WinVN Help Index

WinVN is a Microsoft Windows and Windows NT-based news reader.  Like other news readers, it can be used to select, view, and write Usenet News  articles.  WinVN can also be used to send (but not receive) electronic mail messages.

This help file coincides with WinVN version 1.0 (July 1995).

General

Overview of WinVN

Overview of Usenet News

Usenet Etiquette

License (it's free!)

History of WinVN

The NEWSRC file

Types of Windows

Main Group-List Window

Newsgroup [Article-List] Window

Article View Window

Composition Window

Status Window

Procedure Guides

Click the mouse button on definitions or cross-references.  To learn more about Help, press F1.


Types of Windows
Types of WinVN Windows

Main Group-List Window

Newsgroup Article-List Window

Article View Window

Composition Window

Status Window


Procedures
WinVN Procedures

Getting a Copy of WinVN

Installing WinVN

Invoking WinVN

Configuring WinVN

Authorizing Yourself to the News Server

Subscribing to Newsgroups

Reading News

Posting an Article

Mailing a Message

Decoding Articles

Marking Articles as Read

Filtering Groups


Composition Window

The composition window allows you to compose and then send an article or  electronic mail message to the network.  See Posting an Article. or Mailing a Message.

The composition window is divided into two areas:

Header fields

Body text edit area

Composition Menu Commands

Edit Menu Commands


Composition Menu Commands

These commands assist in the creation of articles and electronic mail.

Send

Attach

Read File...

Preferences

Abort Posting


Send

If this is a news composition, sends your  completed article in this Composition Window to the news server for propagation throughout the network.   If this is a mail composition, sends electronic mail message to the network SMTP server for propagation throughout the network.


Attach
Attach...

Allows you to attach one or more files to the posting,  See Attaching Files To a Composition


Read File
Read File...

Reads a text file directly into the body text window, at the current text location.  If cursor is not in the body text edit window, the file contents will be appended to the body text.  If some body text is selected, the text will be replaced by the file contents.


Preferences

There are two categories of preferences related to the composition window.  See Configure Composition and Configure Attachments.


Cancel
Abort Posting

Closes this window, losing the composition.  You will be warned and asked to confirm the close.


Composition Header Fields

You can select which header fields will be displayed in the composition window . The Subject, To or Newsgroups, Cc , and Attachments fields are always shown.  All other headers can be hidden.  Note that some headers (From, Organization, and Reply-To) will still be sent, even if hidden.  See Configure Composition.

To:

This is displayed only for mail compositions.  This is the E-mail address of the recipient.  For multiple recipients, separate the addresses with commas.  Press the Browse button to open the Mail Address Manager.

Newsgroups:

This is displayed only for news compositions.  This is the name of the newsgroup to which the article is posted.  To cross-post to multiple newsgroups, separate the group names with commas.

Subject:

You must fill in this field before sending.  If this is a follow-up or reply, this field defaults to the original message subject, with the addition of "Re:" in front.

From:

This field defaults to your E-mail address and name in parentheses.  See Configure Personal Info.

Organization:

This field defaults to your organization.  See Configure Personal Info.

Reply-To:

This optional field defaults to your reply-to address. See Configure Personal Info.  If this field is empty, or the address is identical to your E-mail address, the Reply-To header will not be sent.

Cc:

A list of E-mail addresses, similar to the To: field.  Each address listed here will receive a 'carbon copy' of the composition.  If this is a news composition, the Cc: option is available to send the composition simultaneously via SMTP mail (note that this is not available for MAPI mail).

Keywords:

A few well-selected keywords identifying the message should be on  this line.  This is used as an aid in determining if this message is  interesting to the reader.

Summary:

A brief summary of your message.  This is most frequently used in a follow-up message, and again is used as an aid in determining if this message is  interesting to the reader. This is available for news messages only.

Follow-up To:

This field is only used for news.  Use to re-direct responses to a post to a different newsgroup or to poster which would send all responses to your email address.

Distribution:

A list of newsgroups similar to the Newsgroups line.  This is used to limit the distribution area of your news posting.  Your message will only be propagated to news servers who accept the listed newsgroup.   This is available for news messages only.  An example may be "nj,ny".

Attachments:

This is a list containing the file names of the attachments to this composition.  To add an attachment  to the list either select Attach from the Composition Menu Commands, or place the cursor in the Attachments list box and press the Insert key.  To remove an attachment, select the filename in the list box and press the Delete key.  To modify attributes of an attachment, double-click on the filename in the list box.  See Attaching Files To a Composition

Note for advanced users:

You may include additional headers (i.e. "Expires:", or "X-MyHeader:") by including these at the top of the body text of your article.  These headers must be placed before any non-header body text.  WinVN will recognize any header described in RFC-822, RFC-1036, or any header like "X-Custom:".  WinVN will include these headers in the header block of your article (all lines before the first blank line of your article are considered headers).


Mail Address Manager

The Mail Address Manager allows you to maintain a list of commonly used E-mail addresses, as well as easily select recipients from the list.  To select one or more recipients, double-click on each address, then click on Ok.  To add an address to the list, type an address in the edit area and click on Add.  To delete one or more addresses from the list, select the address(es) in the list, and click on Delete.


Attaching Files to a Composition

File Name

Enter name of the file to be attached.  You can click on Browse to open the Windows browse dialog.

Encoding Type

Choose the type of encoding for the file.  If you click on Make Default, this will become the default encoding type for all attachments.

Content Type

Choose the content-type for the attachment.  Note that if WinVN recognizes the type of the file (by its extension), it will automatically set the content type (i.e. "trees.gif" is obviously of type Image/GIF).  If you click on Make Default, this will become the default content type for all file attachments which are not automatically recognized by WinVN..

Start this attachment in new article

If checked, WinVN will initiate this attachment in a new article.  In other words, before posting this attachment, WinVN will complete the send in progress, then initiate a new send (using the same headers as the first send) and start this attachment.


Composition Body Text Area

Type text directly into this area.  If Word Wrap is enabled (see Configure Composition), text will be wrapped as it is typed, and there will be no horizontal scroll bar.  If Word Wrap is disabled, there will be a horizontal scroll bar.  Keep in mind that many people reading your text will only have room to display 80 characters or so on their screen, so either use Word Wrap, or break your lines frequently.

You may read a file directly into this text area by selecting Read File from the Composition Menu.


Installing WinVN

WinVN Depends On Winsock

Before installing WinVN, make sure your TCP/IP software is correctly installed.  You should have exactly one winsock.dll file on your path.  This file should be provided with your TCP/IP software.

Information You Will Need

The name or IP address of your news server.

A username and password, if required   by your news server.  Contact your news provider if necessary.  See Authorizing Yourself to the News Server.

If you plan to send mail using SMTP, the name or IP address of your SMTP mail server.

Unzipping WinVN

Create a directory in which WinVN is to be installed (i.e. c:\winvn).  Unzip the distribution files into this directory using pkunzip or a compatible decompression program.

DLL Locations for Windows 3.x 16-bit  version

Place wvtb.dll and gwinsock.dll in the same directory as the winvn.exe.

Move (don't copy) ctl3dv2.dll into your \windows\system directory.

DLL Locations for Windows NT and Windows 95 32-bit  version

Place wvtb32.dll and gwinsock.dll in the same directory as the winvn32.exe.

Move (don't copy) ctl3d32.dll into your \windows\system32 directory.

GWINSOCK.DLL

gwinsock.dll is WinVN's interface to Winsock .  Some Winsock stacks (for exampleTrumpet Winsock) may exhibit poor performance in conjunction with WinVN's gwinsock.dll.  WinVN provides an alternate DLL genasync.dll which may improve performance in such cases.  To install the alternate DLL, modify the WINVN.INI file:  in the "[Communications]"section, modify "GenSockDLL=gwinsock.dll" to read "GenSockDLL=genasync.dll".

Environment Variables

If you are running Windows 3.x, you will need to set the TZ environment variable.

You may also set the WINVN environment variable   See Invoking WinVN.

Filling In Communications Information

Start WinVN.  You may wish to add a WinVN icon to a group in the Program Manager.

You will be prompted for your NNTP News Server address and some other information.   The only required field is the NNTP Server name. You only need to fill in the username and password fields if  your news server requires them.  Additionally, if you plan to use mail, select MAPI if you use the Microsoft Mail system or some other MAPI compatible mail system, otherwise select SMTP and enter the address of your mail server.  See Configure Communications.

Filling in Personal  Information

Next, you will be prompted for your personal information, such as name, E-mail address, and organization name.  This information is used to identify you when you post an article or send a mail message.  See Configure Personal Info.

Note this information can be changed later from the Configure Menu in the main window.


Posting an Article

You can post an article either as a followup to a previous article, or as a "brand new" article.  Note that often it is preferable to respond to an article via an electronic mail message rather than by another article; see Usenet Etiquette and Mailing a Message.

An article contains headers followed by the text of the article.  Each article is directed to one or more newsgroups by a "Newsgroups:" line in the header.  If you want to send an article to more than one newsgroup, type the names of the newsgroups in the "Newsgroups:" header field, separated by commas.

If you are running Windows 3.x, WinVN needs to know your time zone so it can generate valid dates.  See Setting the TZ Environment Variable.

Followup Articles

A followup article has the same "Subject:" line as the article which inspired it.  (The notation "Re:" is added.)  This makes it easier for other Usenet News users browsing the newsgroup to follow the discussion.  Also, a followup article typically selectively quotes the earlier article, again to make the discussion easier to follow.

To compose a followup article, select the Followup Article option from the Respond menu or toolbar of an article window. WinVN creates a composition  window.  The headers of the article in this window are filled in with information taken from your Personal Info configuration and from the header of the referenced article. The full text of the referenced article is also included in the posting window, with each line preceded by a ">" to indicate that another article is being quoted.  You should delete irrelevant quoted lines in your followup article.  Some news servers will reject postings which contain more quoted text than new text.

You may optionally send a copy to the original author of the posting via an electronic mail message by typing the author's return address in the "Cc:" header field.  You can configure the composition window to pre-fill the "Cc:" address during followup.  See Configure Compose.

New Articles

To compose a "brand new" article, select the New Article option from the Articles menu or toolbar of a group window, or by selecting New Article from the Utillities menu or toolbar of the the main window.  WinVN creates a composition window for your new article.  The "Newsgroup:" header field should contain the name of the newsgroup to which you wish to post.  If you wish to cross-post to multiple newsgroups, separate the names of the newsgroups by commas..  Other information in the header fields is based on your Personal Info configuration.  You must fill in a subject for the new article.

Sending the Article

When you have completed composing your article, you can send it to the network or cancel it.  See Composition Menu Commands.  If the article is posted successfully, composition window is closed.


Mailing a Message

If using SMTP mail , creating a electronic mail message is nearly identical to creating a news article.  If using MAPI, then instead of opening a composition window, WinVN opens the available MAPI interface (i.e. Microsoft Mail).

You can use WinVN to send an electronic mail message either as a personal reply to the author of an article, or as an independent message.

A message contains headers followed by the text of the message.  A message is directed to one or more recipients by filling in the "To:" header field.  Multiple recipient addresses  are separated with commas.  To use the mail address manager, click on the Browse button next to the "To:" field (See Mail Address Manager.)

If using SMTP mail and you are running Windows 3.x, WinVN needs to know your time zone so it can generate valid dates.  See Setting the TZ Environment Variable.

Reply Messages

A reply message has the same "Subject:" line as the article which inspired it.  (The notation "Re:" is added.)   Also, a reply message typically selectively quotes the article which inspired it, to give some context to the recipient.

To compose a reply message, select the Compose Mail option from the Respond menu or toolbar of an article window. If using SMTP, WinVN creates a composition window. If using MAPI, WinVN opens the MAPI interface (i.e. Microsoft Mail).  Initial header fields are filled in with information taken from your Personal Info configuration and from the header of the referenced article.  The full text of the referenced article is also included in this window, with each line preceded by a ">" to indicate that an article is being quoted.  You should delete irrelevant quoted lines.   Some news servers will reject postings which contain more quoted text than new text.

