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1 slrn slrn - An easy to use NNTP based newsreader. SYNOPSIS slrn [ -n ] [ -h nntp-server-name ] [ -f newsrc-file ] [ - create ] [ -C ] [ -help ] 2 DESCRIPTION slrn is an easy to use but powerful NNTP based newsreader. It relies extensively on the S-Lang programmer's library for many of its features. If no server is specified on the command line using the - h option, the server specified by the NNTPSERVER environment variable will be used. The -f option specifies which newsrc file should be used. If none is specified, a default value of JNEWS.RC will be used. This value can be set on a server by server basis using the SLRN.RC initialization file. The -create option should be used the first time slrn is used for a particular server. This causes slrn to read the entire list of groups available at the server and place them in the selected newsrc file. If the NNTP connection is slow, this process may take several minutes. Fortunately, this happens only when the -create flag is used. If -C is specified on the command line, the terminal is assumed to support colors. Colors may be specified by using the initialization file. If the -n option is present, no new newsgroups will be checked for. This may result in a faster startup. 2 BASIC_OPERATION Using slrn is simple. For many, simply typing slrn will connect to a news server. After starting, slrn checks for the existence of new newsgroups and automatically subscribes to them. Then after new news is checked, slrn goes into ``full screen'' mode at which point the user can unsubscribe to one or more groups. slrn will display a list of news- groups that looks like: -> 3 sci.research.postdoc 689-705 1 comp.databases.olap 1-1 4 rec.antiques.radio+phono 1-4 1 comp.emulators.ms-windows.win 339-349 113 comp.unix.questions 74401-74513 11 gnu.ghostscript.bug 4874-4884 100 alt.music.pink-floyd 7941-8040 11 rec.sport.baseball.analysis 239-249 3 rec.sport.baseball.data 267-269 13 sci.physics.electromag 1159-1171 65 comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.systems 4754-4818 5 sci.physics.particle 1069-1073 2 comp.sources.x 2362-2363 2 comp.unix.user-friendly 2603-2604 Here the middle column shows the name of a newsgroup and the left column shows the number of unread articles in the group. The right column shows the range of articles present on the server. Note the presence of the -> in the first column on the `sci.research.postdoc' line. This symbol is used by slrn as a pointer to indicate the currently selected line. It may be moved up and down by using the arrow keys. Pressing the RETURN key or the SPACEBAR at this point will select the `sci.research.postdoc' group. A new screen will appear showing something like: ->- 703 (P) Lecturer in Comp. dumontet@nuri.inria.fr (dumo - 704 Research & Developnment dumontet@nuri.inria.fr (dumo - 705 Re: Example of proposal shinbrot@bart.chem-eng.nwu.e Here, each line consists of four fields and possibly the - > cursor. The first field indicates whether the article has been read or not. A hyphen ( - ) in the first field indi- cates that the article has not been read. Since a hyphen appears in the first field in all three of the lines above, none of the articles have been marked as read. A d in this field indicates that an article has been read. The currently selected article can be changed from the read to the unread state by pressing the u key. The d key may be used to mark the article as read without actually reading it. The c key may be used to mark all the articles as read (Actually this is the preferred way to use the newsreader: scan the arti- cles by eye looking for something interesting then before moving on to next newsgroup, press `c' to mark all articles as read). The second field displays the server number of the article. The third and fourth fields contain the subject and author of the article, respectively. Pressing the SPACEBAR or the RETURN key will create a second window and display the contents of the currently selected article. The screen will now consist of two windows - a large one and a small one. The large window, known as the article window, will contain the currently selected article and the small one, known as the summary window, will contain the list of articles as shown above. The space bar may be used the scroll the article forward and the DELETE key or the `B' key may be used to scroll it backward. The UP/DOWN arrow keys simply move the - > cursor from one line to another in the summary window. To hide the article