Aminet 1 (Walnut Creek)/Aminet - June 1993 [Walnut Creek].iso/usenet/sources/volume91/news/vnres112/part05/vn.doc

Text File | 1991-03-14 | 25KB | 536 lines

VN 1 6/1/88

NAME
    vn  -  visual  news reader

SYNOPSIS
    vn [options]

DESCRIPTION

Vn is a news reader which uses the same \.newsrc file as  readnews
(1),  but  displays  and interacts differently.    It  is  aimed at
allowing you to rapidly scan a large number of newsgroups, looking for
something  you  want  to  read.    The  major premise  is that you will
be interested in a small number of articles, but will be interested in
keeping tabs on a large number of newsgroups which may contain
something interesting from time to time.  It also has the ability to
unpackage digests.

As  with other readers, options may be given on the command line, in
which case they will supersede those given in the \.newsrc file.

OPTIONS

Vn supports  the -n,  -x  and  -t options of readnews (specify
newsgroup, read all articles, and specify title).  In addition, there
some other options: -U, -S, -%, -w, -t  and some  options  beginning
with +. The "+" options are not recognized within the \.newsrc file,
only  on  the  command  line,  and  are  intended  for  use  in
environments with  multiple  NNTP  installations.  If you are not using
an NNTP version, or only have one news installation accessible from  a
given  machine, they are probably of little use.

The -w (writer or author) option which works like -t, but is a search
string to apply to  the "From" header line rather than the subject.  In
the -n, -t and -w options, a leading "!"  on the string is taken to
mean negation.  The  rest  of the string is a regular expression for
the -w and -t options.

For example:

-n net.dogs -w !fred -t [Bb]eagle

Selects  articles  in  net.dogs  about  beagles  written by somebody
other than fred.  Multiple -w -t options are treated as follows:

     If the  article  satisfies  any  of  the  negations,  you  won't
     see  it, regardless of the non-negated options.

     Multiple -w options are logically "or'ed", as are multiple -t's.

     If both -w and -t are present, the article is seen only if it
     satisfies at least one  of  the -w's and at least one of the -t's,
     i.e.  the results of the logical "or's" of the -t's and  of  the
     -w's  are  logically  "anded" together.

The  -n  options  allow  the  "all" convention, replacing ".all" by
".*" before using the regular expression calls.  -n options  are
processed  in  the  order given  so that subsequent, more specific,
-n's may partially undo the effect of previous "alls". Note that the -n
option treatment is slightly  different  than the readnews  treatment
which  says  that "foo" implies "foo.all".  Vn accepts this
incompatibility to allow you an easier way of saying  JUST  "foo"
without any of its subgroups.

The -S  option  is  useful  in conjunction with command line -n
options.  It is really not useful in the \.newsrc file, but existed
before the "+" options were added.  For command line -n options, the
"!"  unsubscriptions in  \.newsrc  are also ignored.    This  allows
you  to override all subscription information by command line
specification.  -S will modify this behavior.  If you  use  an  -S
option on the command line, the "!"  unsubscriptions will still be
used.

The -% option initially gives you the results of a "%" command, rather
than the page for  the  first  newsgroup  (see  below).    This  allows
you to see what newsgroups are available before viewing any.

The -U option says that when your \.newsrc file is updated via
answering  "yes" to the update query on exit or using control-W,
newsgroups marked with "!"  are to be updated  too.   Normally, these
groups are left alone, i.e.  updated only to the number that was
already in your \.newsrc, or the lowest  article  number still around.
 You  may  get flooded should you decide to resubscribe.  If you don't
like this treatment, use -U. Then, control-W and "yes" to the  update
on exit will update your unsubscribed newsgroups to the most recent
article.

The  "+"  options  mainly  deal with NNTP. If you are not using an NNTP
version (will be printed in the version message on  startup,  version
will  either  be "res" or "nntp"), the +l, +m and +t options are not
recognized.

The  +n  option  must  be  followed  by  a filename, and directly
specifies the \.newsrc file in a manner  similar  to  the  NEWSRC
variable,  which  it  will override if defined.

The  +m option must be followed by a machine name, and specifies the
machine to talk the  news  installation  on.    This  will  normally
default   to   some site-determined machine,  and  may also be set via
the VNMACHINE variable.  The option overrides the variable, if defined.
Note that this is  useful  only  if you  have  multiple  news
INSTALLATIONS  accessible  from  your  machine,  ie. different spooling
areas with possibly different sets of articles and different newsgroups
based on which machine you communicate with to obtain the news.    A
majority  of sites will not have this situation, so if you find the
explanation confusing, ignore it.