New Messages

To compose a "brand new" message (one that does not reference an article), select the Compose Mail option from the Options menu or toolbar in the main window or from the Articles menu or toolbar in any Group Article-list window.   If using SMTP, WinVN creates a composition window for your new article. If using MAPI, WinVN opens the MAPI interface (i.e. Microsoft Mail) editor (you may be prompted to log in before proceeding).  Initial header fields are filled in based on your your Personal Info configuration.

You must fill in an appropriate subject for the new article on the "Subject:" field, and a recipient on the "To:" field.

Forwarding an Article

To forward an article via mail, select the Forward Article option from the Respond menu or toolbar in an article window.  See Respond Menu Commands. If using SMTP, WinVN creates a composition window. If using MAPI, WinVN opens the MAPI interface (i.e. Microsoft Mail).  Initial header fields are filled in with information taken from your WinVN configuration (see Configure Personal Info) and from the header of the referenced article.  The full text of the forwarded article is also included in this window, preceded by a line which says "--Forwarded--".  You may include any introductory text by editing the article before sending it.

You must fill in a recipient on the "To:" field.

Sending the Message

When you have completed composing your message, you can send it to the network or cancel it.  (If using SMTP, see Composition Menu Commands.)  If the message is sent successfully, the composition or MAPI edit window is closed.


Subscribing to Newsgroups

What is "Subscribing"?

"Subscribing" to a newsgroup means telling a news reader that you are interested in tracking, selecting, and viewing articles in that group.  Most news readers support the concept of "subscribing" to newsgroups as a means of simplifying the way that you interact with the news reader.  There are probably over 3000 newsgroups in which you are not interested; if you are not subscribed to these newgroups, a news reader need not bother prompting you with information on these groups.

WinVN also supports the concept of subscribing to a newsgroup, but primarily as a means of providing compatibility with other news readers.  WinVN's windowed, point-and-click interface makes it less necessary for it to resort to the somewhat artificial distinction between newsgroups in which you are interested and newsgroups in which you are not interested.  You can always access any newsgroup simply by scrolling to its name in the main window and clicking on it.    If you prefer, you show only the groups to which you subscribe (hiding unsubscribed groups) by disabling Show Unsubscribed in Configure Group-List. or from the toolbar.

Subscribing to New Newsgroups

When WinVN starts up, it can check the news server to see if any new groups have been created since your last session.  (See Configuring WinVN.)  If WinVN checks and finds that new newsgroups do exist, it displays their names in a scrollable list in a dialog box. Select the groups to which you want to subscribe by selecting a newsgroup category (i.e. "comp", or "sci"), then double-clicking on the names of the desired newsgroups.  When you have finished making your selections, click on the OK button.  Alternatively, you can click on the Cancel button and WinVN will ignore the new newsgroups altogether.

Subscribing to Existing Newsgroups

Newsgroups to which you are subscribed are displayed in the subscribed color at the top of the main window.  Following these groups are all of the unsubscribed group names, in the unsubscribed color and sorted alphabetically. (See Configure Colors).

You subscribe and unsubscribe to newsgroups by selecting them in the main window and using Group Menu Commands.  Select groups by clicking on their names.  A selected group appears in reverse video (black background) (See Configure Colors).  The Subscribe selected groups, Unsubscribe selected groups, and Move selected groups to Top menu options operate on all currently selected newsgroups.

Subscribing to a newsgroup moves its name to the bottom of the list of subscribed groups in the top portion of the main window.  Unsubscribing to a newsgroup causes it to be moved to its proper alphabetical place in the unsubscribed portion of the main window.

You can hide the unsubscribed groups from the main view window by toggling the Show Unsubscribed option in the Group-List Options.


Marking Articles as Read

Normally, WinVN keeps track of which articles you have read.  (See Group Window.)  Sometimes, you may want WinVN to think that you have read articles when you have not.  You may have read the articles with another newsreader or with a different copy of WinVN, or you may have been on vacation and want to ignore the articles that accumulated in a newsgroup while you were away.

To toggle the "read" status of a single article in a group, point the mouse cursor at the article subject and click on the middle or right mouse button.  You can also hold the shift key down and use the left mouse button, or drag the mouse while holding down the middle or right mouse button.

To mark all articles from the beginning of the newsgroup up to an article as "read", double-click the right mouse button on an article in the Group Window.

You may also select desired articles, by clicking on them, and then choosing Mark Selected Articles As Read from the Articles menu of the Group Window.

To "Catch Up", or mark all articles in the group as read, choose the Catch Up and Exit option from the Articles menu of the Group Window.


Authorizing Yourself to the News Server

Some Usenet news servers require you to present a username and password in order to gain access to certain features.  For instance, you may need a username and password to be able to post to any newsgroup, or to be able to read certain newsgroups.  The process of providing a username and password, and the subsequent checking done by the server, is called "authorizing".

WinVN supports the AUTHINFO NNTP command for authorization.  You can provide a username and password; see Configure Communications....  Note that you should only enter a username and password if your news server requires it.  If the news server does not require it, entering a username and/or password may cause your connection to be refused.

If you have saved a username as part of your WinVN configuration, when WinVN connects to the news server, it attempts to authorize you with the news server.  If you have saved a password as well, WinVN provides the username and password to the news server without prompting you.  If you have saved a username but have left the password field empty (or disabled Save Password in Configure Communications...), WinVN brings up the Configure Communications... dialog box to allow you to enter your password before completing authorization.

If you choose to save your news server password, WinVN encrypts it before recording it in the WINVN.INI file.  However, given the availability of WinVN source code, a determined attacker with access to your configuration file could decrypt your password without too much effort.  Therefore, for the best security, force WinVN to always prompt you for the password by never saving the password, as described above.


Configuring WinVN

Before you use WinVN to read news, you must give it the information it needs to contact the news server, send electronic mail, and so on.   In addition, you can configure WinVN with personal preferences, such as the colors and fonts it uses, how many article titles should be automatically fetched at once, and so on.

All configuration commands are accessible from the Config menu of the main window.  See Config Menu Commands.

By default, configuration information is written to the file WINVN.INI in the current directory.  The curious may wish to examine this file with a text editor.  See Invoking WinVN.


Invoking WinVN

WinVN is typically invoked by double-clicking on an icon in Program Manager; however, WinVN can be invoked via the File/Run... menu command or by any other mechanism that can be used to start a Windows program.

When WinVN starts, it looks for two files:  WINVN.INI, which contains configuration and customization information, and NEWSRC. By default, WinVN looks in the current directory for these files.  However, there are ways of specifying alternate locations for these files.

WINVN Command Line

You can pass command line arguments to WinVN to tell it where to locate your WINVN.INI and NEWSRC files.  The format of the command line is:

   WINVN  IniFile  NewsrcFile

        or

   WINVN  Path

In the first case, WinVN will take IniFile to be the filename--including path specification--of the initialization file.  If IniFile is just a directory name, WinVN will look for the file named WINVN.INI in that directory.  Similarly, WinVN takes the second argument, NewsrcFile, as a filename for the news history file.  If NewsrcFile is just a directory name, WinVN will look for the file named NEWSRC in that directory.

If, as in the second case, WinVN is run with one argument, WinVN will use it as a directory name for both the WINVN.INI and NEWSRC files.

(Actually, this is a simplified description of how WinVN searches for these files.  For a complete description, curious readers are referred to the source code file ininews.c.)

WINVN Environment Variable

Alternatively, you can set an environment variable to tell WinVN where to look for these two files.  Set the environment variable WINVN to the directory in which both the WINVN.INI and NEWSRC files can be found.  For instance:

   SET WINVN=F:\FRED

The WinVN environment variable must be set before windows starts up.  Every DOS shell within Windows maintains its own seperate copy of the environment.  Windows only looks at the environment that existed at startup.

On a PC LAN, an administrator can add code in the login script to set the WINVN environment variable to the unique location of a user's WINVN.INI file (on a network drive).  For those using multiple news servers, you can have multiple icons from within Windows and they have command line arguments set.

Summary of WinVN's Search for WINVN.INI and NEWSRC

Winvn uses the following search mechanism to find the WINVN.INI file:

Command line    (e.g.,   n:\winvn\winvn.exe u:\winvn.ini u:\newsrc)

WINVN Environment variable

Application startup directory

Windows Directory

Windows System Directory

DOS search path


Using the Mouse in the Group Window

From the Newsgroup window,  clicking the mouse anywhere on the window while a network operation is in progress will update the information on the screen with the current downloaded information.  Once all the article header information has been downloaded and the Newsgroup window is fully populated, the mouse operations are:

Mouse Left	Mark/Unmark an article for further consideration

Drag Mouse Left	Mark/Unmark multiple articles

Mouse Double-Click Left	Select article for viewing

Mouse Middle	Toggle the read/unread state of an article

Drag Mouse Middle	Toggle read/unread state of multiple articles

Shift Mouse Left	Same as Mouse Middle

Mouse Right	Reserved for future popup article menu

Mouse Double-Click Right	Mark all articles above this one as "seen".


Setting the TZ Environment Variable

If running the 32-bit version of WinVN under Windows NT or Windows95, this information is obtained automatically from the date/time control panel.  You do not need the TZ variable.

If running the 16-bit version of WinVN under Windows 3.x however, you must set the TZ environment variable.  This variable should be set in DOS, before running Windows

Use the following syntax to set the TZ environment variable:

set TZ=tzn[+ | -]hh[:mm[:ss] ][dzn]

The tzn must be a three-letter time-zone name, such as PST, followed by an optionally signed number, + -hh, giving the difference in hours between Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). and local time. To specify the exact local time, the hours can be followed by minutes, :mm; seconds, :ss; and a three-letter daylight-saving-time zone, dzn, such as PDT. Separate hours, minutes, and seconds with colons. If daylight saving time is never in effect, as is the case in certain states and localities, set TZ without a value for dzn.


Encoding a File

When encoding a file, WinVN will send the raw encoded data to a file.  WinVN will not generate any MIME headers, or any news/mail headers.  If you intend to send this encoded data over the network, select Attach from the composition menu  of a composition window.

Name of file to be encoded

Enter the file name of a file to encode.  Select Browse to open the Windows file browser.

Encoding Type

Choose the type of encoding for the file.  If you click on Make Default, this will become the default encoding type for all attachments.

Custom Encoding Table

If you selected Custom for the Encoding Type, this must be a valid Custom Encoding Table.  See

Custom Encoding Tables.

Ok...

When you click on Ok, WinVN will prompt you for a name for the file which will contain the encoded data.

See Encoding Concepts.


Decoding

See Decoding Concepts.

Destination Path

Enter the destination path for the decoded files.

Browse

You may select Browse to open a Drive/Directory navigator.

Smart Filer

Click on Smart Filer to Configure the Smart Filer.

Ok...

If you are using the Utilities Menu Decode a File option, when you click on Ok... you will be prompted for the file name of the file to decode.  If you are decoding an article or selected articles, when you click on Ok...,  the decode process will begin.

Other options

For information on the other decoding options, see Configure Decoding.


Decoding Concepts

Large binaries files are often broken up into multi-part files when encoded and posted.  These large blocks of text which make up an encoded file may be presented to WinVN by a news server out of order and with blocks of other encoded files mixed in.  WinVN determines threads of blocks as they are received and decoded, caches blocks which are out of sequence and then pieces together the fragmented files.  Theoretically, for example, you can select all files in an alt.binaries newsgroup article-list window, and select Decode Selected Articles from the Articles Menu;  WinVN will determine which articles contain encoded material.  In cases where not all blocks of an encoded file are found in the selection, WinVN will store as much of the decoded file as possible.

In non-MIME postings, there are no real standards for listing the file name, part number, and total number of parts for each encoded block.  However, most encoders attempt to place this information on the subject line of each block, and/or on some informational header in the body text.  WinVN attempts to determine encoded-block threads by examining the Subject line of each post, as well as non-data lines within the body text.   Information found in Info Headers take precedence over subject line content.

MIME supports standard 3-to-4 encodings, and wraps articles in a very precise protocol describing content types, and multiple-part tracking information.  Strictly speaking, filename and part number information are not required in the subject line for MIME attachments.  But, MIME is still young and there are many news readers and posters in use that predate the MIME standard, so WinVN will use, but does not depend on MIME headers..

See Decoder and Subject Lines.

See Decoder and Info Headers.