window, press the h key.This will zoom the summary window to full screen. The f key may be used to post a followup to the currently selected article. To return to the list of Newsgroups, press the Q key to leave this mode. 2 DEFAULT_KEYBINDINGS These keybindings are always available: These keybindings are always available: ? Help PageUp Ctrl-U Page up PageDn Ctrl-D Page down Ctrl-Z Suspend program These keybindings may be used at the newsgroup level: SPACE Select articles for the current group. UP P Move to the previous group DOWN Move to the next group q Quit the program p Post an article l Toggle the display of groups with no unread articles on and off L Toggle display of unsubscribed groups (can also sub- scribe with this) u Unsubscribe from the current group s Subscribe to the current group c Mark all articles in the current group as read. a Subscribe to a specified group / Search for a subscribed group G Refresh groups from news server X Save .newsrc ESC > Move to last group ESC < Move to first group The following bindings are valid once a newsgroup has been selected: SPACE Select or scroll currently selected article forward DELETE, b Scroll currently selected article backward d Mark currently selected article as read and move to the next unread article. u Mark the currently selected article as unread # Numerically tag the article for multiple save (see o command) g Skip to next digest h Hide the article window by zooming the summary win- dow to full screen Ctrl-^ Decrease the size of the header window by one line. ^ Increase the size of the header window by one line. f Post follow-up to the currently selected article F Forward the currently selected article to someone r Reply directly to the author of the currently selected article o Save the currently selected article or thread to a file in a Unix mail format by appending it to the the specified file, then optionally decode the arti- cles with uudecode or unshar. If numerically tagged articles (see # ) are present, then optionally save and then decode the tagged articles. The built-in uudecoder can decode files that contain multiple multi-part uuencoded articles. However, they must be tagged in the proper order. The key ESC # may be used to un-tag articles. q Quit and go back to the list of newsgroups T Toggle quote display K Toggle scoring TAB Skip over quotes in article t Toggle the current articles headers between hidden and un-hidden states. By default, uninteresting ones are hidden UP Move to the previous article DOWN Move to the next article ESC DOWN, RETURN Scroll the article down one line < Jump to the beginning of the article ESC UP Scroll the article up one line ESC > Move to last article ESC < Move to first article RIGHT Pan the article window to the right LEFT Pan the article window to the left n Move to the next unread article o Append article to a file; optionally, decode with uudecode or shar p Move to a previously unread article PageUp, PageDn Page up and down through the header list. / Search forward in the article ? Search backward through article. a Author search forward. A Author search backward. s Subject search forward. S Subject search backward H Hide the article (make its window disappear) N Skip to next news group j Move to an article P Post an article (also see f to post a follow-up article) SEMICOLON Set a mark at the current article. COMMA Return to a previously set mark setting the mark first. * Flag the article as 'important' (prevents catchup in header window from marking the article deleted) | Pipe article to an external command ESC Ctrl-C Cancel the current article. c Mark all articles as read ESC C Mark articles to here as read ESC U Mark articles to here as UN-read Ctrl-R, Ctrl-L Redraw the screen. ESC R Toggle ROT 13 decryption on and off ESC S Toggle header threading on and off ESC T Toggle collapse of header threading ESC A Switch between header display methods ESC p Find parent header ESC Ctrl-P Find child header ? Show help Ctrl-Z Suspend the newsreader. E Edit score parameters using this article as template 2 ENVIRONMENT_VARIABLES slrn uses the following list of environment variables: NNTPSERVER NNTP Server to connect to if none specified when slrn is started. EDITOR SLANG_EDITOR Editor to use when composing messages. The '%s' and `%d' format descriptors may be used to specify the filename and line number respec- tively. For example, if `jed' is your editor, then you can use something like: DEFINE SLANG_EDITOR "jed %s - g %d " in your LOGIN.COM file. SLANG_EDITOR is the prefered environment variable since all S-Lang applica- tions that use an editor look for this variable and understand this syntax. REPLYTO Address to be inserted into the `Reply-To' field. ORGANIZATION String to be used in the `Organization' field. 