Tutorial 14: Group Reader
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Main Group Window Areas The basic structure and operation of the group window is covered in an ealier tutorial: Tutorial 5: Newsreading Basics. This tutorial covers more advanced features of the Group Reader window.

At the top of the window are a set of register tabs which can be used to move between the several areas of the group window.


You can click on one of the tabs to go to the associated section of this tutorial.

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Status Bar & Abort Button

In the main newsreading area near the top of the window is the status bar, which looks like this:

On the left side of the status bar is a brief message which indicates the current action. It lists states such as Idle, D/L'ing Articles (N of M), etc.

On the right side of the status bar is a bar graph showing the approximate percentage completion of the current action. Some actions such as downloading articles only update the status approximately every 100 lines.

On the far right of the status bar is a small stop button which can be pressed to halt the current network operation. For example, if you start downloading a very long article by mistake, pressing this will stop that operation. Pressing it during batch downloading of articles will halt that operation, and so on. This button will be ghosted if no operation is in progress or if the current operation is not abortable.

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Article Status Icon On the left side of the article list is a small status icon which displays the current state of the listed article. The exact look of the icons will depend on your current MUI preferences:

The broken icon is displayed for articles that could not be fetched from the server. This might be due to any number of causes: the article has expired, it has been cancelled, a connection could not be made to the news server, or an error occurred when attempting to fetch the article from the server.
The network icon is displayed for articles are in the queue to be downloaded from the network, or are actually being transferred from the network.
The cached icon is displayed for articles that have been cached on the local disk. Since no information needs to be obtained from the news server, these articles may be read in offline mode. Articles may be explicitly cached by using one of the cache menu items. A Cached filter is available to select against cached articles.
The permanent icon is displayed for articles that have been marked as permanent. Permanent articles are like cached articles, but they do not expire as normal articles do, and will remain in the group until explicitly deleted or marked as non-permanent. A Permanent filter is available to select against permanent articles.
The new icon is displayed for articles that have recently been downloaded from the network. Resetting the new state is controlled by the group preferences; it may be done when the group is closed, when an article is read, or both, or neither. A New filter is available to select against new articles.

By clicking in the column that displays the status icon, you can cycle an individual article between Normal, Cached, and Permanent.

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Group Window Toolbars The article list toolbar looks like this:


You can click on the buttons to move to the associated section of this tutorial. The article viewer toolbar looks like this:

         

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Mode Changing Arrows

These buttons move the article list between All Articles, All Threads, and One Thread modes.

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FAQ Manager

This button opens up the group's FAQ Manager . The FAQ manager can fetch group FAQ ("Frequently Asked Questions") files from a FAQ server and display them locally.

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Hilight Filters

This button opens a list of Hightlight Filters. Highlight filters are simply selection filters which cause an article's subject to be highlighted in the Article List. For example, here is an example of a hilight filter which matches all articles with Steinway or Baldwin in the subject line:


This sort of filter can be used to make particular articles stand out from the others. Any NewsRog selection filter may be used. The Update button will re-highlight all visible articles according to the current set of enabled filters.

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Read/ Unread Toggle

These buttons determine whether read article, unread articles, or both, are displayed in the article list. If neither button or both buttons are pushed (depressed), then all articles are displayed. If the only read button () is pushed, then only read articles are displayed. If only the unread button () is pushed, then only unread articles are displayed.

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One Author Button

If this button is depressed, then the article list is restricted to viewing articles by one particular author. When this button is pushed, the author of the currently article highlighted in the article list is remembered, and only articles by this author are displayed.

Note that this is orthogonal to any other restrictions in place. For example, if you are in One Thread mode, only articles by the chosen author in that particular thread are displayed. To display all articles in the current group by a particular author, first move to All Articles mode and then use the button.

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Remove Articles Button

This button is used to remove articles or threads from the article list on a temporary basis. Articles removed in this manner will re-appear the next time the group is opened (as long as they haven't been expired or killed and meet all the proper criteria for being displayed). Contrast this with the Kill button, which removes articles for good.