There are cases in which the encoded blocks of a file are posted with with unrelated subjects, and without MIME or any useful information headers.  WinVN won't realize (how could it?!) that the articles go together.  The following example Subject headers will, assuming no recognizable info headers are contained in the articles, start two decoding threads - one for an identifier "test.exe", and one for an identifier "second":

Test.exe [1/2]

second part

In such cases, the 'Dumb Decode' option is available from Configure Decoding which deactivates the decoding threading algorithms.  Dumb decode requires that the encoded blocks be in strict sequential order - it starts decoding when it sees a "begin" and stops decoding when it sees an "end".   Note that this will not work with Base64 encodings (See Encoding Concepts.  When WinVN is not smart enough to realize that encoded articles go together, you can make sure the articles are listed in order, select them all, and then use "Dumb Decode" to decode them.


Decoder and Subject Lines

If no recognizable Info Headers are contained in the article body text of an encoded block, WinVN relies on the subject line content.

The WinVN decoder understands the following commonly used subject line styles:

filename.ext 1/2 comment

filename.ext (1/2) comment

filename.ext [1/2] comment

filename.ext 1 of 2 comment

filename.ext part 1 of 2 comment

For subject lines beginning with the comment or free text, the filename is harder to guess.  In these cases, WinVN chooses an identifier which it will seek in other subject lines (it prefers a word containing a dot (hopefully filename.ext), but if none, it just uses the first word).  For example:

This is part 1/2 of filename.ext	(filename = "filename.ext")

Another encoded file: filename.ext (1/2)	(filename = "filename.ext")

Testing encoded files (1/2)	(filename = "testing")

This is not an infallible method but it works most of the time.   Subject styles known to be incorrectly handled are:

filename.ext 3.4 (1/2)	(filename w/ version number)

filename.ext 001	(sequence w/ no # parts)

filename.ext1	(part number appended to filename)


Decoder and Info Headers

Application-specific info headers which the WinVN decoder understands:

part=n

file=abc.def

pfile=xyz.abc

Archive-name: fileident/part0n

section N of uuencode 5.10 of file abcd.efg   by R.E.M.

section n/N   file abcd.efg   [ Wincode v2.x ]

[ Section: n/N  File: abcd.efg  Encoder: Wincode v1.x ]

section n/N abcd.efg  [EnUU 2.1]

abcd.efg    section  n/N   UUXFER ver 2.0 by David M. Read

POST V2.0.0 abcd.efg (Part n/N)

Also, WinVN currently supports a limited subset of the MIME standard headers:

name=abcd.efg

number=n

total=N

Content-Transfer-Encoding:

boundary=


Encoding Concepts

When Internet mail and news is sent thru the collection of machines that make up the Usenet, uncontrolled binary data in a file could confuse a number of network gateways  For this reason, all binary files transmitted must be converted (encoded) into a subset of the ASCII language that can be safely passed thru the variety of devices on the Usenet.  The most common style of encoding is 3-to-4 encoding where three 8-bit bytes are "spread" into four 6 bit bytes (each with the two high order bits set to zero).  A 6-bit byte conveniently can be mapped to a 64-character subset of ASCII.  Common encodings are UU and XX, which are identical accept for their choice of ASCII mappings (UU is all upper-case).  Users sometimes create their own encoding tables (list of 64 characters to use).  In each of these, the encoded file begins with the word 'begin' and ends with the word ' 'end'.  Base-64 is a somewhat newer 3-to-4 encoding scheme, used in the MIME standard, which has some advantages over UU and XX encoding - it does not use "begin" and " end".


Status Windows

There are two types of status windows in WinVN:

Block Status Window

This is a small status window which is displayed during encoding, sending news, sending SMTP mail, and decoding,  This window shows you the byte and line count and activity status of the current operation (i.e. how much has been sent, how much has been encoded, how much has been decoded, etc).  This window can be configured to stay "Always on top" in Configure Decoding, or by checking the "Always on top" option from the status window's Alt-space system menu.

Decoding Status Window

This is a window created during decoding operations to show the running status of decoding.  If the Verbose Status Windows option is checked, one Decoding Status Window will be displayed for each binary decoded.  This window shows detailed status of the decoding progress for the associated binary file (i.e. part sequencing, etc).  When the Verbose Status Windows option is not selected, only one Decoding Status Window will be opened, and only a simple message will be shown identifying the start and completion of each binary decoded.

Note that you can close all open non-busy status windows from the main windows Window Menu.


Toolbars

Toolbars are included in the main group-list window, group article-list windows,and article view windows.  The toolbar provides an alternate method for selecting options which are otherwise available from the window menu.

If you find it difficult to ascertain the functionality of a toolbar button from its picture, you may obtain a text descriiption of the button by placing the mouse cursor over the button, left clicking without releasing .  While you hold down the mouse button, a text description will be shown in the status bar at the bottom of the window.  When you are finished reading the message, you can either release the mouse button to invoke the toolbar button, or move the mouse cursor away from the button and release.


Reading News

To read news, choose an interesting newsgroup from the main group-list window and double-click on it.  A group article-list window will be opened.  If there are more articles in this group than you have specified as your maximum-retrieve threshold (See Configure Article-List),  then you will be prompted for the number of articles headers you wish to retrieve.

Wait for a moment while the article-list for your selected newsgroup is retrieved.  Now you will see a list of article lines.  For each article, you see the article number the author, date, and subject.  Choose an article with an interesting subject, and double-click on it. An article view window will be opened.

Wait for a moment while the article is retrieved.  Now you can read the article.  If it appears to contain encoded data which you are interested in, you can decode it by selecting Decode from the Article File menu or from the toolbar.  You can save the contents of the article by selecting Save or Save As... from the Article File menu or from the toolbar.  To reply to the author of the message by mail, select Compose Mail from the Respond menu or toolbar.  To post a followup to the newsgroup, select Followup from the Respond menu or toolbar.. To forward the article to an E-mail address, select Forward from the Respond menu or toolbar.

Now return to the group-list. To compose a new article, select the New Article option from the Articles menu or toolbar.  If you see a group of articles which appear to be a multipart encoded message (i.e. with subjects like "fun.zip 1/2" and "fun.zip 2/2"), select both articles (for selection options, see Configure Article-List), and choose Decode Selected Articles from the Articles menu or toolbar.  See Decoding.


Group Filter

A group filter allows you to specify using simple expressions (see below) which groups you wish to retrieve from the server.  Note that this does not speed up the group retrieval process, as WinVN must still retrieve each group from your new server, then compare the group with your filter.  You might use a group filter, for example, to prevent offensive, or undesirable groups from being shown to you, or simply to reduce the size of your group list by filtering out "the junk".

You may install a group filter by modifying the WINVN.INI file.

In the [Group List] section:

EnableGroupFilter=1

GroupFilter=exp|exp|exp

If EnableGroupFilter=0, group filtering is disabled, and all news server groups will be retrieved.  This is equivalent to setting GroupFilter=*

A GroupFilter expression is as follows:

'*' will match any string of characters.

'fun*' matches words beginning with 'fun'

'*ing' matches words ending in 'ing'

'*windows*' matches words containing 'windows'

'!' at the beginning of the expression negates it

Negated expressions should appear before non-negated expressions

Multiple expressions are separated by '|' (vertical bar character). Expressions are matched left-to-right, so more specific expressions should be listed in the GroupFilter before more general expressions.

WinVN compares each group during group-list retrieval with the expressions in the GroupFilter.  Only groups which match the filter will be added to your group list.

Example group filters:

GroupFilter=comp.*|sci.*

Matches only groups in the comp and sci categories.

GroupFilter=!alt.tv*|!alt.stupidity|alt.*

Matches all groups in the alt category except the alt.tv groups, and alt.stupidity.

GroupFilter=!*sports*|!alt.fan.*|*

Ignores any groups containing the word 'sports', and groups in the alt.fan category.  Note that if you did not include the trailing general '*' expression, this filter would match no groups, thus filtering all  groups and leaving you with an empty group list.


Usenet News

The Usenet News, or Netnews, system is a kind of distributed bulletin board system run on thousands of computers world-wide.  Users of Usenet News exchange views and information by writing articles, which are then transmitted automatically amongst the computers in the network.  Once posted, an article can by read by others days, hours, or even minutes later, depending upon their computer's type of network link to Usenet.

Articles are organized by topic area into newsgroups, of which there are currently over 10,000.


Overview of WinVN

WinVN is a Microsoft Windows and Windows NT-based news reader.  Like other news readers, it can be used to select, view, and write Usenet News  articles.  WinVN can also be used to send (but not receive) electronic mail messages.

WinVN offers a more visual approach to Usenet News than traditional text-based news readers, allowing you to easily navigate amongst newsgroups and articles via its point-and-click interface.

In normal operation, WinVN displays three types of windows:  the main group-list window, which displays a list of all newsgroups; one or more group article-list windows, each of which displays a list of the articles in a newsgroup; and one or more article windows, which each displays an article.  Double-clicking on a newsgroup or article name causes that item to be displayed in a separate window.

When you want to write an article, WinVN opens a composition window for that purpose.  See Posting an Article.  Similarly, when you want to write an electronic mail message, WinVN either opens a MAPI (Microsoft Mail) editor session or opens a composition window to accept your text.  See Mailing a Message.

WinVN offers a very flexible, customizable newsreading environment.  See Config Menu Commands.


History of WinVN

WinVN began at home as an own-time project by Mark Riordan, a systems programmer at Michigan State University.  Serious development of WinVN began in September 1989 and continued in fits and starts.  A Macintosh version was developed, but it is no longer in sync with the latest Windows version. The recent release of a number of good Macintosh news readers stopped the development of a version of WinVN for the Mac. The MS Windows based WinVN program and its source code were placed in the public domain in 1991.

In 1992, Sam Rushing and Jim Dumoulin, of the NASA/Kennedy Space Center Information Systems Branch, selected WinVN as a good candidate for future development as part of the Payload Data Management System (PDMS-II) project.  After contacting Mark Riordan, NASA agreed to make extensive enhancements to WinVN, coordinate a public domain Internet development effort to extend its features, and to serve as the overall integrator for future versions of WinVN.  Sam Rushing reworked WinVN to support the emerging Windows TCP/IP Sockets standard (Winsock), revamped the user interface and added support for threading and XOVER.

In July 1993, John Cooper approached the WinVN team with a number of bug fixes and enhancement ideas.  John's work soon evolved into a broad restructuring of the WinVN interface and communication engine.  John also implemented a series of new advanced features including MIME attachments, intelligent integrated decoding, and a flexible customizable interface.

Over the years, many other people, in a truly international effort spanning 4 continents, have contributed their own time and energy to the success of WinVN.

See List of Contributors.


List of Contributors

Here is a partial list of those who have contributed to the development of WinVN.  (We are working on compiling a better list.)

Original Author:

Mark Riordan     	mrr@scss3.cl.msu.edu

Major Authors/System Integrators:

Sam Rushing	rushing@titan.ksc.nasa.gov

Jim Dumoulin	dumoulin@titan.ksc.nasa.gov

John S. Cooper	 jcooper@netcom.com

Contributing Authors:

Matt Bretherton	MBretherton@cmutual.com.au

Jody Glasser	jglas@tdycont.com

Conor Nolan	cnolan@tcd.ie

Michael Finken	finken@conware.de

Harvey Brydon	brydon@tulsa.dowell.slb.com

Don Gardener	gardnerd@keystone.ksc.nasa.gov

Masaki Ishido	ishidou@yhp.hp.com

Michael Downs	mdowns@eos.arc.nasa.gov

Jim Martin	jim@noc.rutgers.edu

Roger Pearse	pearse_w_r@bt-web.bt.co.uk

Tom Menshik	tmenshik@hpcvitlm.cv.hp.com

Vince Vielhaber	vev@msen.com


Usenet Etiquette
Usenet Etiquette ("Netiquette")

The ease of posting Usenet News articles causes many inappropriate articles to be sent to the network.  An article can be inappropriate if it:

--	Is devoid of useful information or ideas.

--	Is sent to inappropriate newsgroup(s).

--	Is really intended for a particular individual, rather than the entire Usenet community.

--	Contains rude or insulting remarks.

Please compose your articles thoughtfully.  Consider sending an electronic mail message rather than posting an article, if appropriate.