2 INITIALIZATION_FILE If a file called SLRN.RC is present in the users login direc- tory, slrn will use it as an initialization file. This file can contain list of personalized keybindings as well as a list of server -- newsrc mappings. 3 BINDING_KEYS To bind a key to a particular function use the syntax: setkey keymap function key-sequence The setkey function requires three arguments.The first argu- ment specifies the keymap to be used for the bindings. Valid keymaps are: group and article. The function argument spa- cifies the function that is executed when keys in the last argument are pressed. For example, setkey group quit "x" indicates that if x is pressed at the group level, the quit function will be executed. Note that although not normally necessary, the last argument should be enclosed in double quotes since it may contain SPACE characters. The key-sequence argument can consist of several characters. For example, on many terminals, the RIGHT arrow sends the three characters ESC, `[' and `C' to the terminal. To bind the RIGHT key to `select_group' function, use: setkey group select_group "\e[C" Sometimes, it is necessary to unbind a key from a keymap before binding the key. For example, one cannot do: setkey group quit "\e" to bind the ESC key to the quit function without first unsetting it. This is because the default bindings use the ESC character as the prefix character for certain keymaps. To achieve this goal, use the unsetkey function: unsetkey group "\e" setkey group quit "\e" Here the unsetkey function has been used to remove the bind- ing for the ESC character before binding it to the `quit' function. Please note that unsetting the ESC key will also unset any key sequence been with the ESC key. This includes most function keys. See the example initialization file below for the list of functions and their meaning. 3 USING_MULTIPLE_SERVERS The easiest way to use multiple servers is through the use of the server command in the SLRN.RC file. This command sim- ple associates a server name with a newsrc file: server nntp-server newsrc-file For example, suppose that you use three servers with host- names `red.news.edu', `blue.news.edu', and `green.news.edu'. The the lines: server red.news.edu JNEWS.RC-red server blue.news.edu JNEWS.RC-blue server green.news.edu JNEWS.RC-green specify that the file JNEWS.RC-red is to be used when the server red.news.edu is connected to, etc... 3 DEFINING_COLORS Color support is enabled when suing the `-C' command line switch. Use slrn "-C" to pass an upper case C. The colors may be defined through the use of the `color' keyword in the `SLRN.RC' file. The syntax is: color OBJECT-NAME FOREGROUND-COLOR BACKGROUND-COLOR Here, OBJECT-NAME can be any one of the following items: error -- error messages status -- status line attached to windows menu -- Line at the top of the display (menu bar) group -- newsgroup names (group mode) cursor -- The --> position indicator author -- Author's name in the article mode subject -- Subject in the article mode headers -- The lines that constitute the headers of the article article -- The body of the article (not headers) normal -- anything not included above The foreground/background color names can be any of the following: black gray red brightred green brightgreen brown yellow blue brightblue magenta brightmagenta cyan brightcyan lightgray white Most terminals do not support the second group of colors for the background. 3 HIDING_QUOTED_ARTICLES Often articles contain quotes of previous articles. slrn is capable of not displaying lines in an article that match a given regular expression. The regular expression may be specified by putting a line of the form ignore_quotes REGULAR-EXPRESSION in the SLRN.RC startup file. The default regular expression is "^ ?