Reading News: a brief introduction.

News (aka USENET) is a world-wide discussion forum. Here's how it works: many different topics are discussed in news, from computers to movies to sex. Each topic has its own section, called a newsgroup. News readers all over the world write little articles about whatever pithy little subject they like, and then submit it to the relevant newsgroup. Then, news readers all over the place see this article and can either blissfully forget about it, or post some even more bizarre drivel in response. Thus creating a resevoir of sometimes interesting information.

1. Several programs are available for reading news. One pouplar one is called trn. When you first run trn, the program sets up some files and subdirectories. Don't mess with them for now. Next, it may list several newsgroups you don't have, and ask if you want them. If the group sounds interesting, press y; if not, press n. Typing h at any prompt will explain your options.

2. Eventually, you will get to the main news prompt. The general format is:

   ******** 10 unread articles in comp.sys.amiga -- read now? [+ynq]

   ******** 25 unread articles in rec.humor -- read now? [+ynq]

   The only newsgroups you will be "subscribed" to are news.announce.newusers and any group you answered y to before. To get a list of all newsgroups, type l followed by a Return. There thousands of newsgroups, nobody has time to read them all -- remember, each gets new articles constantly. To add a newsgroup from this list, return to the -- read now? [+ynq] prompt, type g [newsgroup], and y if you want to resubscribe. To leave the group, just type n, for next. Look through the entire newsgroup list and add all the newsgroups which sound interesting. For most of them (like alt.drugs), it will be fairly clear what the group is about. For some, however, like the comp., ca., and news. groups, it will be far from clear. In this case, 90% of the time the group won't be interesting. However, remember you can always unsubscribe by pressing u later, if for example you decide that you don't like soc.culture.sri-lanka. When you're done adding newsgroups, either go to the next step, or type q for quit. You can always return later.

3. Now comes the fun bit: reading. Go to the main menu, pick a likely group, and press y. You will be presented with a list of discussion "threads" in this newsgroup. Select the threads which you want to read (judging from the titles) by pressing the letters corresponding to them. Once you've selected the threads you want, press D. Press the space bar to scroll through the article you are viewing. To move to the next article, press n. To quit this group and move to the main menu, type q.

4. Now, finally, you have to trim your reading material to a managable lump. When you eventually read all the articles in a group, you will be bumped back into the main menu, and that group will not be offered again until it receives more articles from somewhere. It will soon become clear that catching up is a gigantic task. Many groups start out with hundreds of articles in them. That is why the c command (for catch up) is useful. Pressing it, and confirming afterwards marks all the articles in the groups read and leaves you with a clean slate, so to speak. This command also comes in handy when you have stems due tomorrow, and can't really bother with the 424 unread articles in alt.tv.x-files.

5. Once you have started catching up in your groups, either by c or reading, and unsubscribing from topics you don't like, you are, for all practical purposes, a news reader. Typing trn every few hours will give you a few articles to peruse in order to avoid work. Try not to get too bored.

Notes:

1. Reading news isn't quite on the same intellectual level as playing a game, but the priority is still the same. Please refrain if lots of people have work to do.

2. Keep, by all means, news.announce.important and news.announce.newusers. The former states things that are generally of imperative importance, and the latter provides a good intro.

3. Finally, it will probably, after a while, be tempting to create and send out some of your own articles to the net. Before you do so, it is highly suggested that you read for a while and see what is considered good and bad, and read some guidelines. News.announce.newusers is a great place to look.

Copyright (c) HMC Computer Science Department. Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.1 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with the no Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled ``GNU Free Documentation License.''