Be aware of the fact that many sites must pay long-distance telephone charges to receive your article.  Also be aware of the fact that some of the popular newsgroups have tens of thousands of readers.  10,000 people each reading your article for 20 seconds spend a total of 55 hours reading your article.

At the end of most articles there is usually a small blurb called a signature or sig.  This usually comes from a file in the person's login directory and is appended automatically to the message by the news reader.   Some people get carried away with their signature and place complex ASCII drawings or cute sayings at the bottom of their messages.  These signatures bother most people and it is considered poor "netiquette" to have signatures larger than about 4 lines.  You can create a signature file of your own using any Windows Editor and then attach it to WinVN using the option Config Signature File on the Config menu.  Please remember to save your signature file as plain ASCII text, since vendor dependent binary files (such as Microsoft Word files) are not portable across the entire Internet community.

Many new users wish to test their ability to post before they actually say anything of any interest to anyone.  Don't post test type messages to an active newsgroup.  This will interrupt quite a number of people and is considered poor "netiquette".  There are usually a number of "Test" newsgroups (they usually have the word "TEST" in their name) that can be used to verify that posting from your host will be successful.   Some test newsgroups (like ALT.TEST) have automatic E-Mail responding software.  A post to those groups will cause electronic mail from all over the world to be sent back to you as your post gets forwarded from site to site.

The "Newsgroups:"  field in a composition window isn't limited to just one group.  If a note makes sense to more than one area you can cross-post it to other newsgroups by just separating the newsgroups with a comma in the Newsgroups field.  It is considered poor "netiquette" to cross-post to more than three or four newsgroups.

When posting new articles to News, please remember that News runs on many different hosts and operating systems.  In fact, since WinVN is one of the very few News readers for Microsoft Windows, the majority of posts from the Usenet are viewed by people running non-DOS/Windows operating systems.  Inserting graphics or non ASCII text (such as different fonts, underlining, color changes etc.) in an article will appear as unintelligible garbage to almost everyone else. You can use WinVN to send binary attachments along with your post but exercise judgment and don't flood the Usenet with massive binary attachments.

When responding to articles, use the Follow-up Article option instead of the New Post option.  This will maintain a reference link between your message and the article you were reading at the time of your posting.   People reading your message from other "thread based" news readers, like WinVN, will be able to understand how your message fits into the rest of the conversation. WinVN will automatically "quote" the text of the article you were reading (including a unique Message ID that can be used to locate the original posting) and insert it at the beginning of your post.   Intersperse your comments between the quoted text and delete any large quoted sections that do not pertain to your response.  Someone can always find the original text by clicking on the unique Message ID.  Also, use Message ID's when referring to other articles and never refer to another article by it's article number.   Article Numbers are never the same from system to system so only people reading news on your own local system will know to which article you are referring.

Try to keep your text in a generic format.  Many (if not most) of the people reading Usenet do so from 80 column terminals or from workstations with 80 column terminal windows.  Try to keep your lines of text to less than 80 characters for optimal readability.  If people quote part of your article in a follow-up, each line gets indented a few characters and gets proceeded with a ">".  Thus, standard lines of 75 characters or less are best for later readability.    Also, WinVN allows you to change your viewing font to any font your workstation supports.   Be careful when using proportional style fonts since they allow you to place more characters per line than fixed style fonts.

Most news readers on the Usenet are running on multi-user hosts with system administrators and operating systems that validate logons.  Unfortunately, WinVN runs under MS-DOS which is a single user operating system that doesn't have any concept of a logon.  (WinVN also runs under Windows/NT which does validate logon's.)  Please take special care in configuring your Personal Info and insure that your name and mailing address are valid.  Since most MS-DOS machines cannot receive Internet mail, don't specify your MS-DOS host as your mail address.

See Posting an Article and Mailing a Message.


The NEWSRC File

In order to keep track of your viewing history, WinVN records information about newsgroups in a file named NEWSRC.  This file contains a list of all newsgroups.  For each newsgroup, WinVN records whether it is subscribed and which articles have been seen.

Many UNIX-based news readers record this information in a file named .newsrc.  WinVN uses a similar file format to provide compatibility with these programs.  One extension had to be made to the file format to provide features not found in ordinary UNIX newsreaders.  WinVN NEWSRC files contain in each line a field of the form

sbiggest_art_number

where  biggest_art_number  is the number of the most recent article to appear on the news server.  WinVN uses this information at the beginning of a session to tell you which articles have appeared on the server since your last session.  WinVN does not require this field to be present, so you can transport your UNIX-style .newsrc file to your PC as the filename NEWSRC and WinVN should be able to use it without modification.  Transporting a WinVN NEWSRC back to UNIX would require a simple script to remove the "s" fields.

See Group Menu  Commands. and Invoking WinVN


Bulletin board system
Bulletin board system (BBS)

An electronic system in which users participate in discussions by leaving public messages for each other.  Most BBS's are run on personal computers and are accessible only by dialup modem.  Many have additional features, such as on-line games and a file repository.

Usenet News is not a BBS in the usual sense of the word, but it provides the messaging features of a BBS on a much grander scale than found on any existing BBS.


Usenet

A loosely-organized network of over 200,000 computers worldwide.  These computers are linked in a number of ways, including modem and TCP/IP.  The best known service provided by Usenet is Usenet News.


NNTP

Network News Transport Protocol.  This is the network protocol used by WinVN and most other newsreaders to carry Usenet News information.  There is also a program named wNNTP that implements the NNTP protocol and runs on many news servers.  (The program NNTP has been replaced by the program INN at many sites.)  NNTP is defined in RFC-977.


SMTP

Simple Mail Transfer Protocol.  This is the network protocol used for the exchange of electronic mail messages on the Internet.  SMTP is defined in RFC-821.


MAPI

Microsoft Mail Application Programmers Interface.  Allows communication between WinVN and Microsoft Mail.


ROT13

ROT13 is a very simple encryption mechanism for text.  Imagine the 26 characters of the alphabet on a wheel.  To ROT13 encrypt one character, simply rotate the wheel 13 positions from the original character  position.  To decrypt, turn the wheel another 13 positions.  The purpose of ROT13 is not really encryption, but rather to shield the casual reader from potentially offensive material, or from what people call spoilers - i.e. giving away the end of a movie.


XOVER

XOVER is an  extension to NNTP which dramatically increases performance during article header transfer.  If XOVER is available, WinVN will automatically enable threading.


RFC

Request For Comment.  This is the common forum for presenting proposals for standards and protocols to the Internet community.  RFD's of interest to news/mail enthusiasts include 821 (SMTP), 822 (Mail Messages), 977 (NNTP), 1036 (Usenet Messages), 1341 (MIME).


Article

A message written by a Usenet News user and posted to the network.  Articles are similar to electronic mail messages, but are not private.  They are intended to be seen by potentially hundreds of thousands of people.  Also called "postings".


Newsgroup

A collection of articles on a given topic.  When you write an article, you specify to which group or groups it should be sent.

Each newsgroup has a hierarchical name which suggests the topic of that group.  Names consist of several words separated by periods.  The first word in the newsgroup name states the general category covered by that group, the second, a subcategory of that general category, and so on.

For instance, the newsgroups sci.chem and sci.math are scientifically-oriented groups which are dedicated to chemistry and mathematics, respectively.  soc.culture.indian is sociologically-oriented group devoted to the culture of India, and so on.


News reader

A computer program through which you interact with the Usenet News system.  News readers allow you to select and read articles written by others, and to write and post articles of your own.

A number of news readers have been written over the years, many of them for computers running the UNIX operating system.  The best-known news readers are probably rn, nn, tin, and xrn.


Posting

The act of sending an article to the Usenet network, to be seen by potentially hundreds of thousands of individuals.  Also, a synonym for "article".


Header

A series of lines at the beginning of an article or electronic mail message that contain such information as the article's or message's author, its subject, its date and time of transmission, and so on.  The header is separated from the actual text of the article or message by a blank line.


Electronic mail message

A message sent privately to one or more explicitly-named individuals.  Electronic mail is not provided by Usenet News per se; electronic mail messages are not the same as news articles.  However, many news readers provide the capability of sending (but usually not receiving) electronic mail because it is often desirable to respond privately to an article.


News server

A computer that runs special software to exchange news articles with other computers in the Usenet network, and makes these articles available to local users.  News readers require access to a news server, but they do not require you to have an account on a news server.


Definition

A type of hypertext link in Microsoft Help.  A definition is a (usually) brief description of a term.  Definitions appear when you press and hold the mouse button on a term that appears in Help as green text marked with a dotted underline.

Some definitions contain hypertext links, because they are also available as cross-references.  It is usually possible to reference a definition as a cross-reference via the Help Search button.


Cross Reference

A type of hypertext link in Microsoft Help.  A cross reference is a topic that appears in the Help window when you click on a term that appears in Help as green solid underlined text.


Subscribing (concept)

"Subscribing" to a newsgroup is the act of marking that group as one in which you are interested and which you would like to track.  The term "Subscribing" is misleading, as you are not actually notifying anyone of your interest in the group - it is a purely local and personal distinction that a particular newsgroup is one that you are interested in.

Newsgroups to which you do not subscribe all called "unsubscribed".  WinVN allows you to hide unsubscribed newsgroups so that they are not listed in the main group-list window.  You can make your newsgroup list more manageable by subscribing to the groups you are interested in, and hiding the unsubscribed groups.  See Configure Group-List.


Signature

A short piece of text appended to a posting or mail message typically describing the author and his/her interests and affiliation.  It's considered bad form for the signature to be more than four lines.  See Usenet Etiquette.


WINVN.INI

WinVN saves its configuration information in a file named WINVN.INI.  By default, WinVN searches for this file in the current directory when it is launched.  However, its location can be specified in other ways. The curious may wish to examine this file with a text editor. See Invoking WinVN.   If WINVN.INI doesn't exist, WinVN will create one when it's run.


Followup

An article that is posted to the network in response to another, earlier article.  When you are creating a followup article, it's better to use WinVN's Followup menu command than to create a brand new article with the same title.  The reason is that WinVN inserts a "References:" header line in the article which is used by some newsreaders to gather together related articles.


MIME

Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions - an international standard for the exchange of text and binary files in Internet messages.  It is presented in Internet Standard RFC-1341 by Nathaniel Borenstein and Ned Freed, June 1992.


FAQ

FAQ is an acronym for "Frequently Asked Questions".  A FAQ is typically a text on one subject organized as a list of common questions related to the subject and the answers.  FAQ's on many subjects are frequently posted to the newsgroup news.answers.  The WinVN FAQ can be found at the same location as the WinVN files.


TZ Environment Variable

If you are running Windows 3.x, the TZ environment variable must be set  for your messages to be time stamped correctly.  See Setting the TZ Environment Variable


Article Number

For each article in a group article-list window, an article number is shown.  This is the number used by your news server to track the article.  This number is local to your news server only.  This number is not a meaningful identifier outside of your news server.  If you need a globally (Internet-wide) unique identifier for an article, use its message ID.


Message ID

Every news and mail message sent over the Internet has an absolutely unique message identifier.  The identifier is contained inside angle brackets and typically looks something like <uniquenum@full.domain.host>.  i.e. <91028938183.bba3@titan.ksc.nasa.gov>.


Threads

A way of organizing and displaying the sequence of articles that make up a conversation.  The News protocol and many news readers have built-in support for this mode of operation.  WinVN has direct support for threading if you have the "Compute Threads" option enabled from Config Article-List.  You can also use "poor man's threading" by moving  to the next article on the same subject with the "Find Next Article Same Subject" menu command.   There is also a hypertext support of accessing news reference headers.  You can click the mouse on a news reference header and WinVN will fetch that article and display it for you.


Winsock

Winsock is the Microsoft Windows TCP/IP sockets programming interface. The Windows Sockets Specification is intended to provide a single API to which application developers can program and multiple network software vendors can conform.  WinVN requires a Winsock DLL (supplied by your TCP/IP software).  See Installing WinVN.


GWINSOCK.DLL

GWINSOCK.DLL is WinVN's interface to Winsock..  This interface was developed to allow WinVN to also work with DLL's that predate the Winsock specification (such as the WSOCKETS.DLL used in Microsoft LAN manager 2.1a and DEC Pathworks 4.1) and also to allow experimentation with other non-sockets based networking transports.  There is an alternate version of the DLL, for use in situations in which GWINSOCK.DLL performs poorly,  called GENASYNC.DLL.  For more information, see Installing WinVN.