When this button is pressed, a small popup window appears with several choices. Clicking Remove Selected Articles will cause the currently selected articles to be removed from the article list. Remove Selected Threads is similar, but all articles in the same threads as any currently selected article are removed. Un-Remove restores any removed articles to the article list.

The hotkey 'z' (lower case) invokes the Remove Selected Articles function, while 'Z' (upper case) invokes Remove Selected Threads.

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Kill Button

This button provide an easy way to create kill files. A small popup window that looks like this will appear:


The first cycle gadget choses the kill type. The choices are:

  • Kill Selected Articles - This will kill all selected articles.

  • Kill Selected Threads - This will kill all articles in the same thread(s) as the selected article(s).

  • Kill All by Same Author - This will kill all articles written by the same author as the selected article(s).

The second cycle gadget selects between:

  • Kill Current Articles - Only articles present now will be killed. This will have no effect on any future articles posted to this group.

  • Kill Current & Future Articles - This will also kill new articles that come along matching the same criteria. For example, if Kill Selected Threads is chosen, then the next time this group is read, new articles posted to the selected threads will be killed as well. This will effectively remove all articles that have been posted as well as all articles that will be posted to those threads. The function in Kill All by Same Author mode is similar: any future articles posted by the selected authors will be killed as well.

The Expiration control is only available if Kill Current & Future Articles has been selected. If the checkbox is unset, then the kill filter entry that has been created will never expire. If it is checked, however, then the kill filter entry will expire after the indicated period of disuse. For example, if you chose to kill all articles in a particular thread now and in the future, then the kill filter entry that accomplishes this will disappear after nothing has been posted to that thread for the indicated period of time. This makes it easier to manage kill filters.

The Location gadget controls how kill filter entries are created:

  • Kill in This Group - The default mode creates local kill entries - that is, entries which only apply to this particular group.

  • Kill in All Groups - If this mode is selected, kill filter entries will be created globally for all groups. This is useful, for example, to kill a particular author's articles no matter which group they are posted to.

The results of using this easy front end to kill filters can be changed or examined by hand as well. A group specific kill filter of the type HeaderMatch called is created called Thread/Author Kill. This filter can be found in the Select Filters tab of the group window. You might want to add, remove, or change various entries by hand.

Lastly, pressing the Kill button will kill the indicated articles and if required, add to the Thread/Author Kill filter. Pressing the Cancel button will close the window and not do anything else.

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View Button

The article list view button allows you to change the currently enabled set of selection filters. In effect, you can define different Views onto the current group, and select one or more of them at any given time. Pressing this button yields a small popup window like this:


This window lists both selection filters defined for this group only, and global selection filters defined in the configuration area. Any combination of filters can be toggled on or off here, and when the Update button is pressed, the popup window will close and the article list will update to display articles matched by the newly enabled set of selection filters.

By default, the selection filters are used in Any mode. That is, an article matches will be displayed if it matches any enabled filters. But this can be changed in the main selection filter list to All mode, in which only articles that match all enabled filters are displayed.

The Close button will close the popup window but will not immediately update the article list.

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Action Button

This will pop up a list of defined action filters:


Any combination of action filters may be selected, and when the Run button is pressed, the action filters will be run against the currently selected set of articles. If necessary, articles may be fetched from the network at this time.

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Article Viewer Movement

These buttons move the view to the top or bottom of the currently displayed article.

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Post New & Followup

The PostNew button () posts a new article to this group. The Post Followup button () posts a followup to the article in the article view area, or a new article if no article is currently displayed.

Note that the "Replies" option in display filters can be turned on or off to modify the initial text when posting followups to articles. For instance, you might turn this option on in a HideSig filter to remove signature blocks automatically.

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Article Viewer Browsing

Pressing the forward browse button () or the period/full-stop "." key or the numeric keypad "page down" key will page forward in the article displayed in the article list. When the end of the article is reached, the next article in the present thread will be fetched and displayed. When the end of the thread is reached, the first article in the next thread will be displayed, and so on until the end of the group. Many times, it is possible to browse news using just by pressing the period/full-stop key when you are ready to continue reading.

