Table of Contents 1) Introducing Newsbeat for Os/2 1 2) Installing Newsbeat 3) Starting Newsbeat for the first time 4) Using Newsbeat 1) Introducing Newsbeat for OS/2 Newsbeat for OS/2 is a PM USENET newsreader for OS/2. It is multithreaded, which allows you to do many things at one time. In other newsreaders you have to wait for each function to finish before continuing on. In Newsbeat you can actually do many functions at one time, so no time is wasted watching your screen do nothing. 2) Installing Newsbeat for OS/2 In order to run Newsbeat, you must meet the basic system requirements for running OS/2 Warp. After that, you need to install EMXRT.ZIP. This file can be ftp'd from hobbes.nmsu.edu in the /os2/unix/emx09b directory. Retrieve the file emxrt.zip and unzip it into your root directory. Read the EMXRT.DOC that comes in the /emx/doc directory, and follow the instructions for installing it. Take the newsbeat.zip file, and create a directory for it. Unzip the file into this directory. Follow the instructions on the screen. You have now finished installing Newsbeat for OS/2. ;-) 3) Starting Newsbeat for OS/2 for the First Time Start Newsbeat for OS/2 by typing "newsbeat", without the quotes. You will now see a window open which has some fields to fill in. All of the appropriate information can be received from your Internet Service Provider. Fill in the name of your news server. Press Tab. Fill in the name of your SMTP mail server. This mail server must support SMTP, Newsbeat does not support any other protocol. If you are not sure, contact your Internet Service Provider. Press Tab. Fill in the rest of the fields, email address, your name, and organization, if applicable, using Tab to between fields. When satisfied click on Done. Now the Newsbeat for OS/2 main screen should come up. 4) Using Newsbeat for OS/2 4.1) The Newsbeat Windows On the Newsbeat main screen, you will see a menu system, a row of buttons, and three windows. To get a brief description of each button on the toolbar, press the right mouse button on a button on the toolbar. This will bring up a balloon help. Each window hides another window behind it. In order to see these hidden windows, you can click on each title bar to flip between the windows. On the bottom is a window labeled "Current Message". Behind this window is one called "UUDecode Queue". On the top-left window is labeled "Article List". In this window, a list of articles within a newsgroup is displayed, when a newsgroup is chosen. Behind this window is one called "Kill file", which displays those names and addresses in your killfile. On the top-right is a window labeled "Subscribed Newsgroups". If you click on the words "Subscribed Newsgroups" the bar changes to "All Newsgroups". 4.2) The All Newsgroups Window Click on the title bar "Subscribed Newsgroups". If this is the first time you are running Newsbeat, you are asked "Do you want to load Newsgroups from server?" If you answer "Yes", Newsbeat will begin to get the list of groups from the server. This will take some time, as there are literally thousands of newsgroups to fetch. Note that it counts how many groups in the bottom left corner of the Newsbeat window. Once the groups are fetched, they will be sorted and put in alphabetical order. This may also take some time. Once all groups are displayed, you can subscribe to them. There are two ways of subscribing to a group. You can click on the group you want and press Alt+S, or double click on the group you want to subscribe to. You can do this with as many groups as you like. You can scroll through the groups using the scrollbar on the righthand side of the window. 4.2.1) Searching the Groups Since there are literally thousands of newsgroups available for you to subscribe to, there is a search function. By selecting Newsgroups from the menu, and then selecting Find Group, you can give it a word to search for, in the Groupname field. Press Find and the group listing will highlight the first occurance of the word in the list. Press Find Next to move to the next occurances. You can subscribe to a group by clicking on subscribe. Once you have finished selecting the groups you want to subscribe to, click on "All Newsgroups" to go back to "Subscribed Newsgroups". You will now see the groups you had selected displayed. 4.3) The Subscribed Newsgroups Window The subscribed newsgroups are displayed with the number of unread articles in the group, followed by the groupname. In order to list the articles in a group, double click on a group in the "Subscribed Newsgroups" window. The articles will load and then appear in the "Article List" window. You can scroll through the subscribed groups by using the scroll bar on the righthand side of the window. 4.4) The Article List Window The article list is displayed in the following manner: article number, number of lines in the article, title of the article, and the author of the article. Now you can double click on an article in the "Article List" and it will be downloaded, and displayed in the "Current Message" window on the bottom-half of the Newsbeat window. An asterisk, "*", will appear on the left side of the article name in the article list. This asterisk means that you have read the article already. On subsequent reloading of this newsgroup, the article will not be displayed. 4.4.1) Mark as Read/Unread You can mark a specific article as read or unread by clicking on the appropriate button from the toolbar. The eighth button from the left marks the selected article as read. The ninth button from the left removes the read mark from an article. You can mark the whole newsgroup as read by clicking on the tenth button from the left, and, of course, remove the read marking from the group using the eleventh button from the left. 4.4.2) Binary Files and the UUDecoding Queue There are also articles which are actually binary files, such as pictures, programs, sound files, and so on. These are usually in a format called uudecode. There is a built-in decoder in Newsbeat. In order to uudecode an article, you can click on the 4th button from the left (has a UU in it), and it is added to the uudecode queue. To view the UUDecoding Queue, click on the Current Message title bar. Now you will see a window listing the articles in the queue. The top article is the one being processed. You can continue to add to the queue by selecting another article and clicking on the UUDecode button. Should you want to stop decoding you can click on Abort All. You can also pause the queue, by clicking on Pause. You can remove any article from the queue, except the one being currently serviced, by selecting the one you want to remove and clicking on Remove File. Since uudecoding can take a while, you can go and read other articles while waiting for your queue to complete. There are no restrictions on the group or article you wish to read while waiting. The queue will continue uudecoding until it is done, you press Abort All, or you terminate Newsbeat. 4.5) The Current Message Window The window on the bottom displays the message you selected from the article list. You can scroll through this message by using the scroll-bar on the righthand side. 4.5.1) Copy to Clipboard / Cut and Paste You can highlight a section of the message by moving the mouse cursor to the beginning of the highlight section, pressing the left mouse button, and then while holding the button, moving to the end of the highlight section. Once you have highlighted the section you want, you can then click on the Copy to Clipboard button, the sixth button from the left, the one with a picture of a clipboard. This will copy the section into the clipboard. You can then paste the selection into any other program by using it's paste feature. 4.5.2) Saving a Message You can save a message by clicking on the fifth button from the left, the one with a folder. Enter the name of the file and click on OK. 4.6) Sending Email and Sending a Posting to USENET Clicking on the first button on the left allows you to post a message. It will bring up the posting/email screen. The button to the right allows you to reply to a message. Both buttons work in the same manner, except the second button will fill in some of the fields using the current message you are reading as it's base. At the top, make sure your email address is correct. All email responses to the message will be sent to this address. The second line is the subject you would like to give your posting or email. This should be a general title of your posting or email. The third line is the newsgroups you want to send the posting too. You can post to multiple newsgroups by separating a list of newsgroups by commas. You can select whether to send the message to the world, or keep it local on your local server. If you are sending this message as email, you can put the email address on the next line. Note at the bottom of the window you have two checkboxes, Post and Mail. Select the appropriate action. Keep both checked if you wish to do both. In the window you can type whatever you wish to send. If the message is a reply, you will see the current message displayed. Click on Send to send the message. 4.7) The Web Explorer Button This button allows you to select a URL and run the IBM Web Explorer to automatically go to the URL. Highlight any URL in a message and click on the third button from the right. The URL can be any URL supported by Web Explorer.