Fragmentation of the newsrc file

WinVN in particular and threaded news readers in general have always had a problem with fragmentation of the newsrc file.  Since the newsrc file keeps track of "seen" articles as a list of ranges (ie:  1-4,6,10-12,etc..) this leads to a compact storage of "seen articles" only if you display your articles sorted by article number.   If you sort via threads (the default way most people use WinVN), then the list of ranges can quickly get into the 100's.  Marking of crossposted articles only increases this fragmentation problem.   This is why crossposting of non-subscribed groups is an option.


License
License to use WinVN

The authors of WinVN have placed WinVN in the public domain.  This means you can use it free of charge for any purpose you like, with no conditions being placed on its use by us.  The source code is also available free of charge and licensing requirements from the same places as the executables.

You have our permission to modify, redistribute, hoard, or even sell WinVN in its executable or source form.  You don't have to pay us anything.  If you do sell WinVN, though, we'd appreciate it if you'd provide your own support.  The support load for WinVN is already quite substantial, and the WinVN developers work as unpaid volunteers (except in the case of supporting their own in-house users).

WinVN, and the information in these help files are subject to change without notice and should not be construed as a commitment by NASA, Kennedy Space Center or any of the Authors to provide support for this product.  NASA and the Authors assume no liability for any errors that may appear in either this documentation or the WinVN product.


Getting a Copy of WinVN

WinVN is distributed via anonymous FTP from the hosts ftp.ksc.nasa.gov  and  ripem.msu.edu.  The definitive version is always at  ksc.  Copies of WinVN can often be found at other sites, but they are sometimes badly out-of-date.  (The  ripem  site  tends to lag behind  ksc  by a day or so.)

Both source code and binaries for various platforms are distributed. WinVN binaries are available for Windows 3.x, and Windows NT on Intel and Alpha AXP machines.  Distributions are in the form of .ZIP files. As of this writing, WinVN source code distributions have file names starting with WINVNSRC, and binary distributions for have names starting with WINVN. The previous few versions of WinVN are always available at ksc. The latest version is always version with the most recent date.   Also included at the ksc FTP site are the FAQ, and the documentation.

Be sure to use binary mode FTP to do the transfer.

Here is a sample FTP session.  User-typed entries are in bold.

$ ftp ftp.ksc.nasa.gov

Connected to ftp.ksc.nasa.gov.

220 titan04.ksc.nasa.gov FTP server (Version wu-2.4(1) Wed Jan 18 18:06:58 EST 1

995) ready.

Name (ftp.ksc.nasa.gov:vev): anonymous

331 Guest login ok, send your complete e-mail address as password.

Password: fred@abc.com

230-

230-                 Welcome to FTP.KSC.NASA.GOV

230-          (Formerly the "World's Slowest FTP Site")

230-

230-      A service of NASA - Kennedy Space Center, Florida

230-          The local time is Thu May  4 06:58:48 1995

230-             You are user 15 out of 100 possible.

230-

230-    Please send mail to dumoulin@titan.ksc.nasa.gov if you

230-    experience any problems.

230-

230-    Welcome, user from abc.com!

230-

230-

230 Guest login ok, access restrictions apply.

Remote system type is UNIX.

Using binary mode to transfer files.

ftp> cd /pub/winvn/win3

250 CWD command successful.

ftp> ls

200 PORT command successful.

150 Opening ASCII mode data connection for /bin/ls.

total 1779

drwxrwxr-x   2 23       50          1536 Dec 14 18:29 old

-rw-rw-r--   1 23       50        222480 Dec 14 08:39 wv16_93_09.zip

-rw-rw-r--   1 23       50        261784 Dec 20 08:52 wv16_93_10.zip

-rw-rw-r--   1 23       50        261848 Jan  9 16:18 wv16_93_11.zip

-rw-rw-r--   1 23       50            73 Feb  9 00:39 wv16_93_13.txt

-rw-rw-r--   1 23       50        271529 Feb 14 16:26 wv16_93_14.zip

-rw-rw-r--   1 20       0         273390 Mar 28 21:04 wv16_99_02.zip

-rw-rw-r--   1 20       0         267967 Apr 21 22:07 wv16_99_03.zip

226 Transfer complete.

ftp> get wv16_99_03.zip

local: wv16_99_03.zip remote: wv16_99_03.zip

200 PORT command successful.

150 Opening BINARY mode data connection for wv16_99_03.zip (267967 bytes).

226 Transfer complete.

267967 bytes received in 7.2 seconds (36 Kbytes/s)

ftp> bye

221 Goodbye.

$


Network Menu Commands

The network menu controls the communication between WinVN and the news server.

Connect to Server

Disconnect from Server

Reconnect to Server

Reset Server Protocol

Quit without Saving

Mail Logout

Exit


Connect to Server

Starts a network connection between your workstation and your news server.  Use this command if you have the Connect at Startup option disabled under the Config Menu, or any time you are not connected to the server. This option is also available from the toolbar.


Disconnect from Server

Terminates the network connection to your news server without exiting WinVN. This option is also available from the toolbar.


Reconnect to Server

Use this command to disconnect, then reconnect to your news server.  This can be useful to abort an otherwise uninterruptible communications process.


Mail Logout

Manually logs out of a network-based mail system (such as Microsoft Mail) without exiting WinVN.  This can save both local and network resources if you are sure you won't be needing to send mail for a while.  If you are logged out from your mail system and wish to forward an article via mail, WinVN will force another mail login if necessary.  This option is only available if your mail transport is MAPI.  See Configure Communications.


Reset Server Protocol

Resets WinVN's idea of the status of the session with the news server, aborting any outstanding requests.  This command is used to work around problems with WinVN, your news server, or your network. This option is also available from the toolbar.


Quit without Saving

Terminates WinVN without updating the NEWSRC file.  When you use this option, WinVN's idea of which articles you have seen and to what groups you are subscribed will revert to the status at the beginning of the session.  In other words, WinVN will forget the activity in this session.


Exit

Terminates WinVN, and writes of record of which articles you have seen, and to which you have subscribed to the NEWSRC file. This option is also available from the toolbar.


Group Menu Commands

The group menu contains all the functions associated with finding, selecting, subscribing to and unsubscribing from the newsgroups.

Find...

Find Next

Subscribe Selected Groups

Unsubscribe Selected Groups

Move Selected Groups to Top

Deselect All

Save NEWSRC File


Find and find next are in the file findnext.rtf


Subscribe Selected Groups

Subscribes to the currently-selected newsgroups.  See Subscribing to Newsgroups.


Unsubscribe Selected Groups

Unsubscribes from the currently-selected newsgroups.  See  Subscribing to Newsgroups.


Move Selected Groups to Top

Subscribes to the currently-selected newsgroups if they are not already subscribed, and moves them to the very top of the newsgroup list.   See Subscribing to Newsgroups.


Deselect All

Clears all newsgroups in the main window, so that no newsgroups are currently selected.


Save NewsRC File

Write current list of newsgroups, newsgroups subscribed to and an index of articles read to the NEWSRC file.


Utilities Menu Commands

The utility menu contains the functions for encoding and decoding files, creating and sending new articles and electronic mail.

New Article

Compose Mail

Batch Send

Posts

Mails

Decode a File

Encode a File


New Article

Creates a Composition Window, in which you can create a new article that is not a follow-up to an existing article. This option is also available from the toolbar.


Compose Mail

Allows you to send Electronic mail directly from within WinVN.  The type of mail system that WinVN will use will be determined by the setting of the Mail Transport option on the Configure Confirmations menu..  If SMTP, creates a Composition Window, in which you can create a new electronic mail message. This option is also available from the toolbar.


Batch Send

Performs "send" operations on a group of open windows.  See Batch Submenu Commands.


Decode a File

Decode the contents of an encoded file.  See Decoding. The file may contain multiple saved mail/news articles, spanning multiple logical encoded files.


Encode a File

Encode a file and store the results in a file.  See Encode a File. To attach a binary file to a composition, select Attach from the composition menu  of a composition window.


Batch Submenu Commands

Send Posts

Send Mails


Send Posts

Sends all postings in open Composition windows.


Send Mails

Sends all electronic mail messages in open Composition windows.


Config Menu Commands

Before you use WinVN to read news, you must give it the information it needs to contact the news server, send electronic mail, and so on.   In addition, you can customize WinVN's colors, fonts, and behavior.

All configuration information is written to the WINVN.INI file.

Configure Communications...

Configure Personal Info...

Configure Logging...

Configure Smart Filer...

Configure Confirmations...

Configure Group List...

Configure Article List...

Configure Article...

Configure Compositions...

Configure Attachments...

Configure Decoding...

Configure Fonts

Configure Color

Save Configuration


Configure Communications...

Opens a dialog box allowing you to select communications/networking options.

WinVN is a Winsock based TCP/IP application.  You must have networking software loaded on your PC and a Winsock compliant Dynamic Link Library (DLL) in your Windows or Windows System directory.   WinVN makes all calls to Winsock through its generic network interface DLL called GWINSOCK.DLL. See Installing WinVN.

NNTP (News) Server

Fill in the Internet address of a news server.   Obtain this information from your system administrator.

TCP port

Fill in the TCP port designation of the news server program.  Typically this is "nntp".  In the case of some misconfigured TCP/IP software, you may need to type in the value 119, which is almost always the port number used by news servers.  Other values can be used only if your local news server is so configured.

Username & Password

Some NNTP news servers require you to provide an authorizing username and password before they will allow you full access to some or all newsgroups.  If you plan on connecting with such a server, you should fill in the appropriate username and password for the server you have selected.  WinVN stores your password in encrypted form in winvn.ini.  However, be aware that the NNTP AUTHINFO protocol used to authenticate you to the server is quite insecure, so your use of this option may be hazardous.  You should leave the name and password blank if the news server does not require authentication - if you have specify a name and password, and the server does not require it, your connection will most likely be refused.

Connect at startup

When selected, WinVN will connect to your news server as soon as WinVN starts,  When deselected, WinVN will not connect at startup, and you will need to manually connect.

Save Password

When selected, the password entered will be saved (encrypted) in the WinVN configuration file.  If deselected, WinVN will not save your password.

SMTP (Mail) Server

Fill in the Internet address of an SMTP mail server if you plan on using TCP/IP mail from within WinVN.

Mail Transport

Select one of 4 options used to determine how WinVN will send mail.   The options are:

Disabled	Do not allow outbound mail.

Use SMTP	Send mail via the Internet Simple Mail Transport Protocol (SMTP) interface.  WinVN provides the ability to compose mail using the same composition window as used when creating news postings.

Use MAPI	Send mail via Microsoft's Mail Applications Protocol Interface (MAPI).  Use this option if you are using Microsoft Mail at your site.

Auto Select	WinVN will attempt to locate MAPI and use it if available,  If MAPI is not available, it will default to SMTP.

MAPI Demand Logon

If you have the Demand Logon option selected, WinVN will force a MAPI login "upon demand" (when mail is sent) instead of requiring a login instantly when WinVN is started.

See Saving Configuration Information and Authorizing Yourself to the News Server.


Configure Personal Info...

Opens a dialog box allowing you to specify personal information. This information is used to construct headers for articles and electronic mail messages that you write.

Your name

This is typically your full name.  This will be shown as part of the "From:" header in compositions.

Your email address

This is your email address. This will be shown as part of the "From:" header in compositions.  For example, "From: jcooper@netcom.com (John S. Cooper)"

Reply-to email address

Only enter a Reply-to address if it is different from your email address.  You may do this, for example, if your "official" address is at work, but you would like people to reply to your personal email address.  Note that you can change this at composition time by selecting Show Reply-To Header in Configure Compositions.

Organization name

This is  typically the name of your employer or educational institution.

See Saving Configuration Information.


Configure Group-List...

Opens a dialog box allowing you configure options related to the main group-list window.

Retrieve group list on connect?

When WinVN connects to the news server, it can ask the server for a status list of all the news groups.  This operation can be time-consuming if you have a slow connection.  However, it's useful to know how many new articles and groups there are.

