines. It will get truncated. Q. Articles never get sent. Everything seems to work OK, but the message never gets there. No error messages or dead-letters. A. Be sure you have the exact and proper domain names and port numbers entered in the Config, Setup, [Hosts and Ports Information] fields. Q. Please explain how to save a copy of the article I posted. A. <Not verified!> Before clicking on the Send hot button (or selecting File, Send or CTRL-E), click on the Save hot button (or select File, Save or CTRL-S). If the article has already been sent, shift the focus back to the Newsgroups window and select Group, Check New Articles (ALT-N). NX should add the recently sent article to the list in the Article Headers window. Highlight it, then click on the Save hot button. 4.3.0 Find and Find-Next Q. How is "find" used properly? With all groups listed, finding "alt.winsock" says "warning: not found". A. (Mike J.M.)NX seems not to find the newsgroup if it's already open. A. Make sure the highlight bar is on and at the very top of the newsgroup list. Find will always ask for a new text string to search for, while Find-Next will scan for the next occurance of that text. The scanning will always proceed from the current location of the highlight bar to the end of the list. 4.4.0 Reloading Old Articles Q. After closing an Article Headers window, any article that was read is not available the next time that newsgroup is opened. Is there a way to reload old articles? A. (Jason D) Select Group, Reload Old Articles (or Alt+R). Press the "stop" hot button to force an end to the retrieval process. 4.5.0 Fonts Q. Please explain about the fonts. The only choices for EDIT font are Courier and Fixed-Sys. What about Ariel? What is the "Switch Font" command? A. (Greg R. Broderick)There are two types of fonts available for MS-Windows applications - fixed-pitch and proportional fonts. Most messages, for compatibility reasons, are composed with fixed-pitch fonts, and NX is compliant. Arial is a proportional font. Not everyone who reads your article will have Ariel available and not every proportional foint has the same metrics. The article format should be no more than 78 characters of 7-bit ASCII characters per line, each line terminated with a CR/LF (hex 0D/0A or decimal 13/10 at least in the other-than-unix crowd). TABs may be frowned upon. The "switch font" command appears to switch fonts from the font selected as the "Article" font, to the font selected as the "Edit" font, when reading an article. If both fonts are defined as the same thing, then the button is useless. 4.6.0 Multiple Users, Multiple Providers Q. Does anyone know how to configure NX for multiple configurations on the same machine, such as two users with different E-mail addresses and subscribed newsgroups? A. Create individualized <username>.INI and <username> files. Create as many icons for NX as you have users. Highlight each icon in turn, then from Program Manager, select File, Properties. Edit the fields for each individual icon to identify its appropriate user, such as: Description: Jack's News Xpress Command Line: c:\nx10b3\nx.exe c:\nx10b3\jack.ini Working Directory: c:\nx10b3\ Description: Mary's News Xpress Command Line: c:\nx10b3\nx.exe c:\nx10b3\mary.ini Working Directory: c:\nx10b3\ Make copies of the NEWSRC file, renaming them to <username>. From within NX, edit the Config, Setup, [File and Path], News RC File: field to read <username>. Edit all other fields as appropriate. For multiple providers... A. (Gary Zone)Create subdirectories of NX. In each subdirectory, place the individualized .ini file and NEWSRC file. Create as many icons for NX as you have subdirectories. Highlight each icon in turn in Program Manager and point to File, Properties. Point each individual icon to its appropriate subdirectory .ini file in the command line. For example, the command line for one NX icon says: c:\internet\nx10b3\nx.exe c:\internet\nx10b3\cadvisn\nx.ini This points to one of several Usenet providers. The names of the .ini files can be the same because they will reside in separate subdirectories. The catch is that only one session of NX can be resident at one time. A. (Mark S. Stein)For each user, set up an icon with command lines like: nx.exe nxuser1.ini nx.exe nxuser2.ini etc. First time each is run, it will bring up the configuration window. Be sure to fill in the "Home Directory" and "News RC" sections properly so each user has his own area and NEWSRC. 