Tutorial 11: Program Configuration Options
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Contents: Configuration Overview Project Options
User Options News Options
Misc Options Window Options
Post Options Default Columns
Filter Options Variable Editor
Custom Headers Summary
Config Overview

NewsRog has a large number of configuration options. Some of the configuration options are settable on a per-group basis, but others are global in scope or can be set for all groups matching a particular pattern. The main configuration editor edits config options which are not group specific. The click tabs across the top of the configuration window can be used to edit different configuration areas.

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Project Options

The project options settings are:

  • Popkey - A commodities key specification for a key to display NewsRog if it is in an iconified state.

  • Save Project Icons - If set, workbench icons will be saved with project files. Otherwise, no icons are created .

  • Clobber - If set, projects saved over the top of a different file will not ask whether this is OK. The old files will be silently overwritten.

  • Exit Mode - May be set to Save, which always saves the project file upon program exit, or Ask, which inquires, or Don't Save, which never never saves. With the last option, the Project/Save menu item may still be used to save project files. There is a great deal of state information kept with project files and it is usually best to select Save here.

  • Backup Suffix - When project files are re-saved, the old file will be moved to it's name plus this suffix, if it is non-empty.

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User Options

The user options settings are:

  • Real Name - Your user name.

  • User Email - Your email address in the form user@host. This should not include your user name.

  • Organization - The organization from which you are posting. This will be displayed with your posts when other usenet users view them.

  • Reply Line - This line of text is included when composing replies to other people's posts, and may include NewsRog Back to Top
Program News Options

The news options settings are:

  • Cache Dir - The directory used for storing program cache files. Multiple projects may share a cache directory as long as only one is opened at a time. Multiple projects may also use different cache directories. Usually you will not need to change the default value.

  • Header Memory Cache - The amount of memory allocated to caching article headers. This is a lower bound; at a minimum, headers for all open groups will be cached even if they exceed this size. It is best to keep this value as large as practical for your machine.

  • Header D/L Method - The method used to fetch article headers from your server. Different methods work best on different servers, so some experimentation may be necessary.

  • Header D/L Increment - The article list in group windows will be updated every time this many headers have been fetched from the server. Lower numbers involved much more local overhead for keeping the list sorted and threaded, but will let you start reading news sooner while other headers are still loading. Higher numbers will be more efficient but it will take longer before you can start reading articles. The proper value depends on the speed of your network and your news server, so experiment.

  • Max Simultaneous Commands - This chiefly affects batch article downloading. Larger values are more efficient, but some servers act improperly when this value is set too large.

  • Enter Thread Action - You may have NewsRog automatically fetch and display the first available, or first unread, article when you enter a thread in the Group Window.

  • Header Fetch Policy - This controls the behavior of NewsRog when there are more headers available in a group than the Max Articles count for a particular group. You may fetch only the most recent MaxArticles number of headers, or fetch all headers, or prompt for what to do:

    Prompting only happens for interactive fetches; batch download operations will not prompt. If you chose to always download all headers, the Max Articles setting is ignored.

  • FAQ Directory - When using the FAQ Manager, this is the directory from which group FAQs are obtained.

  • FAQ Server - This is the FTP server used to fetch group FAQs using the FAQ Manager.

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Program Misc Options

The misc options settings are:

  • Signature File - A short file appended to posts that you send to the network. A signature separator line is automatically included and need not be added to the signature file unless you disable the Use Sig Separator option.

  • Editor - The command line used to launch an external editor. The NewsRog variable ${File} may be included in this string and will be set to the file for the editor to edit.

  • Startup Network Mode - May be set to online or offline to have the program come up in the indicated network mode. If no networking protocl stack is found, the program will always start in offline mode no matter what this value is set to.

  • Article Text Font - The default font used to display the body text of articles.

  • Article Text Color - The default color for displaying article text.

  • AutoClip - If checked, then text selected in an article view using the mouse will be automatically copied to the system clipboard.

  • Article Title - The title line displayed above the article viewer. Various group and article variables may be used.

  • Soft Scroll - The soft scroll setting used when paging up and down in news articles. A setting of zero disables soft scroll entirely (jump scrolling is used). Higher numbers are for smoother but slower scrolling. Lower numbers are for courser but faster scrolling.

  • Printer Device - The device used to send text to the printer. Usually the correct value is PRT:, but this might be different depending on your computer's configuration. Also, you can set this to the name of a file for printing article text to a file.

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Program Window Options

The window options settings are:

  • Group List Window - Controls whether the group list window is opened or closed when a project is first loaded. This may be set to Last Saved State, which will open the window if and only if it was opened when the project was saved, or Open on Project Load, which will open the window when a project is loaded, or Closed on Project Load, which will close the window.

  • Server List Window - Performs the same function for the server list window.

  • TCP List Window - Performs the same function for the TCP networking list window.

  • Post Queue Window - Performs the same function for the post queue window.