You control whether WinVN requests this information from the server by choosing Yes, No, or Ask.  If you choose Ask, WinVN will always prompt you whenever it connects to the server.

Use shift/control-selections

If checked, you can select groups from the group-list using the standard windows paradigm.  Clicking on one group will select that group and deselect all others.  Control-clicking on a group will select that group, without deselecting any already selected.  Shift-clicking will select all groups between the last group selected (the "anchor") and the group clicked on.

If not checked, you select groups simply by clicking on them.  To deselect a group, click on it again.  You can drag select/deselect by clicking on a group and dragging over other groups.

Show unsubsribed groups

If checked, the group-list main window will show only the subscribed groups; all unsubscribed groups will be hidden.  If not checked, all newsgroups (subscribed and unsubscribed ) are shown. This can also be toggled from the toolbar.

See Saving Configuration Information.


Configure Article-List...

Opens a dialog box allowing you configure options related to group article-list windows.

Article list retrieval

WinVN fetches header information on articles when you view a newsgroup.  Ask if more than... determines how many article headers you are willing to have WinVN automatically fetch from the server.  If the number of articles in a group exceeds this number, WinVN will prompt you with a dialog box before proceeding.  Automatically retrieve latest unread will retrieve all articles in the newsgroup starting with the first unread article. Fetch at least... determines the minimum number of articles WinVN will retrieve in the case when retrieving latest unread, and there are very few unread articles.

New window for each group

If checked, WinVN will attempt to create a new group window for each newsgroup selected from the main window.  If this option is not checked, WinVN will reuse an existing group window to display newly-requested newsgroups.

Use shift/control-selections

If checked, you can select articles from the article-list using the standard windows paradigm.  Clicking on one article will select that article and deselect all others.  Control-clicking on a article will select that article, without deselecting any already selected.  Shift-clicking will select all articles between the last article selected (the "anchor") and the article clicked on.

If not checked, you select articles simply by clicking on them.  To deselect a article, click on it again.  You can drag select/deselect by clicking on a article and dragging over other articles.

Full 'from' name in article list

If checked, WinVN will display the name of each article's author instead of the author's E-mail address.   If WinVN can't find the author's "Full Name", it will use their E-mail address out of the news article's "From" field.  Note that this will only affect newly retrieved newsgroups, as the name is obtained during article-list retrieval.

Compute threads in article list

If checked, WinVN will request additional "references" data for each article in the displayed group.  You can then sort articles by threads. Note that this will only affect newly retrieved newsgroups, as the references are obtained during article-list retrieval.

Show full subject in threads

If checked, WinVN will show the full subject of each article in a thread when sorting the article-list by threads.  If not checked, the subject of each article in the thread after the first article will be replaced by the thread depth indicator.

Save Newsrc on Closing Group

If checked, WinVN will save the newsrc file when you exit the article list window.

Track Seen Subscribed Crosspostings

If checked, WinVN will track articles that have been crossposted to more than one newsgroup and mark them as having been seen in the other subscribed groups.

Track Seen Unsubscribed Crosspostings

If checked, WinVN will track articles that have been crossposted to more than one newsgroup and mark them as having been seen in the other unsubscribed groups.  This selection is made an option by default to protect against excessive fragmentation of the newsrc file.

Thread depth indicator

This is the character which will be used to replace subjects in threads.  Common thread depth characters are '»' and '>'.  A common technique for obtaining a thread depth indicator is to run the Windows Character Map accessory, select the font you use for the article-list (See Config Fonts), and copy the desired character into the clipboard; then you can simply paste this character into to the Thread depth indicator field.

See Saving Configuration Information.


Configure Article...

Opens a dialog box allowing you configure options related to article view windows.

Wrap article text to...

If checked, and a number is specified here, WinVN will wrap article text during retrieval to this number of characters.  This is useful when retrieving articles posted by people who have written their article with very long lines, or (as is sometimes the case due to misconfigured posting software) their article has ended up all on one line with no line breaks).  Note that this will only affect newly retrieved articles, as the lines are wrapped during article retrieval.

Trim headers during article retrieval

If checked, WinVN will trim article headers during retrieval, by ignoring any article headers not included in the following list: Newsgroups, From, Subject, Date, Reply-To, Distribution, Message-Id, Keywords, Summary.  This will clean up incoming articles by removing potentially confusing headers like Path, and X-headers. Note that this will only affect newly retrieved articles, as the headers are trimmed during article retrieval.

New window for each article

If checked, WinVN will attempt to create a new article window for each article selected from the group article-list window.  If this option is not checked, WinVN will reuse an existing article window to display newly-requested articles.

Scroll past headers after retrieval

If checked, WinVN will scroll the article view window past the headers upon completion of article retrieval.

Italicize quotes in article window

If checked, WinVN will italicize quoted text in the article view window.  Quoted text is any line beginning with the '>' quote character.  This is useful in distinguishing the reference text from the response, but may not be very readable with your selected fonts.  See Configuring Fonts.

See Saving Configuration Information.


Configure Composition...

Opens a dialog box allowing you configure options related to compositions and composition windows.

Since From, Reply-To and Organization are not items you will change often, it is recommended that you disable showing these header fields.

Word wrap in composition body text

This sets the default word-wrap setting for the body text of a composition.  Word-wrap can be toggled during composition from the Composition Edit Menu.

Prefill 'Cc:' address in followup postings

With this option set, on follow-up postings the CC field will be automatically set to the original author's email address. (only available for SMTP mail.)

Show from header

If checked, the From  header field will be shown in the header fields of the composition window, allowing you to modify it at send time. Note if this header field is not shown, but you do have a From  set in you Personal options (See Configure Personal Info...), this header will still be sent.

Show organization header

If checked, the Organization  header field will be shown in the header fields of the composition window, allowing you to modify it at send time. Note if this header field is not shown, but you do have an Organization  set in you Personal options (See Configure Personal Info...), this header will still be sent.

Show reply-to header

If checked, the Reply-to  header field will be shown in the header fields of the composition window, allowing you to modify it at send time. Note if this header field is not shown, but you do have a Reply-to  set in you Personal options (See Configure Personal Info...), this header will still be sent.

Show keywords header

If checked, the Keywords header field will be shown in the header fields of the composition window.  If you would like to send a list of Keywords with your articles, check this option.  If this header field is not shown, no Keywords header will be sent (unless this is a reply to a message containing a Keywords  header, in which case the original Keywords  header will be sent).

Show summary header

If checked, the Summary header field will be shown in the header fields of the composition window.  If you would like to send Summary information with your articles, check this option.  If this header field is not shown, no Summary header will be sent.

Show distribution header

If checked, the Distribution header field will be shown in the header fields of the composition window.  If you would like to limit the distribution of your article, check this option.  If this header field is not shown, no Distribution header will be sent (unless this is a reply to a message containing a Distribution header, in which case the original Distribution header will be sent).

Show follow-up to header

If checked, the Follow-up to header field will be shown in the header fields of the composition window.  If you would like to edit the Follow-up to header field, check this option.

Signature file

If Enable is checked and you enter the name of a valid text file, WinVN will read the contents of the text file into each new composition window.  Note that WinVN will always prepend the standard "-- " delimiter (two dashes and a space) on a line before your signature.

Says templates:

These allow you to customize the introductory text which WinVN adds to follow-up and reply messages.  In the template, you may use the following "variables":

%i in the template will be replaced by the original article ID

%d in the template will be replaced by the original article date

%n in the template will be replaced by the original author's full name

%a in the template will be replaced by the original author's E-mail address

use %% in the template if you need a literal percent sign

For example, a common Follow-up says template is:

In article %i, %a (%n) says...

and a common Reply template is:

In article %i, you say...

See Saving Configuration Information.


Configure Attachments...

Opens a dialog box allowing you configure options related to attachments.

Article Split Length

This option determines how large an individual posting is allowed to grow before it is split into a multi-part posting.   Posting extremely large files as a single Usenet post will break some news sites and is considered good "netiquette" to break the post into multiple parts.  If you are posting with large attachments it is recommended you set this value to less than 64,000 however you can disable article-splitting by setting this option to None.

Start attachments in new article by default

This checkbox sets the default for attachments, which you can then override in the Attach dialog.

Default Encoding Type

This checkbox sets the default for attachments, which you can then override in the Attach dialog.

Custom Encoding Table

Specifies a custom table of exactly 64 unique characters for use with the Custom Encoding Type.  See Custom Encoding Tables

Subject Line Template For Multi-Part Send

The Subject Line Template allows you to customize a detailed subject line for a multi-part send.   A text string can be entered and interspersed with the symbols %s, %f, %p or %t:

%s in the template will be replaced with original subject line

%f will insert the filename of an attachment (or the words "N attachments" where N is a number greater than one)

%p is the part number of a multi-part message

%0p is the part number of a multi-part message, prepended with zeros to match the length of the total number of parts

%t is the total number of parts transmitted.

use %% in the template if you need a literal percent sign

WinVN defaults to the following Subject Template:

%s - %f [%0p/%t]

For the 5th part of a 12 part send with an original subject called "Testing " and an attached file called "aconfig.bmp", this would produce the subject line:  "Testing - aconfig.bmp [05/12].

For the 1st part of a 7 part send, with an original subject of "Hello", and 4 attachments, this would produce the subject line: "Hello - 4 attachments [1/7]"

See MIME Configuration and  Saving Configuration Information.


Configure MIME...
Configure MIME Section of Attachment Preferences

Opens a dialog box allowing you configure options related to Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME) in attachments.

Generate MIME headers

If checked, MIME headers will be generated when sending compositions.

Enable MIME usage suggestions

If checked, WinVN will prompt you if it thinks you may be doing something inappropriate with MIME.  For example, using Base64 encoding without MIME, and using non-Base64 encoding with MIME are not recommended, but you can do both if you like.

Default Content Type

This allows you to specify the default MIME content type which will be used for an attachment if none can automatically be determined by the attachment file name extension.  For example, an attachment file name "image.gif" will automatically be recognized as type "Image/GIF", but a file name "foo.bar" will not be recognized, and will use the content you specify here..

MIME Boundary

Specifies the text string to be used as the boundary multiple attachments in a single article.

See Saving Configuration Information.


Custom Encoding Tables

To create your own encoding table, choose exactly 64 unique ASCII characters (i.e.: no character can be used more than once).   Enter these in the Custom Encoding Table section of  Configure Attachments....

When using custom encoding tables, a "table" line will be added, followed by two 32 character lines representing your custom table.  The standard "begin" and encoded data will follow.

Custom Encoding Tables are discouraged in the MIME standard and are only needed when an attachment is failing to pass through a particular gateway when using Base64, UU or XX encoding, or if you are particularly eccentric.

Be warned that not all decoders support custom-tables, so the further you deviate from common encoding standards, the less likely that the general population will be able to decode your attachments.


Configure Decoding...

Opens a dialog box allowing you configure options related to decoding.

Block coding status window always on top

When decoding, a small block coding status window will be displayed.  If this option is checked, the status window will "float" above all other windows.  This option can also be selected while a coding status window is open, by checking the "Always on top" option from the status window's Alt-space system menu.

Verbose decoding status windows

If checked, one status window will be displayed for each binary decoded.  This window shows detailed status of the decoding progress for each file.  If not checked, there is only one thread status window and only a simple message identifying the start and completion of each binary thread decoded.  Verbose status windows are useful if attempting to determine a decoding problem, but should typically be left disabled.

Auto-minimize decoding status windows

If checked, the status windows will minimize when decoding.

Execute decoded files

If checked, decoded files will be executed on decode completion.  This option relies on your appropriate use of the Windows association lists, configured by the Associate option in the Windows File Manager.

Keep current article header visible

If checked, as each article decode starts during decoding the selected articles, the group article-list will scroll if necessary to ensure that the article header is visible.  This option is disabled if this is a single-file decode.

Include open articles in decodes

If checked, WinVN will decode any already-retrieved open articles, in addition to the articles selected for this decode.  For example, if you have retrieved the 1st part of a 10 part encoded file in order to read its description, and decide you would like to decode this file, you can select all the article parts in the group article-list and initiate the decode.  The part 1 you have already retrieved will be decoded first, and then the other 9 parts will be retrieved and decoded.  Note this option is disabled if no article windows are open.