The reverse browse button () which is mapped to the "," key or the numeric keypad "page up" key performs the same function but in reverse. It pages back in the present article, etc.

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Article Movement

Pressing the forward article button () or the forward bracket "]" key or the numeric keypad "+" key will move to and display the next article. At the end of a thread, the first available article in the next thread will be displayed.

The reverse article button () which is mapped to the "[" and numeric keypad "-" keys performs the same function but in reverse.

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Thread Movement

Pressing the forward thread button () or the forward paren ")" key will move to and display the next available thread, skipping all articles in the current thread.

The reverse thread button () which is mapped to the "(" key performs the same function but in reverse.

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Article Text Searching

This button is similar to the list search buttons available elsewhere, but instead it searches for the indicated text through the article body of the article displayed in the article view area.

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Article Text Clipping

This button is similar to the clip buttons available elsewhere, but instead it copies the currently selected text from the article viewer into the system clipboard.

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Group Specific Filters The group specific filter areas allow you to define a set of filters that apply only to this particular group. Filters that apply to more than one group may be defined in the configuration area.

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Searching in Article Bodies The article list search window (accessed via the button) in the group window has a few special features. The window looks like this:


The Match Header gadget can be used to select among various header that the search will be restricted to. For example, you can perform a Dynamic search only through the Subject: headers of posts, or only through the From: headers.

There are also several other custom values:

This is similar to the Cached Bodies option above, but the search will find text in header fields as well.

ValueDescription
All Headers The search will find text in any header of an article, as long as it has been loaded. Remember that the Use Full Headers option controls whether all the article's headers are loaded from the network.
Cached Bodies The search will find text in the bodies of articles, as long as those articles have been marked as Cached or Permanent. (Fetching all articles from the network would take too long for acceptable search performance, but you can cache whichever articles you are interested in searching through).

Note that this action will cause all the article bodies to be retrieved from disk cache until the one is found that matches your query. Used with the Dynamic search option, this requires a fast machine and disk subsystem for best performance. The use of a disk cache program also will help improve the speed of searching through article bodies.

Note that NewsRog makes a distinction between how an article is displayed and how it was posted. For example, various Display Filters can modify the way an article is displayed. For this reason, it is possible for this search to find text in an article body that is not actually displayed when you view the article. For example, it might be text that is part of a hidden signature block. However, for text in scrolled quote blocks, the scroll region will be automatically changed to view the text.

Hdrs+Cached Bodies

The Update Disp button is only available when one of the article body search options has been selected. It controls whether the article view updates each time a match has been found. Doing this slows the search since each article must be formatted for display, but it allows you to see the results of the search as you type.

The Search from RAM button is also only available when one of the article body search options has been selected. When selected, all cached articles will be loaded into memory, and further searches will happen from the versions in memory, which is much faster that searching from disk, but can take a considerable amount of memory if there are many or large articles. A status update will be displayed while the articles are being loaded; this may take a few moments. If loading the articles would result in less than 4 Mb being available, the operation will not be performed.

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Group Config There are three main areas in the group specific configuration options:


  • Group Description - This string is displayable in the Group List window, and can be read from the server by group lists's Read Description command, although it may be manually set to any string here.

  • Server - If non-blank, the indicated server will be used to fetch this group instead of using the project's default server. For example, you might want to read a special programming group available from a different news server than you typically read news from. Pressing the Def button will restore the project's default server.

  • Signature File - If non-blank, this will override the default signature file from the configuration area.

  • ArticleView Title - If non-blank, this will override the default set in the configuration area.

  • Max Articles - When fetching article headers, this is the maximum number to be fetched, according to the Header Fetch Policy set in the main configuration window. For example, you may wish to fetch no more than the most recent 200 articles from a group that has 4000 articles available on the server.

  • Max to Keep on Exit - This is the number of article headers (not including those for any permanent articles) to be retained when closing this group. For example, if you want to be able to refer to 100 older articles the next time you read this group, you can set this value to 100 (note that these articles must be either cached locally, or still available on your news server in order for you to see them). Set it to a low value if you don't care about reading older articles.

