Log Window

The log window reports any messages or errors that occur during the unbatching and expiring of news. Typically, the log will report on processing status, statistics about incoming newsbatches, error and warning messages, and debugging information.

Newsgroups Window

Once you have got ToadNews properly configured, you may start manually adding newsgroups to the list of active newsgroups that ToadNews keeps. You will have to manually enter newsgroups if you didn't check the Automatically Add Newgroups box in the Unbatcher Preferences dialog.

To manually add new groups, go to the Windows menu and select the Show Newsgroups item. You will then see the following window:

This window lists all of your current newsgroups. Initially this list wil be empty. To add a newsgroup press the Add button and enter the newsgroup's name. To remove a group, select it from the list and and press the Remove button. You can also manually expire individual groups by selecting the group you wish to expire and pressing the Expire button.

When this window is at the front, you can also select from the File menu the item named Save Active File, which will make ToadNews save the current active file to disk.

By selecting a newsgroup from the list of active newsgroups and then clicking on the button marked Edit, you can bring up a dialog that looks similar to this:

From this dialog box, you can change several attibutes about the newsgroup that you have selected. Clicking on the OK button keeps any changes that you make. Note: editing the First and Last fields is not recommended for novice users -- you should never ever have to edit these fields unless something goes terribly wrong with your active file (ie: death, bubonic plague, or perhaps even a tiger in Africa).

Name
• The name of the newsgroup whose information you are currently editing. This field is not alterable.

First
• The article number of the oldest article in the newsgroup. If this field is greater than the number found in the Last field, then the there are no articles in the newsgroup.

Last
• The article number of the youngest article in the newsgroup.

How old (in days) an article must be before being expired
• The how old an article must be before it gets expired (ie: removed from disk).

The attributes menu:

Selecting Accepts new articles lets ToadNews put new articles in the newsgroup's spool folder (this is the default). Selecting Rejects new articles (surprise, surprise) does the opposite of the Accepts new articles menu option, and disallows any new articles to be saved in the newsgroup's spool folder. The Moderated menu item is disabled, since it is not currently supported in this release.

Event Schedule Window

ToadNews can be configured to run tasks at scheduled times of the day. The following window shows a summary of ToadNews schedule:

 

The five fields above the table, represent the time and what tasks are to be run at that time. Here is a list of what each field represents:

Time:
This a time that a scheduled event will take place.
U: A check mark under this letter indicates that automatic unbatching of the batch folder will occur.
X: A check under this letter indicates that expiring of all old news in all newsgroups will occur.
T: Indicates that ToadNews will launch an external threader at this time.
Q: Indicates that once all of the tasks run at this time have finished, ToadNews will quit running.

There are also three buttons beside the table. The buttons allow the user to add new scheduled tasks, delete and edit previously scheduled tasks. Clicking on either the Add or Edit buttons will bring up the following dialog box:

Clicking on the time field beside the word “At” allows you to change the time field by clicking on up or down arrows, or by hitting the up/down keys on your keyboard. The time in this field represents when the tasks checked will be performed. You'll notice a similarity between this dialog box and the one for startup tasks. The check boxes represent the same features.

The final check-box allows you to have this event repeated over an repeated interval, like say, every hour, after the time indicated in the time field. You can change this interval by using similar controls to the one in the time field.

Rather than entering a new task for 1:00, 2:00, 3:00, etc., it is much faster to specify 12:00 and then use the “Repeat this event every X hrs/min.” feature.