The +l option makes an NNTP version behave in  a  non-NNTP  fashion,
ie.    it directly   reads   the   articles   and   newsgroup
information,  rather  than communicating with NNTP. An empty string for
VNMACHINE corresponds to this.

The +t option must be followed by a filename, and will cause  a  trace
of  the interaction with the NNTP server to be collected into it.
Primarily useful for somebody installing  the  program.   "USER
INTERFACE" When vn is invoked, there will be a pause  (with  an
explanatory  "reading"  message  and  a  series  of newsgroup names)
while  vn  reads  the  news.   The newsgroups listed are ones articles
are actually being found in.  The length of the pause depends  on  how
much news  there is.  If there is a lot, it may take a long time to get
through the reading phase.  If this is the first time you are using vn,
or if  you  are starting  with an empty \.newsrc file, this may take a
very long time; there is a lot of news out there.

Once the reading phase is over, interaction is rapid.  If vn  is
backgrounded, it  suppresses  the  "reading"  output,  so that it will
not halt on tty output until it is ready to begin showing articles.

Vn may show you a list of newsgroups which were not mentioned in  the
\.newsrc file.   Records  for  these  newsgroups  will  be  added to
your \.newsrc file, whether they were scanned for articles or not.  The
first time vn is used,  the list may  be  quite  long  and scroll off
the screen.  Thereafter, there should only be a list when new
newsgroups are created.  This display serves to let you know of their
existence, or of something happening to your \.newsrc file.

The basic display is a "page" which shows a newsgroup and  a  list  of
titles, number of  lines,  and  authors  for  new  articles.   Articles
which have been updated in the \.newsrc file are  flagged  with  an
underscore  preceding  the article number.   You also have the ability
to "mark" articles for the duration of a session; this is shown with an
asterisk.  (Columns 1 and  2  are  reserved for asterisk  and
underscore respectively.  In normal usage they will be blank, so that
the casual user will probably be unaware of their use until marking and
updating are invoked.)

There is a help menu to go with this page.  You may read articles,
save  them, or  send  them to the printer, either by cursor position,
the whole page, or in specified sets.  Sets are specified either as  a
set  of  article  numbers,  a regular  expression to match the subject
/ author / number of lines data on, or an asterisk to indicate the
choice of a set of previously marked articles.  Any of these methods
also accept a leading "!"  to indicate negation.

When you read articles only a couple of  the  dozen  or  so  header
lines  are shown.   There  is  an option to allow you to see all the
header lines when you read articles.  The command controlling this
toggles between the two states.

A similar toggle is used to support ROT13 encryption.

Vn is capable of manipulating digests.  The "d" command unpacks  a
digest  and presents you  with  a  page  showing  the unpacked
articles.  These can then be accessed the same way as articles on
normal newsgroup pages.   When  you  leave the digest  page(s),  you
reenter  the normal flow of newsgroups.  Digests can also be read as
normal articles, of course.

The order of page presentation is determined by order of the group
lines in the \.newsrc file.  Newsgroups which are not mentioned in
\.newsrc will  be  added, as mentioned  previously,  at  then  end  of
the file.  Lines corresponding to non-existent newsgroups will be
deleted.  You will  probably  want  to  run  vn once, then edit your
\.newsrc file to the desired order of presentation.

Updating the  data  for \.newsrc is under user control.  If you do no
"W", "w", "^w", "o" or "O" commands, no updating takes place, and
you'll see the articles again the next time you read news.  If you quit
without updating, you  will  be prompted to make sure you this is
really what you want to do.

Note  that  "updating  what  you've seen" to vn means that you've seen
the page presentation, not that you've read the article.  This is
consistent  with  the overall  assumption  that you don't want to read
most of what you are presented with.

Breaks result in a "really quit?"  query, so you can recover from
noisy  lines and prompts  for  commands  you  didn't really mean.  If
you answer no, you are simply jumped back to the page.  Breaks while in
the midst of scrolling out  an article you are reading jump you to the
end of the article to stop the output.

Commands are single character (no return key required), except that
they may be preceded  with numeric characters, which may have some
effect on their actions. Commands which require further input cause
prompts for  the  information,  this input being  terminated by return.
For prompted input, the erase and kill keys work.