  • Article Font - The default font to use for this group. If unset, the font from the main configuration is used. For example, you may wish to use a proportional font as your default, but override it with a fixed width font for an ASCII pictures or source code group.

  • Article Color - The default text color for this group. If unset, the color from the main configuration is used.

  • New Article Marker - Newly fetched article headers are marked with a status icon. This setting controls the policy for resetting this marker. You may chose to have it reset when you read an article, when you close the group, or only manually from the group menu options.

  • Incremental Loading - If checked, then headers will be displayed as they are loaded, so that you can start reading articles even before all the headers are finished transferring. If unchecked, headers will not be displayed until all of them are done loading from the network, which is more efficient since it avoids extra sorting and threading operations.


  • Cached Articles - If articles have been cached (which is most often done to support later off-line reading), NewsRog will typically ask whether to keep or delete them when the group is closed. This option may be set to Keep at Exit, Ask at Exit, or Delete at Exit to specify a behavior.

  • Mem Cache Articles - When reading news, the last few articles read will be cached in memory to make them quickly available if you go back and re-read an article. This is the maximum number of articles that will be so cached in memory.

  • Mem Cache Size - This is the maximum size of the article memory cache.

  • Thread Prefetch - When reading one article of a thread in online mode, the next few articles in the same thread will be fetched while you are still reading the first to speed access for sequential reading. This is the number of pre-fetched articles. Note that the articles must fit in the memory cache, so the smaller of this value and Mem Cache Articles actually determines the prefetch.

  • Read & Cache - If enabled, articles read in online mode will be automatically cached as they are read.


  • D/L New on Startup - If set, then new article headers will be downloaded from the news server when the group window is opened and NewsRog is in online mode. Otherwise, headers are only fetched manually using the Group/Fetch New menu.

  • Use Full Headers - When fetching articles, NewsRog usually downloads only a subset of the available headers. This subset is sufficient for almost all purpose, but leaves out some infrequently used headers such as the Path headers. Setting this option will cause NewsRog to download all the article's headers instead, which is slightly slower and consumes more room in the header cache.

  • Mark Read on Exit - If set, all articles in the group are automatically marked as read when the group window is closed.

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Group Window Menus Group Project menu:

  • Save - Saves the headers to the local disk cache. This includes information such as read/unread articles.

  • Close - Save & close the current group.

  • Close/NoSave - Close the group window without saving the header cache. This is not generally the recommended way to close the group window.

  • Toggle Windows - Toggles between a single article list/article view window, and separate windows. This can be configured permanently in the Config Window.

Group menu:

Article List menu:

  • Select All - Select (highlight) all articles currently shown in the article list.

  • Select - Menus for selecting multiple articles from the current set displayed in the article list:
    • Read - Select all read articles.
    • Unread - Select all unread articles.
    • Marked - Select all marked articles.
    • Cached - Select all cached (but not permanent) articles.
    • Uncached - Select all uncached articles.
    • Permanent - Select all permanent articles.
    • New - Select all new articles.

  • Toggle Selected - Toggle the selected state of all articles currently shown in the article list.

  • Limit to Selected - All articles except the currently selected ones are removed from the article list.

  • Unlimit - Undo the effect of a Limit to Selected operation.

  • Remove - Removes articles from the group on a temporary basis, identical to the operation of the remove button.

  • Search... - The same as pressing the search button ( ).

  • Selected Articles
  • All in Thread
  • All in Group - The following sub-menus are available under each of the preceding three menus. Their function is identical, differing only in the set of articles operated upon:
    • Set Read - Mark the articles or threads as read.
    • Set Unread - Mark the articles or threads as unread.
    • Mark - Set a user mark on the selected articles. Articles marked in this way show up as bold. This can be used to mark interested articles or threads.
    • Unmark - Reset the user mark set with Mark.
    • Cache - Cache the selected articles on the local disk.
    • Cache Permanent - Make the selected articles permanent. Permanent articles are cached on the local disk but do not expire.
    • Uncache - Remove cached or permanent articles from the local disk cache.
    • Reset New - The new article marker for these articles is reset.

