News Xpress Help Index

Introduction

Setting up NX

Customizing NX

Author

Copyright Information

Reporting Bugs


Introduction

What is News Xpress?

News Xpress (NX) is a Windows Sockets compliant USENET news reader for MS Windows that uses the NNTP to access newsgroups and articles on a  news server.

Some of the key features of NX are:

•	An integrated MDI application

•	Support XOVER to access overview database from news server

•	Support AUTHINFO for authorization

•	Support threads

•	Support signature

•	Built-in uuencode and uudecode

•	Support kill and autoselect, accept regular expressions for specifying  patterns

•	Local folders for storing articles

MS Windows is a trademark of Microsoft Corporation.


Windows Sockets

The Windows Sockets specification defines a network programming interface for Microsoft Windows which is based on the "socket" paradigm popularized in the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) from the University of California at Berkeley. Network software which conforms to the Windows Sockets specification will be considered "Windows Sockets Compliant".


USENET News
USENET News System

The USENET News System is a set of bulletins, discussion groups, program sources, and other bits of information distributed around the world. The information is generally called "articles" and is broken up into "newsgroups". Each newsgroup deals with a subject or a set of subjects. The subjects for newsgroups are varied from discussions about particular versions of UNIX to movie reviews, from information on the X window system to commentary on current social and political issues.


News Server

An Internet host running a special software which provides services for exchanging USENET news.


Newsreader

Newsreader is an interface to the USENET news system that allows users to read and write articles by accessing a central news repository.


Mail Relay

An intermediate machine which is used to deliver electronic mail to recipient. It is also known as a mail gateway, or mail bridge.


NNTP

Network News Transfer Protocol is a standard for the distribution, inquiry, retrieval, and posting of articles among the ARPA-Internet community.


SMTP

Simple Mail Transfer Protocol is a standard for the exchange of mail between machines.


NEWSRC

NX uses a file called newsrc to store a list of all newsgroups from news server. Each line shows a newsgroup name in full, followed by the numbers of the articles that have been read. A colon after the newsgroup name indicates that the newsgroup is subscribed and an exclamation mark indicates that the newsgroup is unsubscribed.


Threads

NX uses articles' subject and references to order the discussions in a reply-ordered sequence, which is called threads. This makes following the discussion easier, and also makes it easy to backtrack a specific discussion from the beginning.


XOVER

XOVER is an NNTP extension for accessing the Overview database in a news server.


Signature

A few lines attached to the end of posting that give sender information.


Setting up NX

Setup Dialog Box

The Setup dialog box is where you specify hosts, personal, and others information. It is important to fill in this information correctly in order to run NX.

To bring up the Setup dialog box, choose Configure|Setup. See the descriptions below for more information.

NNTP News Server

A fully qualified Internet hostname or an IP address of a NNTP news server. You must have access to a news server in order to run NX.

NNTP Port Number

This specifies the protocol port number which NX can contact your news server. NX will use the default port number if you enter 0.The well-known port reserved for NNTP is 119.

SMTP Mail Relay (optional)

A fully qualified Internet hostname or an IP address of a SMTP mail relay. You can leave this blank if you are going to use other mail client.

SMTP Port Number (optional)

This specifies the protocol port number which NX can contact your mail server. NX will use the default port number if you enter 0. The well-known port reserved for SMTP is 25.

Fullname, E-Mail and Organization

This personal information is used to construct headers of articles and mails you write.

Signature File (optional)

A text file contains your signature.The maximum signature lines is 20.

Username and Password (optional)

This information is used to authorize yourself to your news server. Some news server restricts the access of part or all services to authenticated user only, e.g. protected groups access and posting articles. If you are an authorized user, you can enter the assigned username and password in these fields to have access of certain services. Otherwise, you should leave these fields empty. Note, NX encrypts your password and saves it in the profile.

Home Directory

This specifies the home directory for NX to keep newsrc,  log file, and temporary files.

News RC File

This specifies the name of your newsrc file. If you don't specify the pathname, NX will create it in the home directory.

Time Zone (optional)

This specifies the time zone information for NX to generate GMT date and time stamps for outgoing messages. The format of the time zone string is shown as follows.

zzz[+/-]d[d][lll]

zzz	Three-character string representing the name of the current time zone. All three characters are required.

[+/-]d[d]	Required field containing an optionally signed number with 1 or more digits. This number is the local time zone's difference from GMT in hours.

- Positive number adjust westward from GMT.

- Negative number adjust eastward from GMT.

This number is used in the calculation of timezone.

lll	Optional three-character field that represents the local time zone's daylight saving time.

- If this field is present, daylight is set to non-zero.

- If this field is absent, daylight is set to 0.

If the time zone string isn't in the specified form, NX presumes a default EST5EDT.


Customizing NX

Preferences Dialog Box

The Preferences dialog box is where you customize NX.

To bring up the Preferences dialog box, choose Configure|Preferences. See the descriptions below for more information.

Retrieve Active Groups on Connect

This specifies whether NX should retrieve latest active newsgroups from news server once a connection established.

Connect at Startup

If this option is checked, NX will automatically connect to your news server when it starts up.

Prompt for New Groups

If this option is checked, NX will prompt you and let you subscribe to new groups found after connect to your news server.

Update Subscribed Groups Every nn Mins

If this option is checked, NX will retrieve subscribed newgroups information after a connection established. Also, you can specify for how often should NX update the subscribed groups in a session. If the group is opened all new articles will be brought out. You can enter 0 to disable this feature.