[:>=]" which matches any line that begins with or without a space followed by either a colon, greater than sign, or an equal sign. To toggle the display of such lines on or off, press the `T' key when in article mode. 2 ARTICLE_SCORING (For a complete description of the flexibility in the slrn scorefile system, see the files KILL_FAQ and score.txt in the slrn distribution) slrn incorporates a sophisticated system for scoring arti- cles. In other newsreaders, one of slrn's scoring features would be called a " killfile ". But unlike some other news- readers, slrn provides for a great degree of flexibility and the capability to mark articles in ways other than merely killing them. Four levels of scoring are provided: -9999 The scored article is deleted (as with a common killfile) and will not appear in the header window -1 through -9998 The scored article appears with a " D " as in "Deleted" flag in the header window 0 through 9999 The scored article's header appears with a " ! " flag to indicate importance 3 CONFIGURING_THE_SCOREFILE The scorefile system is disabled until you set scorefile to the pathname of the file slrn should use to hold the scoring parameters. Once set, scorefile may be accessed through the E command at the header window, or may be edited manually. When accessed with E , slrn appends a template based upon the currently selected article to the scorefile with various parameters taken from the article and you are placed in your editor. To enable scoring, delete the % comment symbol from the first column of the header line(s) you wish to score upon. The other way to configure your scorefile is by editing the file directly, with a text editor. Here is a sample score- file (remember the KILL_FAQ and score.txt files are the definitive references for the score system): [news.software.readers] Score: 9999 % All slrn articles are good Subject: slrn Score: 9999 % This is someone I want to hear from From: davis@space.mit.edu Score = -9999 Subject: <f?agent> [comp.os.linux.*] Score: -10 Expires: 1/1/1996 Subject: swap Score: 20 Subject: SunOS Score: 50 From: Linus % Kill all articles cross posted to an advocacy group Score: -9999 Xref: advocacy ~From: Linus % This person I want nothing to do with unless he posts about % `gizmos' but only in comp.os.linux.development.* Score: -9999 From: someone@who.knows.where ~Subject: gizmo ~Newsgroup: development % These stooges post massive .sigs all the time. I like % to track them [alt.fan.warlord] Score:: 20 Subject: larry Subject: curly This file consists of two sections. The first section defines a set of tests applied to the news.software.readers newsgroups. The second section applies to the comp.os.linux newsgroups. The first section consists of three tests. The first test applies a score of 9999 to any subject that contains the string `slrn'. The second test applies to the `From'. It says that any article from davis@space.mit.edu gets scores 9999. The third test gives a score of -9999 to any article whose subject contains the word `agent'. Since tests are applied in order, if an article contains both `slrn' and `agent', it will be given a score of 9999 since 9999 is a special score value. The second section is more complex. It applies to the news- groups comp.os.linux newsgroups and consists of 5 tests. The first three are simple: -10 points are given if the sub- ject contains `swap', 20 if it contains SunOS, and 50 if the article is from someone named `Linus'. This means that if Bill@Somewhere writes an article whose subject is `Swap, Swap, Swap', the article is give -10 points. However, if the Linus writes an article with the same title, it is given -10 + 50 = 40 points. Note that the first test expires at the beginning of 1996. The fourth test kills all articles that were cross posted to an advocay newsgroup UNLESS they were posted by Linus. Note that if a keyword begins with the `~' character, the effect of the regular expression is reversed. The fourth test serves to filter out posts from someone@who.knows.where unless he posts about `gizmos' in one of the comp.os.development newsgroups. Again note the `~' character. The last test marks as important messages from mentioning Moe or Curly in the alt.fan.warlord newsgroup. This demon- strates use of an "OR" condition in a scorefile. 2 COURTESY_COPY If you elect to send a courtesy copy of your followup arti- cle to the original poster, you may easily do so by adding a "Cc:" header to the article. Here is an example of how to send a courtesy copy of a followup to John Davis' (slrn's author) announcement of a new slrn version: Newsgroups: news.software.readers Subject: Re: slrn 0.8.0 Released! References: <46c6b8$e2@news.mit.edu> Organization: a clean well lit place Reply-To: hg@n2wx.ampr.org Followup-To: Cc: davis@space.mit.edu On 22 Oct 1995 01:26:45 GMT, John Davis <davis@space.mit.edu> wrote: ... John will receive a copy of the followup by email with the article text preceded by a line of text stating that [This message has also been posted.] (The text within the brack- ets may be customized with the SLRN.RC cc_followup_string parameter.) 