Helpful Hints

Here are some hints and shortcuts that you might find useful. They are presented in no particular order.

Starting the Program

You can get a quicker start if you double-click on your subscription file rather than on InterNews  itself. If you do that, it will not ask you to find the subscription file. Under System 7 you can put an alias to your subscription file in the Apple Menu Items folder of the System Folder. This will give you access to InterNews  from the Apple Menu. You can also put an alias in the Startup Items folder if you want InterNews  to open when you start your computer.

If your subscription file appears to be taking longer and longer to open each day, there are a couple of things you can do to help:
- Make sure that you do not have a lot of newsgroups in the New Newsgroups subscription ( like more than 50). See the section discussing New Newsgroups below. 
- Arrange your subscriptions so that no one subscription had a lot of newsgroups in it. InterNews  gets article information about each newsgroup when a reading window is opened. The more newsgroups in the subscription, the longer it will take to open. If you have a preference set to open a subscription automatically at startup, the process will be that much slower if there are a lot of newsgroups in that subscription. 
-Do a Tune Up using the command of that name in the Subscriptions menu. It will tidy up your subscription file to make it more efficient.

Keyboard Shortcuts

InterNews  offers a number of keys for quickly performing common commands.  

- Newsgroup selection shortcuts:
  •  Right-arrow selects the next newsgroup.
  •  Left-arrow selects the previous newsgroup.
  •  Return or Enter shows the selected newsgroup.

- Topic selection shortcuts:
  •  Down-arrow selects the next topic; Option marks the old one read.
  •  Up-arrow selects the previous topic; Option marks the old one read.
  •  Return or Enter shows the selected topic.
  •  Command-space selects and shows the next topic; Option marks the old one read.

- Article scrolling shortcuts:
  •  Space scrolls the bottom pane by one page (it’s useful for those without the Apple Extended Keyboard).
The following keys are present on the Apple Extended Keyboard:
  •  Page-down scrolls down a page.
  •  Page-up scrolls up a page.
  •  Home scrolls to the beginning of the first article in the topic.
  •  End scrolls to the end of the last article in the topic.

“Out of Memory” Problems
 If you open several reading windows, or open a newsgroup or topic with many articles, InterNews  may complain of having insufficient memory. You may see an alert that says “Memory space is low. Some commands may be disabled.” or another that says that something could not happen because “there is not enough memory.” Mouse clicks in various places may not produce any results and some menu items may be gray.
You can alleviate the immediate problem by closing some windows and/or opening a smaller topic or newsgroup. A longer term solution is to give InterNews  a larger memory partition in the Finder. To do this:

•
Quit InterNews.
•
In the Finder, select the InterNews  icon in it’s folder window.
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Choose Get Info... in the File menu to open the application Info window.
•
Select the input box closest to the bottom of the window. This may be labeled “preferred size” or something similar, depending on the version of the System you are running.
•
Type 1000 to give InterNews  a full megabyte of memory. This is enough for most cases. You can give it more if you like.
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Close the Info window. InterNews  will have more memory from then on. 

Windows

Reading and Composing windows can be adjusted to make your work easier. Use the split bars - the horizontal double lines - to change the relative sizes of the panes in a window. Just click on one and drag up or down until you have a size that seems right to you. InterNews  will remember your changes next time.

You can change the font and size of the bottom pane of all reading windows and composing windows. Choose the Preferences item in the Edit menu. 

Reading

A subscription with many newsgroups takes longer to open than a subscription with fewer newsgroups. This is because InterNews  gets information about each newsgroup from the news server when a window is opened. Use subscriptions to divide your newsgroups up into smaller groups that make sense to you rather than putting them all into one subscription.

If a newsgroup has many unread articles it will take longer to show the topics when you open it. If you want to just see a few articles at a time, hold the option key down when you open a newsgroup. InterNews  will respond by getting just 50 articles from the news server. Mark those read and select again with the option key down to see the next 50.

While reading one subscription, you can open another subscription using the Windows menu. You don't have to click all the way back to the subscription file window.

If an article looks unintelligible, it may be encoded. If it is a program, it might be encoded using "binhex". If it is an image, it may be encoded using "uuencode". If it is a joke, it might be encoded using "Rot13". Check the title or opening lines for clue. The first two cases cannot be decoded within InterNews.  You will have to save the article as text and run the resulting file through a decoding program. Rot13 can be decoded using the Convert Article (Rot13) command in the Reading menu.

Click on the popup rectangle at the top of an article to see its full header. A window appears while you hold the mouse down that will tell you, among other things, when the article was posted.

Posting

You can save your password so that InterNews  will not ask you for it the first time you post. See the Preferences in the Edit menu.

Use the signature preference to describe yourself. The signature is automatically appended to all of the articles that you post. You can edit the signature in the composing window before posting if you want to.

To quote the text of an article in your response to it, select that text before creating a new composition. The text will be automatically copied to the new Compose window. To quote more text after that, copy the text from the article, paste it into the Compose window. Then select the copy and apply the Quote Selected Text command in the Reading menu.

Posting can take a long time, depending on how busy the news host machine is. You cannot do anything else in this version of InterNews  while the article is being sent. You can, however, switch out to another application at that time.

If you post an article ant then realize that you made a mistake, you can cancel the article. First select the article as it appears in its newsgroup. Then choose the Cancel Article… command from the Reading menu. Some people may have seen the article before it was cancelled if a long time elapses between posting and cancelling. If the article was posted to several groups, it will be removed from all.

You can save an article while you are composing it and after it is posted. Use command-S to save it while you work. You do not have to post it before quitting the program. You can open it again at a later date, change it, and then post it. Once it is posted, the final version will be saved. Create a folder to use for saved compostions to make them easier to find. By default, InterNews  will save them in the same folder where the subscription file resides.

Some optional header fields for an article are "hiding" in the top pane of a Compose window. Use the scroll bar or split bar to get to them if you need to.

New Newsgroups

New newsgroups will appear in the New Newsgroups subscription. You can delete that subscription at any time. A new one will be made the next time that new groups appear. To keep track of what is really new, look at the groups in the New Newsgroups subscription. If any are of interest to you, drag them into one of your own subscriptions. Then delete the New Newsgroups subscription. The next time that subscription appears, it will have only the groups that are new since you last looked at it. 

Aligning Subscription Icons

You can tidy up the subscriptions window by selecting icons and applying the Clean Up Icon(s) command from the Subscription menu. This will align the icons to a fixed, invisible grid. You can also do this by dragging an icon or group of selected icons while holding the option key down.

Undoable Operations

Several menu items are described in this help text as being "undoable". You may find that the Undo item in the Edit menu is not always enabled when you expect it to be. One cause of this situation is that undoable operations are "committed" (so they are no longer undoable) when you save the subscription file, do a tune-up, or export a .newsrc file. If you have a preference set to automatically save your subscription file, seeming unrelated operations will be committed when you are not expecting it.

Debugging Window
If you are seeing errors referring to the news host, mail host, NNTP, SMTP, or authentication, you can monitor the communications between InterNews and any of the hosts using a special window. To open the window, bring the subscription file window to the front and then press Option-Shift-Z. A window will appear entitled “Network Monitor.” The communications will be echoed in this window. You can copy from the window and print it as needed. The program is slower when this window is open, so you do not want to have it open all the time.