Command Menu For Page:

[...] = effect of optional number preceding command
pipes are specified by filenames beginning with |
articles specified as a list of numbers, title search string, or
* to specify marked articles.  ! may be used to negate any

 q - quit
 k - (or up arrow) move up [number of lines]
 j - (or down arrow) move down [number of lines]
 <back sp> - (or left arrow) previous page [number of pages]
 <return> - (or right arrow) next page [number of pages]
 > - next newsgroup [number of newsgroups]
 < - previous newsgroup [number of newsgroups]
 d - unpack digest
 H - top of page
 L - bottom of page
 G - bottom of page (alternate L)
 M - middle of page
 d - unpack digest
 r - read article [number of articles]
 <space> - read article (alternate 'r')
 R - read all articles on page
 control-r - specify articles to read
 s - save or pipe article [number of articles]
 S - save or pipe all articles on page
 control-s - specify articles to save
 control-t - specify articles to save (alternate ctl-s)
 p - print article [number of articles]
 P - print all article on page
 control-p - specify articles to print
 w - update \.newsrc status to cursor
 W - update \.newsrc status for whole newsgroup
 control-w - update \.newsrc status for all pages displayed
 o - recover original \.newsrc status for newsgroup
 O - recover all original \.newsrc status
 # - display count of groups and pages - shown and total
 % - list newsgroups with new article, updated counts
 n - specify newsgroup to display and/or resubscribe to
 u - unsubscribe from group
 x - mark/unmark article [number of articles]
 * - mark/unmark article [number of articles]
 X - erase marks on articles
 control-x - specify articles to mark
 h - toggle flag for display of headers when reading
 z - toggle ROT13 mode for reading
 <formfeed> - redraw screen
 ! - escape to UNIX to execute a command
 " - show vn version
 ? - show this help menu

When you read articles there is another help menu  for  advancing
through  the articles, replying,  posting followups, and saving the
articles.  Breaks may be used to stop the output of an article if you
decide that you didn't really want to read it.  You can jump from the
reading portion back to either page you came from or the NEXT page.

For replying and posting followups, you will be placed in an editor  to
 create the reply  or  article.    The  article  will  be  included in
the file you are editing, marked with "> "'s for excerpting in your
reply or  followup.    After exiting  the  editor  you  are  prompted
to make sure you still want to post or reply.

For followups, your article is appended to "author_copy" for future
reference. (See CCFILE in the section on ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES).

Header  lines  for  the  mailer  /  news poster are present in the file
you are editing to allow you to modify them.  Remember to leave a
blank  line  between the header  lines  and  your  text.    It may be
OK if you don't, but why tempt fate.

The editor is determined by your EDITOR or VNEDITOR variable, as for
postnews. (See the section on ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES).  If EDITOR is not
set, you get vi.

Reading menu:

 n - next article, if any
 q - quit reading articles, if any more to read
 Q - quit reading, and turn to next page of articles
 r - rewind article to beginning
 <return> - next line
 / - search for a pattern in the article
 m - send mail to author of article
 f - post followup to article
 s - save article in a file
 p - send article to the printer
 ? - see this help menu
 z - toggle rotation flag
 h - toggle header suppression flag

 anything else to continue normal reading

When articles are saved from anywhere, a few special conventions apply.

If  the  name begins with "|", you are specifying a pipe to feed the
article(s) to, rather than a file.  No other interpretation is done in
this case.

If you specify a name not beginning with "/", the article will  be
saved  with reference  to your original directory, or with reference to
the VNSAVE variable (see below).

If you embed a "%d" in the name, that will be replaced with the article
number, or the first number in a list of articles.

If you prepend "w:" to the name, you can  force  an  overwrite  instead
 of  an append.   The  colon  prefix  may  be  used  to open the file
with any mode you please, actually.  If you really WANT a colon in the
name, specify  "a:"  ahead of it.      The  colon  prefix  is  stripped
off  before  any  other  filename interpretation.

Both the VNSAVE variable and the save name may use a leading  "~"  to
indicate the user's home or "~name" for another user's home.  It is
assumed that a slash will  separate the tilde expression from the rest
of VNSAVE, or the rest of the file name if there are further
directories.

When you are prompted for a savefile name, the last non-pipe name you
used  is presented, so you may use your erase/kill keys to edit it.

Old  search  strings / pattern match strings are also presented for
edit in the same manner.