Use dumb decode

This option should only be used if all other attempts at decoding articles fail.  If checked, WinVN will not attempt to be smart about piecing together out-of-order or split-up articles during decodes.  In other words, when decoding a multi-part article using Dumb Decode, the articles must be in strict order, with no mixing of separate logical files.  For more information on when Dumb Decode may be appropriate, see Decoding Concepts.

See Saving Configuration Information.


Configure Confirmations

Opens a dialog box allowing you configure options related to confirmations.

Confirm batch send/close operations

If checked, WinVN will prompt for confirmation before executing batch operations, such as closing all WinVN windows, sending all open Mail windows, etc.

Confirm disconnect

If checked, WinVN will prompt for confirmation upon selecting the Disconnect menu item.

Confirm Use of Reply-To

If checked, WinVN will prompt you for confirmation anytime you reply to a post that has a From: address different than its Reply-To: address.   A number of large sites on the Internet allow their people to send mail directly from computers inside their facility but don't allow responses to come back through the same route.   Those sites typically will use the Reply-To field of a mail message to identify a proper return address.   However, other sites have broken mail software and checking this option will allow you to verify addresses.  You usually won't know what is a proper address so the typical procedure is to use the Reply-To field (if it exists), and if the email bounces, try the From: field.

Confirm save on exit

If checked, WinVN will prompt the user to save the winvn.ini and newsrc files upon exit.  If this options is disabled, WinVN will automatically save these files.

See Saving Configuration Information.


Append saved articles

Checking Append saved articles affects what WinVN does when you attempt to save the contents of an article to an existing file.  If this box is checked, WinVN will append the article to the previous saved file.  Otherwise, it will ask you what to do.  See File Menu Commands.


Configure Logging...

Opens a dialog box allowing you to specify whether all outgoing posts or mail messages should be logged to a local text file.  If you enable these options, you must also specify the file names to which postings or electronic mail messages should be written. mailbox-compatible

See Saving Configuration Information.


Configure Fonts...
Configure Fonts

Activates a submenu which allows you to select the fonts used for the various window types.

WinVN System

This is the font used for the initializing status ("Connecting to news server..."), all status bar text, and the header-entry fields of the composition window.  If you find that with all the desired headers shown in the composition window, the headers take up too much screen space, try reducing the WinVN System Font size.

Group/Article List

This specifies the font used in the main group-list window and the group article-list window

Article Text

This specifies the font used in the article window.

Composition Text

This specifies the font used in the composition window body text

Status Text

This specifies the font used in the decoding status window, the send status and block coding status windows.

Print Text

This specifies the font used in printed articles.  This font and size will be used for the main article text of the printed article.  A slightly larger version of the same font will be used for any subject headings and page titles.


Configure Color

Activates a submenu which allows you to customize the foreground and background colors used by WinVN in each of its windows.

Unsubscribed Group

This is the text color used in the main group-list window for unsubscribed groups.

Subscribed Group

This is the text color used in the main group-list window for subscribed groups.

Unseen Article

This is the text color used in the group article-list window for unseen articles.

Seen Article

This is the text color used in the group article-list window for seen articles.

List Background

This is the background color used in the main group-list window and the group article-list window.

Article Background

This is the background color used in the article window.

Article Text

This is the text color used in the article window.

Status Background

This is the background color used in the status window.

Status Text

This is the text color used in the status window.

True Inverse Selections

If checked, selections in the main group-list window and the group article-list window will be true reverse video (i.e. a selected line will show the text in the window background color, and the selection bar background in the text color).  If not checked, the text color for a selection will be preserved and the selection bar background color will always be black (or gray black would make the text unreadable).

See Saving Configuration Information.


Configure Smart Filer

Opens a dialog box allowing you configure options related to handling of file names and extensions.  This is primarily for file names encountered during decoding, and comes in handy when decoding files which were created on other operating systems (i.e. UNIX) which support very long file names.

Max Name Length

This is maximum length of the portion of a file name before the extension.  In DOS, or Windows 3.x, (or when the FAT file system is being used), this should be 8.  With NTFS or HPFS, this number can be larger.

Maximum Extension Length

This is the maximum length for the extension portion of a filename. In DOS, or Windows 3.x, (or when the FAT file system is being used), this should be 3.

Extension Conversion

Extension conversion allows extensions encountered during decoding which are not appropriate in Windows to be renamed.  For example, you can specify that any time a 'JPEG' file is encountered, rename the extension to 'JPG'.  You can make strange mappings like mapping 'ZIP' to 'FOO' if you so desire.

To add a new extension mapping, enter the Source Extension and the New Extension in the appropriate fields, and click on Add.  To remove an extension mapping, select the mapping in the list, and click on Delete.

On Duplicate Name...

This allows you to specify how WinVN will react if, during a decode, a duplicate file name is encountered.  You have the following options:

Prompt for new file name

Replace extension with number (i.e. sound.wav becomes sound.001)

Preserve extension, prepend number to name (i.e. sound.wav becomes 1sound.wav)

Preserve extension, append number to name (i.e. sound.wav becomes sound1.wav)

On Name or Extension Too Long...

This allows you to specify how WinVN will react if, during a decode, a file name or extension is encountered which is longer than the length limits you have specified.  You have the following options:

Prompt for new file name

Truncate at max name length (i,e, avery-longname.wav becomes avery-lo.wav)

Condense (skip vowels, punctuation) (i.e. avery-longname.wav becomes vrylngnm.wav)

The order of file name handling is as follows:  Extension Conversion occurs first, then Too-Long name, then Too-Long extension, then Duplicate Name.

See Saving Configuration Information.


Save Configuration

Immediately saves your WinVN configuration information to the WINVN.INI file.  Normally, saving of WINVN.INI is done only upon exit from the program.


Saving Configuration Information

When you exit WinVN via the main window's Network/Exit menu command, you are given the option of saving the configuration options you have set during the session.  (The information is saved to WINVN.INI.)  If you haven't changed any configuration options during the session, it doesn't do any harm to save them anyway.

If you change configuration options and want to save them immediately to guard against the computer crashing (yes, this has happened with WinVN!), use the Save Configuration menu command of the main window.


File Menu Commands

Save

Save As...

Print

Print Setup...

Decode Article...

Cancel Article

Preferences...

Exit


Save

Saves the article in this Article Window to a file.  The filename from the most recent Save As... is used.  If no Save As... has been done in this session, Save acts just like Save As....


Save As
Save As...

Brings up a dialog box asking the user for a file name to which the current article should be saved.  The dialog box also contains a check box labeled Append to this file.  If this box is checked, WinVN will write the article to the end of the specified file.  Otherwise, WinVN will overwrite the file with the article.


Print

Prints the article in this Article Window.


Print Setup

Opens the Windows printer setup dialog


Decode Article

Decodes the contents of the displayed article and stores it in a disk file.  This is useful if someone sends a binary picture or executable as an attachment to a news posting.   See Decoding.


Cancel Article

If you are the author, select this and enter an optional Cancel Reason.  Then select SEND and the article will be canceled.


Preferences
Preferences...

Opens the Configure Article dialog.


Exit

Closes article window.


Window Menu Commands

The window menu controls the actions of the individual windows, and allows for saving the individual window positions.

Cascade

Close Sub menu

Minimize Sub menu

Restore All

Save Window Positions


Cascade

Arrange all open WinVN windows so that they overlap.


Close Sub menu

Allows you to close all WinVN windows, or all those of a specific type:

Article windows

Group windows

Status windows

Composition windows

All Windows


Minimize Sub menu

Allows you to minimize all WinVN windows, or all those of a specific type:

Article windows

Group windows

Status windows

Composition windows

All Windows


All Windows

Closes all open WinVN windows


All Windows

Minimizes all open WinVN windows


Restore All

Restores all minimized windows to their open configuration.


Save Window Positions

Saves the current position of the main window, the first open Group windows, and first open Article windows, The next time WinVN runs, it will position newly-created windows of the same type in the same place on your screen.


Help Menu Commands

This menu is for the purpose of displaying the version number of WinVN and accessing the on-line documentation.

Index

Show Version

About


Index

Starts the Help system with WinVN's main Help index.


About
About...

Displays a dialog box containing WinVN credits.


Show Version

Displays a dialog box containing WinVN version information.  Press Enter to dismiss this dialog box.


>  As for the shift-click option, you can turn that on via the

>>  Multi-Select box from WinVN Article or Group list config menu.

>I have version 99.3.  In the Config/Group list, there is a box

>to click for shift-click reference.  That works for the group list.

>i find no such option for the article list.  In particular, I find

>no option called Multi-Select.  Is my version too old?

>

>Paul Johnson

>Dept of Political Science

>University of Kansas

   Your version is fine. The option for the Article list "shift-click"

 is on the Article List Options menu.


From DUMOULIN@TITAN.KSC.NASA.GOVTue May  9 09:17:12 1995

Date: Fri, 5 May 1995 14:16:36 -0400 (EDT)

From: Jim Dumoulin <DUMOULIN@TITAN.KSC.NASA.GOV>

To: vev@conch.aa.msen.com

Cc: DUMOULIN@TITAN.KSC.NASA.GOV

Subject: RE: Online Docs

On Fri, 5 May 1995 10:00:59 -0400 (EDT), Vince Vielhaber <vev@conch.aa.msen.com> writes;

>Is the 78 character thing fixed, and if so, what will cause it to appear?

>

    Yes...in .99-3 I used a variable that contained the fontsize

 of the compose window.  There was a bug from a previous release

 that never set this variable to the composewindow font (so it

 was still setting it to the articlewindow font.  In an older

 lifetime of WinVN, it wasn't possible to set the compose window

 font (the compose window used the article window font).

    I've fixed this in .99-4 so the calculations are now based on

 the correct font.  The message should only come up in 2 cases:

     1.  You enlarge the compose window so that it is greater

         than 78 characters and save the window.   The next

         time you try to post, you'll get a warning about the

         window size before you can start typing.

     2.  You manually resize the window while editing and make

         the compose window size greater than 78 characters.

         Just after you click SEND, if the size is too large,

         you'll get the message.

>Do we want to include an error list in the help file?

>

  I don't think we can hope to get an exhaustive error list

  in the online help.  Idealy, the error messages should be

  descriptive enough when they pop up that you shouldn't need

  to have to go to online help to get further info.  However,

  the E-mail we've gotten is proof that the existing error

  descriptions are not sufficient.  Some common error messages

  could be included online, with perhaps a more detailed list

  in the printed docs.

>It seems that each portion has different formatting and font sizes for

>each entry, so little by little as I encounter them I'm cleaning it up,

>don't know if all that will be cleaned up by 1.0. there's alot of it.

>

>Vince.

                                                     Jim

>

>

>

>

>On Thu, 4 May 1995, Jim Dumoulin wrote:

>

>> On Thu, 4 May 1995 10:17:32 -0400 (EDT),Vince Vielhaber <vev@conch.aa.msen.com>

>> writes:

>> >Ok, first I'm going to assume that one day in the future someone will

>> >enable context sensitive help for the menus (hit F1 on a menu item to

>> >get help on it).  Because of this assumption, I'm going to split the

>> >files into what would make a little more sense; unfortunately there

>> >will be more files, but they'll be *much* easier to maintain.  eg. The

>> >Network pull down will have it's own file; if an item gets changed or

>> >added... the file to change will be easy to find, as will the new

>> >destination (if there is one).  It will be set up so that there will be

>> >an index [of sorts] at the top of the file with each menu item listed,

>> >and each menu item will be a link (making it easier for the context

>> >sensitivity if/when it happens).

>> >

>>    Currently the files are split into a help RTF file for each window

>>  type.  It used to be split into a large number of little files

>>  but that seemed more difficult to maintain.  It doesn't matter

>>  to me but regardless of how many RTF files there are, they still

>>  should get combined into one HLP file.

>>

>> >I also want to represent the button bars, are they planning on changing

>> >before ver 1.0?

>> >

>>   There was one suggestion for a change to one of the button bar

>>  bitmaps.  I havent' looked at the proposed artwork but it was

>>  on the "catchup and exit" icon.  I hope to get to it when I

>>  make another pass thru the .RC file.    It is important, however

>>  that the HLP file doesn't grow trememdously with graphics. (ie

>>  no screen shots of windows or menus).  The HLP file is 100K

>>  now and we download that to every PC on our Lan.  The hardcopy

>>  docs are full of screen shots and the resultant file has grown

>>  to 9mbytes (trimmed down now since we don't store the graphics

>>  in color anymore).  I would have a difficult time supporting

>>  the online help file if it grew much more than 150k.