4.7.0 Offline capabilities? Q. To read 10 groups offline means that 10 windows have to be opened, then Edit, Select-All (CTRL-A), then Transfer to download all new articles to their respective folders. Is there any way to do that in one single operation? Q. How is the list of unread headers in each newsgroup saved for offline review and selection? While offline, individual articles are marked for retrieval on the next session. Q. Can NX be used to read news and compose a post offline? A. (Mike J.M.)Keep in mind that NX is not yet advanced enough in this area to automate the task. Here's how to do it: While online... Open a newsgroup. Select the desired article headers by using mouse button-2. They can be selected individually or in a batch (select Edit, Select-All or CTRL-A or "swipe" the headers). Then select Transfer, New and name a folder for these articles. You can sort them however you want. Try to use a different folder name for each newsgroup. Click OK to create any new folder name. Next time, just choose the proper folder name from the Transfer menu. They'll be downloaded for later reading. While offline... Select Folder, <foldername> and read, follow-up and reply as usual. Outgoing messages will be placed in the Outbox. To send them, select Folder, Outbox during the next NX session. A. (Marcio Watanabe)NX can only select articles for retrieval while online. To prepare for retrieving articles for offline viewing, select Config, Folders, Add. Open the desired group, highlight some article headers, select Transfer, <foldername> to retrieve articles into it. Select Transfer, New... to create folders on the fly. After disconnecting, select Folder, <foldername> to view the articles offline. Q. There are no articles to read when offline! What is wrong?? A. (Marcio Watanabe)Don't forget to transfer all the articles to be read offline to folders. 4.8.0 Folders Q. How can a folder be deleted? A. Select Config, Folders, highlight the folder to delete, select Delete. Q. How do articles of a particular newsgroup get into a folder? A. Highlight the desired article headers, then select Transfer,<folder name>. Q. Please explain the Folder, Outbox. It shows just a blank window with a vertical line. Does it archive postings? Is this a part that's still under construction? A. While offline, select Folder, Outbox. The Outbox window is split into two parts: the contents of the subject field, and the contents of the newsgroup(s) field (which was automatically filled in if a newsgroup was highlighted) or e-mail recipient. Now press the Post or Mail/Forward hot buttons. The appropriate editing window will allow you to create an article or e-mail. When finished, close the editing window and NX will ask, "Save Changes?" Click on YES to put this article or e-mail into the Outbox. This is not a place to archive personal postings. When NX connects to the provider, the contents of the outbox will be sent and the box will be cleared. 4.9.0 Spawning auxilliary programs Q. Please explain how to spawn Netscape when a URL name is spotted in an article. NX is setup for mosaic with the right info. Now what?? Q. NX has been setup to call NETSCAPE.EXE with the proper path but it does not seem to work. More details on the "applications" feature of NX is needed. Q. The path for applications (ftp, mosaic, gopher) have been setup but how are they run from NX? A. Waiting for some answers. A. (Dave Solly)Double click on the www or ftp reference (has to start with www or ftp), and the application will start up and take you there. A. (Mike J.M.)Double-click on the URL, such as the one below: http://mars.superlink.net/user/mook/ 4.10.0 Batch article selection Q. Please explain how to combine several files into one for decoding? A. (Steve Howie)Shift-mouse button 1 (or shift-cursor up/down or just mouse button 2) on each article in the order that they are to be assembled. Make sure you do them in the correct order. Click on the Decode hot button. When each article is tagged in this manner, a yellow box with the sequence number appears beside each article. This procedure also works in saving articles directly to disk. A. If a thread (a bunch of articles sharing the same subject line, collected together on one line with a folder icon instead of a document icon) is selected in this manner, the thread is assigned the sequence number but all articles contained in that thread are retrieved. Each article and/or thread can be "tagged" individually, or a group of articles/ threads can be "swiped" by click-dragging the mouse cursor or holding the shift key while repeatedly pressing the cursor key. A. (Luu Tran)NX can decode split articles. Just click on each part in order. NX even decodes multiple files, each with multiple parts. It doesn't matter if the parts are not listed in their proper order. For example: 1. file A (1/3) 2. file B (1/4) 3. file A (2/3) 4. file A (3/3) 5. file B (3/4) 6. file B (4/4) 7. file B (2/4) To decode both file A and B, "tag" lines 1, 3, 4, 2, 7, 5, 6, in that order. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- This is the end of the News Xpress FAQ dated 31 May 1995.