  • Multimedia Types Window - Performs the same function for the Multimedia types window.

  • Config Window - Performs the same function for the config windows.

  • Group Windows - Performs the same function for group reader windows. The Open on Project Load option is not available here, since it would be unworkable to open all the windows for 20 or 30 subscribed groups.

  • Group Window Mode - This can be set to Single List/View Window, in which case the article list and article view areas are displayed in the same window, or Separate List/View Windows, in which case each is displayed in a separate window. MUI window snapshot settings are unique for each of these settings, so snapshotting a single window will not affect the separate window mode.

  • Toolbar Style - The style for the main NewsRog toolbar. You may chose a horizontal or a vertical toolbar, with or without text labels.

  • Filter Toolbar Location - In Group Windows, the filter function toolbar may be displayed above, below, to the right, or to the left of the article view area.

  • Labels - If selected, filter toolbar icons will be labeled with the filter's description under the icon.

  • Article List Weight - In Group Windows, the ratio of the height of the article list to the overall window height may be set here. The remainder of the area is used for the article view.

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Post Options

The post options settings are:

  • Quote Mode - The mode used to created quoted text when composing followups. The supported quote modes are:

    • Off - No line quoting is performed.

    • Line Prefix/Quote Blank - Prefixes each line of quoted text with a short string. Blank lines are quoted.

    • Line Prefix/Skip Blank - Prefixes each line of quoted text with a short string. Blank lines not quoted.

  • Quote Prefix - The prefix used to create quoted text when composing followups in Line Prefix quotemode. Various group and article variables may be used.

  • Charset - This should be set to the character set that matches the font you use to read and write articles. ISO-8859-1 (Latin-1) is common for Amiga fonts but there are other possible choices. This setting will be transmitted as the charset parameter of the MIME Content-Type field when you post a document that requires quoted-printable encoding. Only ISO-8859-X character sets are permitted by the MIME standard.

  • Post Wrap Mode - Posts may be wrapped immediately before being sent to the network (the default), when typing the post into the post editor, or never (in which case it should be done with an external editor). See Preview and Post Wrapping for more information.

  • Post Wrap Column - Your posts will be rewrapped to this many columns before being sent to the network, or as indicated by the Post Wrap Mode above. Be sure to preview your posts before sending them! For the convenience of people reading usenet using text-only newsreaders, you should generally set this value at less than 72 characters.

  • Max Saved Posts - The maximum number of previously sent posts to be archived in the Post Queue window. When the number of archived posts exceeds this number, the oldests posts are deleted first.

  • Tagline File - If non-empty, this is a file of taglines which will be appended to posts. The file may contain any number of taglines separated by a fixed string on a line by itself (usually two percentage (%%) characters). A random tagline will be selected by NewsRog before transmitting the post. You can preview the tagline in the post editor. This format of tagline file is also employed by various other popular internet software such as the YAM mailer, and you may use the same file for all such programs.

  • Tagline Separator - This string separates entries in a tagline file, when it occurs on a line by itself with no other characters.

  • Use Sig Separator - When checked, NewsRog will generate a signature separator line before including your signature file. Otherwise, the signature separator line (two dashes and a space, "-- "), must be part of your signature file.

  • Gen Msg IDs - Generally this setting should be left checked. It is chiefly useful for posting though gateways where various other software must generate post message IDs.

  • AutoStart Editor - If checked, the external editor you have selected will be automatically started when you edit a post.

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Article View Options

When a new group is created, the initial article data displayed in the article list is copied from this template. Thereafter, it may be changed on a per-group basis. Data items may be dragged back and forth between the displayed and hidden columns, or reordered within one column.

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Filter Options

These global filters can be used in any group who's name matches the Group Pattern entered for that filter. For more information, read about NewsRog Selection Filters and Display Filters.

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Variable Editor

These global variables can be referenced in any place that you can use a NewsRog variable name. The global values supplied by NewsRog are highlighted, but you can also define your own in any manner you chose. Variable values are not bound until the variable is referenced, so you can define global variables here that act almost like function calls. See the reference documentation on the variable lookup system for more information.

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Custom Headers

When posts are sent to the network, custom headers from this list are appended to them, unless this option is turned off in the Post Editor. Headers are posted to groups which match the pattern listed under Group Patt, if present.

The Mode button controls the behavior of the group pattern for crossposted articles. For example, consider an article crossposted to both comp.sys.amiga.misc and comp.sys.be. If the mode gadget is set to Any, then the indicated header will be posted if any group in the crosspost list matches this pattern. For example, if this pattern is comp.sys.amiga.*, then the header will be generated.

Conversely, if the mode gadget is set to All, then the pattern must match all groups in the crosspost list. For example, this would be the case if the pattern was comp.*, but not if it was comp.sys.amiga.*.

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Summary By this point in the tutorial you should understand:

  • How to open the NewsRog configuration editor, find, and configure various configuration options.

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