The Viewer Article menu commands operate on the article displayed in the article viewer:

  • Select All Text - All article text is selected.

  • Save Text - Saves selected parts of the article to a file.
    • Headers... - The article headers are saved, using any current display filters with the "Saving" option turned on.
    • Body... - The article body is saved, using display filters.
    • Hdrs+Body... - The full article (headers and body) is saved, using display filters.
    • Raw Headers... - The raw (unfiltered) article headers are saved without using any display filters.
    • Raw Body... - The raw (unfiltered) article body is saved.
    • Raw Hdrs+Body... - The full article (headers and body) is saved, without using display filters.

  • Print - Sends the currently displayed article to the printer device set in the Config window.
    • Headers... - Prints only article headers, using any current display filters with the "Printing" option turned on.
    • Body... - The article body is printed, using display filters.
    • Hdrs+Body... - The full article (headers and body) is printed, using display filters.
    • Raw Headers... - The raw (unfiltered) article headers are printed without using any display filters.
    • Raw Body... - The raw (unfiltered) article body is printed.
    • Raw Hdrs+Body... - The full article (headers and body) is printed, without using display filters.

  • Clip - Copies selected parts of an article to the system clipboard.
    • Subject - The Subject field is copied.
    • From - The From field is copied.
    • Message-ID - The Message-ID field is copied.
    • Date - The Date field is copied.
    • Groups - The Newsgroups field is copied.
    • Headers - All headers are copied.
    • Body - The article body is copied.
    • Hdrs+Body - The entire article is copied.

  • Redisplay - Redisplays the article in one of two modes:
    • Raw (No Filters) - The raw article is display without using any display filters.
    • Normal - The article is displayed normally, using the active display filters.
    • Post Followup... - Composes a followup to this article, including and quoting the original article text.

    • Search... - Identical to pressing the button.

The Partial (Multipart) menu commands include the following operations:

  • Select Related Parts - Causes other parts of a multipart article to be selected in the article list. A warning will be printed if some parts were not found in the current article list.

  • Check for Parts... - Checks to see if all parts of the selected article are present.

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Group Statistics Window The group statistics window displays some statistical information about this group, such as the number of articles that have been cached, the percent of the group's articles that this represents, and the size in Kb or Mb of these articles.

Note that the size computation relies on the Bytes: header returned by the news server, which may be missing or inaccurate.

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Filter Toolbar Display and selection filters may define a filter function toolbar which provides an easy way to access commonly used filters. For instance, you might want a quick way to turn on or off a selection filter with a single mouse click, and automatically update the article list accordingly. Or perhaps you have an ROT13 display filter defined that you would like to have update the displayed article immediately. You can define toolbar buttons for your most commonly used filters.

You may move the filter toolbar, seen here on the left, to the right, top, or bottom of the article view area by setting the Filter Toolbar Location in the Configuration window. Since vertical screen area is more limited than horizontal, the left and right settings are recommended over the top and bottom. You may also display the filters' descriptions as a label underneath the toolbar icon, as seen here. The description will change to bold text when the filter is enabled.

The filter toolbar is only updated when a group window is opened. If you add new toolbar icons, you will need to close and re-open the group in order to see them.

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Summary By this point in the tutorial you should understand:

  • How to move between the main group window areas.
  • How the status bar operates.
  • How to cancel pending network operations.
  • What the different article status icons mean.
  • What the article list toolbar looks like.
  • How to change the article list mode.
  • How to view read articles, unread articles, or both.
  • How to view articles by a particular author.
  • How to create basic kill filters for authors or threads.
  • How to change the enabled set of selection filters.
  • How to run user defined actions against articles.
  • What the article viewer toolbar looks like.
  • How to move to the top or bottom of the displayed article.
  • How to browse forward and backward.
  • How to search for text in an article body.
  • How to copy text from an article body to the clipboard.
  • How to change the enabled set of display filters.
  • What the group specific configuration options do.
  • What the group window menus do.
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