If you don't like the choice of command keys,  you  may  change  them
(default choices  -  basic  control in article reader is ala more of
course, the "j" and "k" on the page  presentation  are  vi  convention,
 other  page  commands  are somewhat readnews  compatible).   If you
have a file named \.vnkey in your home directory this file will be read
in order to obtain keystroke translation.  The format is simple:

Each line begins with R or P indicating translation for the reader
interaction, or the page interaction (r and p accepted also).
Following the R  or  P  is  a character, followed by an "=", followed
by another character.  The character on the  left  hand  side  of  the
equals  sign is what you wish to input, and the character on the right
hand side of  the  equals  sign  is  what  you  wish  to translate it
to.  No embedded spaces are allowed.  Lines not beginning with the
proper   characters  are  simply  ignored,  as  are  characters
following  the translated character.  Eg:

     Pd=j
     Pu=k

uses "u" and "d" instead of "j" and "k" on the page layout (presumably,
you are also going to translate something else to "u" and "d" for the
unsubscribe  and digest commands).    If  you  translate  keys,  it is
up to you to see that all commands can still be reached, and that
former command keys which are no longer used are mapped to something
meaningless.  In particular, you are going to have difficulties if you
make it impossible to input "q". The help menus  will  show the "new"
keys, and bad mappings should show up as multiple definitions for the
same key, or alternate mappings not showing up on the help menu.

Mapping the  "="  key  via  "==" works.  Any keys not mentioned in the
file are translated to themselves.

Control keys are given as DECIMAL numbers with no backslashes or
anything.  The decimal number is the ASCII code for the character, eg:

     P24=12
     P12=?

uses "control-x" for the "control-l  (formfeed)"  refresh  key,  and
maps  the control-l to  a "?". BTW, mapping all undefined keys to "?"
will mean that you automatically get the help display for any illegal
key,  should  you  wish  for such a  thing.   The LAST one mapped will
determine what key is given in the "? for help" lines, and the help
display  itself.    Remembering  that  control-A through  control-Z
are  ASCII codes 1 through 26 and delete = 127 may keep you from having
to consult an ASCII table.  Remember also that some controls,  such as
control-  C,  Z,  S  or  Q may be caught by the operating system for
signal generation or terminal control, and are thus unavailable.

Because of arrow keys and the ability to prefix commands with  counts,
numeric characters and  the  escape key may not be used for page
commands.  Attempts to use them will simply do nothing.

Control keys are not available for the reader, except for  newline,
backspace, and tab.    The reason controls are filtered here has to do
with nasty problems involving terminal mode switches on some systems,
specifically a  UTS  frontend early versions were being used on.

In  either  interaction,  "return"  and  "linefeed" are mapped to the
"newline" character at a level below the translation.  If you don't
know  the  ASCII  for the  "newline" char, it is recommended that you
map both ASCII 10 and 13 if you wish to map "return" to something.

FILES

/usr/tmp/*  One  temporary  file created  by  tmpnam  (3),
and immediately unlinked, remains open in update mode for duration of
session.  Disk space freed by system close of  file  descriptor at
exit.   Can  be large, as this file contains the "page" displays.
Temporary files also created by tmpnam (3) for mailing  replies,
posting  followups  and creating digest  "articles".

(login directory)/\.newsrc news status file. Updated following session.
See NEWSRC  environment  variable.

(login directory)/author_copy A copy of all articles posted using the
followup command will be  appended  to  this  file  in /bin/mail
format.  See CCFILE environment variable.

(login directory)/.vnkey  Keystroke  mapping  file  for  changing
command characters.

(login directory)/*.vnXXXXXX One temporary file created by tmpnam  (3)
while updating the \.newsrc file.  If the update fails, you are
informed, and this file may be used to  recover  the  last  update.
Unlinked following successful  update.

(spool  directory)/*  spooling directories containing articles.

/usr/lib/news/active   active newsgroup   list.


"ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES"

For all variables which do not begin with "VN", vn will accept an
override by setting a variable VN<name> which will be preferred.  For
instance  setting  VNEDITOR  allows  you to use a special editor for vn
without affecting use of that variable by your shell, setting VNPS1
takes care of  your normal UNIX prompt having multiple lines, or
setting VNNEWSRC allows you to use vn without  disturbing  your
\.newsrc  for other readers.

VNSAVE Used as a directory to place saved
articles in.  If it does not begin with "/",  it  will be taken  with
respect  to the users home directory.  If it ends with "/%s", a
separate directory will be created for each newsgroup.