>>

>> >Since the new ftp server you installed down there, I logged an ftp session

>> >with the new info (out with the VMS in with the UNIX).

>> >

>>   Good...I've been deleting files off of our old VMS site.  Our

>>  logs still show a considerable activity of folks getting old

>>  versions from there.  Even though each directory has a big

>>  README that says to use FTP.KSC.NASA.GOV instead.

>>

>> >If you note any changes/missing items, let me know.  I think I have most

>> >of them from the mailing list, but I may have missed one or two.

>> >

>> >So, does the above sound acceptable??  I'd like to get this ready in

>> >time for 1.0.

>> >

>> >Vince.

>> >

>>    Sounds good.

>>

>>            Jim

>>

>>

>>

>>

>> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

>>    Jim Dumoulin                      INTERNET: DUMOULIN@TITAN.KSC.NASA.GOV

>>    NASA / Payload Operations      SPAN/HEPnet: KSCP00::DUMOULIN

>>    Kennedy Space Center

>>    Florida, USA  32899               "America needs SPACE to grow"

>>

>>

>>

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

   Jim Dumoulin                      INTERNET: DUMOULIN@TITAN.KSC.NASA.GOV

   NASA / Payload Operations      SPAN/HEPnet: KSCP00::DUMOULIN

   Kennedy Space Center

   Florida, USA  32899               "America needs SPACE to grow"


  To cancel an article, you must view the article you wish to cancel.

 If you are the author, the option "Cancel Article" will not be

 greyed out.   You just select that option and enter an optional

 Cancel Reason.  Then click on SEND and the article will be

 canceled.

                                                    Jim

-


>"catch up and exit"...... Saving the newsrc file when exiting each article

>list window now causes significant (bordering on unacceptable) delay ......

>My question is: is there a configuration option to turn off this new behavior

>of saving newsrc each time you exit an article list

>and use the older version method of not saving newsrc when exiting

>the article list via "catchup and exit"?  I've looked for such an option

>in 0.99.2 and have not yet found it.

>

>Thanks for providing a great tool!

>Jim Bourg

>j.w.bourg@att.com

   There is such a configuration option but it's in .99-3 and not .99-2.

  .99-3 is available from FTP.KSC.NASA.GOV.  You will need to grab the

   latest version (just released a few days ago) for this feature/fix.


   Create two seperate icons, one for each provider.   Maintain seperate

 WINVN.INI and NEWSRC files (either by placing them in seperate subdirectories

 or seperate names).  Then use the command line features of WinVN to pass

 these different files to the WinVN executable.  You can do this by hardcoding

 the command line arguments into the Windows Icon.

                                                           Jim

-


Articles Menu Commands

The article menu provides commands for creating, decoding, saving, etc. articles.

New Article

Compose Mail

Update from Server

Save Selected Articles

Decode Selected Articles

Select All Articles

Deselect All Articles

Select Articles Containing String

Mark Selected Articles as Seen

Mark Selected Articles as Unseen

Preferences

Catch Up and Exit

Exit


Update from Server

Update the article display with any new articles that have arrived at the server.   Currently, this does not save any previous headers that may have been fetched but that will be fixed in a future release.


Save Selected Articles

Save all selected articles to a file.  You will be prompted for a file name, and you will be allowed to append to a file if you like.  This option is also available from the toolbar.


Decode Selected Articles

Decode all selected articles.  See Decoding. This option is also available from the toolbar.


Select all Articles

Mark all articles in the newsgroup as selected.


Deselect all Articles

Mark all articles in the newsgroup as not selected.


Select Articles Containing String
Select Articles Containing String...

Selectively mark articles in the newsgroup based on whether its title contains a certain string of characters.  You will be prompted for a search string.


Mark Selected Articles as Seen

Changes the status of all selected articles to indicate that they have been seen.  Individual articles can also be toggled between seen and unseen by single clicking the right mouse button.  See also Using the Mouse in the Group Window and Marking Articles as Read.


Mark Selected Articles as Unseen

Changes the status of all selected articles to indicate that they have not been seen.  Individual articles can also be toggled between seen and unseen by single clicking the right mouse button.  See also Using the Mouse in the Group Window and Marking Articles as Read.


Article Preferences
Preferences...

Opens the Configure Article-List dialog.


Catch Up and Exit
Catch-Up and Exit

Marks all articles in this group as read, and closes this Group Article-List Window. This option is also available from the toolbar.


Exit Article
Exit

Closes this Group Article-List Window. This option is also available from the toolbar.


Sort Menu Commands

This menu allows the user to select one of the various methods for sorting the list of articles .

by Date

by Subject

by # Lines

by Threads (strict)

by Threads/Subject

by Article Number

by Author


Sort by Date

Sorts all article headers by date


Sort by Subject

Sorts all article headers by Subject.  The letters 'Re:' in front of subjects are ignored so that  responses will be sorted near the original subject.


Sort by # Lines

Use this to find out who writes the longest or shortest articles in a given newsgroup.


Sort by Threads (strict)

Organize articles so they are displayed as a base article followed by each response article.   Each response is indented in such a way as to show which article a person was reading when the response was made.  This method of sorting uses only the references header for sorting, software that does not properly preserve the references header can cause broken threads. This option is only available if Threading was enabled when this group article-list was retrieved.  See Configure Article-List.


Sort by Threads (strict)
Sort by Threads/Subject

Organize articles so they are displayed as a base article followed by each response article.  Each response is indented in such a way as to show which article a person was reading when the response was made.  This method of sorting uses both the subject and the references header for the sort.  The drawback to this method is that it's possible to get an unrelated article in a thread because it has the same subject.  This option is only available if Threading was enabled when this group article-list was retrieved.  See Configure Article-List.


Sort by Article Number

Sort articles based on their article number.  This is the order the articles were received by the local server.


Sort by Author

Sort articles based on the E-mail address or name of the article author.


This file pertains to all searching selections.


Search Menu Commands

The search menu provides the user a means for searching for text within the list of articles.

Find...

Find Next


Article Search Menu Commands

The search menu provides the user a means for searching for text within an article.

Find...

Find Next


Find...

Searches the window for a specified text string.  Find opens a dialog box into which you enter the string for which you want to search.  Click on OK to start the search, or Cancel if you decide not to search after all.

If an item is found which contains the specified string, the main window will be scrolled so that the matching item is visible, and it will be marked with a ">".  If no match can be found, WinVN will display a dialog box.

This option is also available from the toolbar.


Find Next

Continues the search started by the previous Find... or Find Next.  The next item containing the previously set string, if any, is displayed if it can be found.  If there has been no previous Find... or Find Next, this behaves as if you had selected Find...  This option is also available from the toolbar.


View Menu Commands

The Next/Prev options are only available if this article's original parent group article-list window is still open.  If you have closed the parent window, or have done an "Update From Server" operation in the parent window since you opened this article, the Next/Prev options will be disabled for this article.

Next Article

Next Unseen

Next with Same Subject

Previous Article

ROT13


Next Article

Causes WinVN to fetch and display the next article in this newsgroup.  If there is no next article, WinVN says so.


Next Unseen

Causes WinVN to fetch and display the next unseen article in this newsgroup.  If there is no next unseen article, WinVN says so.


Next with Same Subject

Causes WinVN to search the subsequent articles in this newsgroup for an article with the same subject as the current article.  (Leading "Re:" notations are ignored.)  If a matching article is found, it is retrieved and displayed in the current Article Window.  Otherwise, WinVN informs you that there are no more articles with that subject.


Previous Article

Causes WinVN to fetch and display the previous article in this newsgroup.  If there is no previous  article, WinVN says so.


ROT13

Redisplays the text of the article using ROT13


Respond Menu Commands

Use this menu to respond to articles.

Followup Article

Followup Mail

Forward Article


Followup Article

Creates a Composition Window with the Newsgroups and Subject headers and text to compose an article that responds to the article in the current Article Window.  Additionally, the Cc field will be prefilled with the original author's address, if Prefill Cc Address is enabled.  See Configure Composition and Posting an Article.


Followup Mail

Creates a Composition Window with the To and Subject  headers and text to compose an electronic mail message to the author of  the current article.  See Mailing a Message.


Forward Article

Creates a Composition Window with the text of the current article copied.  See Mailing a Message.


The first one is from Article Window.

The second one is from the Composition Window


Article Edit Menu Commands
Edit Menu Commands

Once article retrieval is complete, text can be selected by click-dragging the mouse.  A quick method for copying selected text to the clipboard is to simply press the right mouse button.

Copy

Deselect All

Select All


Edit Menu Commands

All edit commands except Word Wrap affect whichever composition control is currently active (i.e. if the cursor is in the Subject field, the edit options will affect the text in the Subject field).  Word Wrap only applies to the main body text.

Undo

Cut

Copy

Paste

Delete

Select All

ROT13

Word Wrap


Copy

Copy the selected text to the clipboard.


Deselect All

Clear current selection.


Select All

Selects all text in the current window.  Generally used just prior to a Copy operation to save the contents of the window to the clipboard.


Undo

Reverses the effects of the most recent change to this window.


Cut

Deletes the selected text and saves it in the clipboard.


Paste

Retrieves the text most recently copied or cut to the clipboard into the current window.  The text is inserted at the current cursor position.


Clear
Delete

Deletes all marked text in the current window.


ROT13

Encrypt the selected text using ROT13


Word Wrap

Check this option to toggle word-wrap in the body-text window.


Main Group-List Window

The main window, initially in the upper left corner of the screen, displays a list of newsgroups.  Double-clicking on a newsgroup name causes WinVN to display a list of subjects of available articles in that newsgroup in a group article-list window.

Clicking on a newsgroup name "selects" that newsgroup and displays it in reverse video (light on dark).  Selecting a newsgroup is useful only for subscribing to it; see Subscribing to Newsgroups.  By default, subscribed groups appear in black; unsubscribed groups appear in blue (See Configure Colors).

The first character of each newsgroup line in the main window gives information about that newsgroup:

space	indicates either that WinVN has no information on the status of this group, or that no new articles have appeared in this group since your last WinVN session.

>	indicates that this newsgroup has been selected as the result of the previous Find operation.

n	indicates that new articles have appeared in this newsgroup since your last WinVN session.

u	indicates there are unread articles in this newsgroup (though no new articles).

Additionally, an estimate   of the number of articles in the group is shown before the group name.  If the number of articles in the group is undetermined (i.e. if you did not retrieve the group-list when you connected to your news server), a '-' is displayed instead of the number.

Network Menu Commands

Group Menu Commands

Utilities Menu Commands

Config Menu Commands

Window Menu Commands

Help Menu Commands


Article Window

An article window displays the text of an article.  The article can optionally be positioned in the scrollable window to the beginning of the article text, with the article header scrolled out of sight.  (See Configure Article).

File Menu Commands

Edit Menu Commands

View Menu Commands

Search Menu Commands

Respond Menu Commands


Group Window
Newsgroup [Article-List] Window

Group windows contain a list of subjects of articles in a given newsgroup.  Double-clicking on the subject of an article causes that article to be retrieved into an article window.  See Using the Mouse in the Group Window.

Group windows initially appear in the upper right area of the screen.  It is possible to have up to four group windows open at any one time.  See Config Menu Commands.

The first character of each subject line in a group window gives information about that article:

space	indicates either that WinVN has no information on the status of this article, or that this article was available in a previous WinVN session and you chose not to view it.

>	indicates that this article has been selected as the result of the previous Find operation.

s	indicates that you have already seen this article.

n	indicates that this article has appeared since your last WinVN session.

The other fields in the window are:

Article Number:	A number used to help a user locate a particular article.  Never refer to this number when responding to an article since the number will most likely differ from server to server.

Article Date:	The date the article was posted to the server.

Author's Name:	The network E-Mail address or name of person posting the article.

Article Size:	The number of lines in the article.

Article Title:	The title of the article.

Articles Menu Commands

Sort Menu Commands

Search Menu Commands