3 MISCELLANEOUS_SETTINGS The SLRN.RC initialization file also supports the following commands: signature <signature file name> organization <Your organization name> replyto <Email address to be used reply to> quote_string <string to be used to quote an article> editor_command <string used to invoke editor> scorefile <score file name> For example, signature .news-signature organization "Society of Famous Outlaws" signature "Billy the Kid" quote_string ">" editor_command "jed %s -g %d -tmp" scorefile "News/Score" 2 FILES SYS$LOGIN:SLRN.RC - the slrn's initialization file SYS$LOGIN:JNEWS.RC - default newsrc file for slrn. 2 EXAMPLE_OF_AN_INITIALIZATION_FILE % This is a sample startup file for the slrn news reader. The percent % character is used for comments. % SERVER to NEWSRC mapping server hsdndev.harvard.edu .jnewrc-hsdndev server news.uni-stuttgart.de JNEWS.RC-stuttgart %nnrpaccess HOSTNAME USERNAME PASSWORD %realname "John Doe" %replyto jd@somthing.com % The quote string will be used when following up/replying quote_string ">" % This regular expression defines lines that are consider to be quoted lines. % It says that any lines beginning with 0-2 spaces followed by a either % a >, <, :, |, or = character is a quoted line. ignore_quotes "^ ? ?[><:=|]" % This sets the follow-up string. Here, the following for- mat specifiers are % recognized: %d:date, %r:real name, %f:email address, %s:subject, % %m:msgid, %n:newsgroups, %%: percent followup "On %d, %r <%f> wrote:" % If autobaud is present, output rate will be synced to baud rate %autobaud % if non-zero, display first article when entering article-mode. set show_article 0 % if non-zero, show description of newsgroup if available set show_descriptions 1 % If non-zero, backups of the newsrc file are not per- formed. set no_backups 0 % If 0, do not beep terminal. If 1, send audible beep. If 2, send only % visible bell. If 3, send both. set beep 1 % If non-zero, slrn will automatically subscribe new groups. The default is 0. set unsubscribe_new_groups 0 % If non-zero, all subject titles will be displayed even though many are % duplicated. A zero value makes the screen look less busy. set show_thread_subject 0 % Enable xterm mouse support: 1 to enable, 0 to disable set mouse 0 % Setting either of these to 0 will enable you to move directly to the % next article/group without confirmation set query_next_group 1 set query_next_article 1 % Set this to 0 for no-confirmation on follow, reply, quit, etc... set confirm_actions 1 % If non-zero, a Cc: header to poster will automatically be generated on % followups set cc_followup 0 cc_followup_string "[This message has also been posted.]" % Name of score file (relative to HOME directory) scorefile "News/Score" % Name of directory where decoded files are placed (rela- tive to HOME) decode_directory "News" % Command used to invoke editor. In the following example, %s represents % the file name and %d represents the starting line number %editor_command "jed %s -g %d -tmp" % If non-zero, files used for posting, followup and reply will be regarded as % temporary files in the directory specified by the TMPDIR environment % variable or /tmp. set use_tmpdir 0 %------------ % Colors %------------ color normal black white color error red white color status yellow blue color group blue white color article blue white color cursor brightgreen white color author magenta white color subject black white color headers brightcyan white color menu yellow blue color tree red white color quotes red white color thread_number blue white color high_score red white %------------------------ Group keymap--------- --------------------------- setkey group add_group "A" % add a new newsgroup setkey group bob "\<" % beg of buffer setkey group bob "^K\OA" setkey group bob "^K\[A" setkey group catch_up "C" % mark group as read setkey group down "\OB" % next group setkey group down "\[B" setkey group down "^N" setkey group eob "\>" % end of buffer setkey group eob "^K\OB" setkey group eob "^K\[B" setkey group group_search_forward "/" setkey group help "?" setkey group pagedown "^D" % next page of groups setkey group pagedown "\[6~" setkey group pagedown "^V" setkey group pageup "\V" % previous page of groups setkey group pageup "^U" setkey group pageup "\[5~" setkey group post "P" setkey group quit "Q" setkey group redraw "^L" setkey group redraw "^R" setkey group refresh_groups "G" setkey group save_newsrc "X" setkey group select_group "\e7" % read articles from group setkey