Hide Groups without Articles

Check this option if you don't want groups with 0 unread count to be displayed in the newsgroups window.

New Window for Each Group

If this option if checked, you can browse more than one group at the same time.

Articles Sorted by

This specifies the option for sorting articles.

Threaded by

NX can thread articles by Subject and References. It will try to thread as much as possible if both options are checked.

Max Hdrs Per Read

This specifies the maximum range of headers information per read. For examples, if you specify this number as 20, and there are 50 articles available, NX will break up the request into 1-20, 21-40, and 41-50, thus you are able to stop the transfer in the middle of header transfer. If you specify this as 0 or 1, NX will send the request 1-50 at once. Note, you will suffer from a significant speed penalty, if you make this number too small. If you don't bother to stop the headers transfer or you have a higher network bandwitdth, make this number as 0 will give you a better performance.

Date Time Format

This is the format specification of date and time displayed in threads windows. The format string consists of directives and ordinary characters. A directive consists of the % character followed by a character. All possible directives are shown below:

%a	Abbreviation weekday name

%A	Full weekday name

%b	Abbreviation month name

%B	Full month name

%c	Date and time

%d	2 digits day of month (01-31)

%H	2 digits hour (00-23)

%I	2 digits hour (01-12)

%j	3 digits day of year (001-366)

%m	2 digits month (01-12)

%M	2 digits minute (00-59)

%p	AM or PM

%S	2 digits second (00-59)

%U	2 digits week number (00-52), Sunday is first day of week

%w	Weekday (0-6), Sunday is 0

%W	2 digit week number (00-52), Monday is first day of week

%x	Date

%X	Time

%y	2 digits year (00-99)

%Y	Year with century

Display Hdrs

This specifies which headers should or should not be displayed. If the Except is checked, headers which are not in the list will be displayed. The delimiter used to separate the headers is comma.

Skip Old Articles

This specifies whether NX should retrieve all or minimum headers information from news server. If this option is checked, NX will retrieve headers information of unread articles only.

Suppress "Re:"

If this option is checked, "Re:" prefix in any subject header will not be displayed in threads windows.

New Window for Each Article

If this option is checked, NX will open a new window for each article.

Directory

Directory for decoded files.

Prompt for Directory

If this option is checked, NX will prompt you before decoding selected articles.

Execute after Decoded

If this option is checked, NX will attempt to execute the decoded files.

Post Headers Template and Mail Headers Template

NX allows users to define their own headers for composing articles and mails by editing the headers template. You can also enter the default contains in the template. For instance,

Newsgroups:

Followup-To: poster

Subject:

Distribution: world

However, multiple lines header is not supported, e.g.

Summary: Summary line 1

   Summary line 2

   ...

Note, you MUST give Newsgroups and Subject in the post headers template,  To and Subject in the mail headers template, NX will not automatically add one if any one of them does not present.

Max Include Lines

This specifies the maximum lines of original article to be quoted in followup or reply.

Include Prefix

This is a string which will be used for quoting original article. The maximum include prefix length is 10.

Include Headers

This specifies whether or not to quote the headers of original article  in followup or reply.

Prompt for Including Original Message

If this option is checked, NX will prompt you about whether or not to quote original article.

Subject Template

This specifies the default subject template for attachments. The template consists of directives and ordinary characters. A directive consists of the % character followed by a character. All possible directives are shown below:

%s	Original subject

%f	Filename

%p	Current part

%t	Total parts

Cut Size

This specifies the default multiparts split size.

Word Wrap, Max Chars per Line

If checked, word wrap will be enabled by default. The message editor wrap lines based on window size. If the width of window is larger than the specified value in the Max Chars per Line, NX wraps lines at this specific position.

Generate Message ID

If this option is checked, NX will generate and insert Message-ID header into your post. Leaving this option unchecked is encouraged, unless your news server requires one.

Confirm on Post and Send Mail

If this option is checked, NX will prompt you for confirmation before posting or sending mail.

Fonts

You can specifiy which font to be used to display in each particular type of window. See the descriptions below.

Lists Font	Font used to browse newsgroups and threads.

Article Font	Font used to display article.

Write Font	Font used in message editor.

Status Bar Font	Font used to display status information in the status bar as well as the tooltips.

Printer Font	Font used to print.

Select one of the above commands to bring up a font dialog box and then specify the font typeface, style, and size in the dialog box.


Procedures

Attachments

To attach files to your post or mail, you can click on the Attachment field to bring out Attachment dialog box.

Decoding Multipart Files/Multiple Files

To decode multipart files and/or multiple files, you have to tag the articles in order by either clicking the right mouse button or holding down SHIFT key plus clicking the left mouse button. A yellow box with a sequence number will be displayed for each tagged posts. Once you have completed, press the Decode button on the toolbar or select Article|Decode command on the menu.

NX will truncate long filename automatically and retain the extension if possible. If the filename is duplicated, it will insert a sequence number within the filename.

Filtering Articles (Kill)


Author

W.L. Ken, Ng

Rm F, 5/F, Odeon Bldg.,

26-28 Shu Kuk St., North Point,

Hong Kong

E-Mail:	kenng@hk.super.net

91465589@cityu.edu.hk


Copyright Information

Permission to use, copy and distribute this software and its documentation for any purpose and without fee is hereby granted, provided that it is not modified.

THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND WITHOUT ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.


Reporting Bugs

Mail your bug reports to Ken Ng <kenng@hk.super.net>. Please include the steps to reproduce the bugs, and any other information that might help the developer locate and correct the cause.