PS1 Used to  present prompt string  for  command  on unix escape.
Defaults to "$ "

EDITOR Editor used for mailing replies and posting followups.  Defaults
to  vi.

POSTER Posting program for  followups.    Defaults to "inews -h".

MAILER Used when mailing replies.  Defaults to "sendmail -t".

PRINTER Program used with  the print commands for sending  articles  to
 the printer.  Defaults to "lpr".

NEWSRC If set, can be used to override the choice of \.newsrc as the
name  for the status  file.    Name  will  still be used relative to
the login directory, unless it begins with  "/".

CCFILE  If  set,  overrides  the  choice  of "author_copy"  as  the
name  of  the  file  to CC all articles posted with the followup
command.  Name will still be used relative  to  the  login  directory,
unless it  begins  with
"/".

VNKEY If set, overrides the choice of ".vnkey" as the name of the file
to map keys from.  Name will still be used relative  to the login
directory,  unless it begins with "/".

VNMACHINE Applies only to NNTP versions - sets the machine to  talk
to.    See  discussion  of  options, above.

DIAGNOSTICS User  error  messages.    Self  explanatory.

AUTHOR  Bob McQueer.

Significant enhancement / bugfixes / suggestions from:

Lawrie Brown, John G Dobnick, Greg Earle,  Rodney  Goke,  Andy
Marrinson,  Jay Maynard,  Marius  Olafsson,  George  Pavel,  Dave
Tallman,  Larry Tepper, Karl Williamson, Mark Wittenberg, Andrew
Worsley

And undoubtedly some others who have been forgotten.  My apologies.
BUGS  Note that readnews  will  rearrange the order of \.newsrc.  If
you interleave use of it with vn, order selection gets hosed.

If you've really taken advantage of the ability of readnews to skip
articles in the middle of the spooling numbers, be warned that vn
doesn't have it, and will assume you've read the articles in the
middle.

If the \.newsrc file indicates that you've read articles in a newsgroup
with  a higher number than the current spooling number for that
newsgroup, vn will show you up  to  60  old  articles.    This  is
intended for recovery in cases where article spooling has been reset,
or to avoid missing articles because you  just changed machines  and
didn't  bother  to edit your \.newsrc file.  Rather than miss stuff,
you'll see some old stuff again.    During  the  reading  phase,  a
warning message is printed that this is happening.

Sometimes  a  "break"  during reading an article will not only halt the
article but suppress the prompt.  A command character will work anyway.

If a prompt  to  be  displayed  on  the  dialogue  line  contains
non-printing sequences,  stuff on the line may not get erased when you
are prompted, because vn thinks the string is long enough to overprint
its current  contents.    This usually  comes  up when you have escape
sequences in your UNIX prompt, and do a "!"  command.  The "overprint"
check is made  to  save  a  clear-line  sequence (kludged in by
overprinting to the end with blanks if the terminal doesn't have one -
annoying at 1200 baud).

Output  during  the reading phase which was suppressed by backgrounding
vn does not get started by foregrounding it again  without  doing  a
control-z  and  a second  foreground (it doesn't figure out its
background / foreground status on each output  -  only  on  startup
and  while  handling  the  SIGTSTP  signal). Actually,  this results in
a method for having vn do its reading phase silently in the foreground
without redirecting output, should such a thing be desired.

Very many -w or -t options cause SLOW reading phases.  It is
recommended  that these be used only when reading a few specific
groups.

Digest  extraction  will  split  a  single  article into several if it
contains embedded ---- lines, the normal separator between articles in
digests.    They will all  have  identical  titles.    Digest
extraction may not work with human built digests which  don't  use  the
expected  syntax  for  joining  articles. Mod.computers.ibm-pc   and
mod.computers.mac  were  used  as  models  for  the feature.

The data given by the % command represents  the  difference  between
the  last article  number  you've  updated to in a newsgroup and the
high article number. This may be significantly greater than the number
of  actual  articles  for  a newsgroup  you  haven't been reading, and
for newsgroups that have had a lot of articles filtered out of them
using the -w and -t options.  The  numbers  given for menu selection in
the  % command are the order numbers from the  \.newsrc, and have
gaps for unsubscribed newsgroups.

The key mapping capability doesn't handle function keys.  Because of
the use of controls  as  commands,  terminals whose arrow keys echo
something other than a sequence beginning with escape can't use arrow
keys.  For  these  terminals,  a warning message is printed during the
reading phase.