group select_group " " setkey group subscribe "S" % subscribe to group (See unsubscribe) setkey group suspend "^Z" setkey group toggle_group_display " 33A" setkey group toggle_score "K" setkey group toggle_hidden "l" setkey group toggle_list_all "L" setkey group unsubscribe "U" % unsubscribe setkey group up "\OA" % previous line setkey group up "\[A" setkey group up "^P" %---------------- Article mode keymap ------------------------------------- setkey article goto_article "j" setkey article pipe_article "|" setkey article skip_quotes "" setkey article pageup "^U" setkey article pageup "\[5~" setkey article pageup "\V" setkey article pagedn "\[6~" setkey article pagedn "^D" setkey article pagedn "^V" setkey article post "P" setkey article get_parent_header "\p" setkey article catchup_all "c" setkey article catchup_all "\c" setkey article uncatchup_all "\u" setkey article catchup "\C" setkey article uncatchup "\U" setkey article scroll_dn " " % scroll to next page of article or select article setkey article scroll_dn "\e7" % (article_dn or article_pagedn) setkey article scroll_up "^?" % scroll to next page of article setkey article scroll_up "b" % (scroll_up or article_pageup) setkey article article_lineup "\\[A" % Scroll arti- cle one line up setkey article article_lineup "\\OA" setkey article article_linedn "\\[B" % Scroll arti- cle one line down setkey article article_linedn "\\OB" setkey article article_search "/" % Search forward through article setkey article author_search_forward "a" % Search for- ward for an author setkey article author_search_backward "A" % Search back- ward for an author setkey article cancel "\^C" % Cancel the article setkey article delete "d" % Mark current article as read and move to the next unread one setkey article down "^N" % Move to the next arti- cle setkey article down "\[B" setkey article down "\OB" setkey article mark_spot ";" % Set mark at current article setkey article exchange_mark "," % Set the mark and return to the location of the previous mark. setkey article followup "f" % Followup on the article setkey article forward "F" % Forward the article to someone setkey article help "?" % Show help screen setkey article hide_article "H" % Hide the article win- dow. setkey article goto_end ">" % Scroll the article window to the left setkey article left "\OD" setkey article left "\[D" setkey article next "n" % next unread article setkey article skip_to_next_group "N" % next group setkey article prev "p" % previous unread article setkey article quit "q" % Quit back to group mode. setkey article redraw "^L" % Redraw the display setkey article redraw "^R" setkey article reply "r" % Reply to the author of the current article setkey article goto_beginning "<" % Scroll article to the right setkey article right "\[C" setkey article right "\OC" setkey article save "O" % append to a file in Unix mail format setkey article subject_search_forward "s" % Search forward/backward for an article with a specific subject setkey article subject_search_backward "S" setkey article suspend "^Z" % Suspend the newsreader setkey article toggle_show_author "\a" setkey article toggle_rot13 "\R" setkey article toggle_sort "\S" setkey article toggle_headers "t" % Toggle the display of some headers on and off setkey article toggle_quotes "T" setkey article undelete "u" % Mark the current arti- cle as unread setkey article up "^P" % Move to the previous article setkey article up "\OA" setkey article up "\[A" setkey article art_header_bob "\<" % Move to first article in list setkey article art_header_eob "\>" % Move to last arti- cle in list setkey article shrink_window "^^" % Ctrl-6 or Ctrl- ^ % Shrink header window setkey article enlarge_window "^" % Shift-6 or just ^ % Enlarge header window 2 SEE_ALSO DEFINE Questions about slrn may be posted to the newsgroup news.software.readers where they will be answered by the author of the program. In addition, announcements of new versions of slrn are posted there. The latest version of slrn is available via anoymous ftp from space.mit.edu in pub/davis/slrn. 2 AUTHOR John E. Davis <davis@space.mit.edu> 2 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS (This list is still incomplete) Howard Goldstein <hg@n2wx.ampr.org> for updating this man page. Andrew Greer <Andrew.Greer@vuw.ac.nz> for the VMS port. Lloyd Zusman <ljz@ingress.com> performed some cosmetic improvements. J.B. Nicholson-Owens <jbn@mystery-train.cu-online.com> for extensive testing. Mark Olesen <olesen@weber.me.queensu.ca> for suggestions and help with AIX version.