Using Newsgroups

I describe below two ways of reading newsgroups: netscape and tin.

Setting up Navigator for newsgroups

If you are using one of the Math/CS computers (College Hall 444 classroom lab, 439 lab), or if you are using your own computer but have never used your browser (Netscape or Microsoft Internet Explorer) for email, you need to set the computer up as follows.

Netscape 4.0 (Has a stop light symbol on the top symbol bar near the end)
Start netscape. Click on the Netscape Edit menu and select the Preferences... item. Then select the "Mail and Groups" component (left hand side of popup window). Under this component select the Identity option. Now on the right side of the popup window fill in your name and email address in the first two boxes. Next, back on the left, click on the Groups Server option. On the right side, in the Discussion groups server box, enter (no spaces) news.duq.edu and then press the OK button at the bottom left of the window.

Netscape 3.0 (Has a stop sign symbol on the top symbol bar near the end)
Start netscape. Click on the Netscape Options menu and select the "Mail and News Preferences..." item. Under the Identity tab fill in your name and email address (first two boxes). Now click on the Server tab. In the news server box enter news.duq.edu (no spaces). Click OK.

Internet Explorer Sorry, I don't use it... You'll need to do something like what I describe above, but you'll have to hunt around a bit to find the appropriate boxes to fill in.

Now you are ready to subscribe to a newsgroup. For example, let's say you want to subscribe to the newsgroup duq.cosc-445 (one used by my Software Engineering course). It starts with duq to show that it's a Duquense newsgroup. Another interesting set of newsgroups are those starting with comp (computer related), which is a world-wide set of groups.

The instructions for subscribing in Netscape 4.0 and 3.0 and again somewhat different.

Netscape 4.0 From the Communicator menu select Collabra Discussions. The Netscape Message Center window, containing a line with news.duq.edu, should appear. Right click on this line and select Subscribe to Discussion Groups from the popup menu. There will probably be some delay (up to a minute or so) while netscape communicates with news.duq to get the names of all newsgroups served by news.duq. You will then see a long list of news "hierarchies". Expand the duq hierarchy by clicking on the plus sign next to it. Then find the duq.cosc-445 newsgroup and click in the Subscribe column (right of the name). You should see a checkmark appear in the subscribe, indicating you are now "subscribed" to this group. Click OK on the popup window, and you should now see duq.cosc-445 in the newsgroup list of the Message Center window. Double clicking will bring up a window with a list of messages in the group, and double clicking any of these will bring up the associated message body.
Netscape 3.0 From the Windows menu select Netscape News. The Netscape News Window should appear. Again under Options select Show all newsgroups. You will get a long list of new "hierarchies", possibly after some delay. Clicking on the triangle next to a hierarchy shows its subhierarchy. Open up the duq hierarchy and click on the subscribe (green checkmark) column next to cosc-445. If you're running 3.0 under Unix, you may need to enlarge the hierarchy subwindow to see the subscribe column. Just click and drag on the small box at the lower right of the subwindow (cursor will be a plus when you're over the box).

To post to a newsgroup, just go the the window containing the list of messages in the group and press the New Msg button. You will see a composition window. Use it just as you would for composing email and press the Send button when finished. You can add cc's as you would to regular email. Conversely, if you're using netscape to send and email and want to cc the newsgroup, just create an address line with Group: instead of To: and type duq.cosc-445 .

If you find something's that not quite right with these instructions, please email me so that other people won't be as confused as you were!

Using tin

An alternative to using a browser is to run a program called tin, which is a text-based newsreader. Here are some basics about using tin:

First, if you are on a Math/CS system already running Unix, you can start tin up much as you start pine: move the cursor out into the blue portion of the screen, click the right mouse button, and from the Programs menu select tin. This will cause a window to popup, and after a short wait the tin program will begin.

If you are not on a Math/CS system but running from elsewhere, you will first need to telnet to a Math/CS machine. Then at the command prompt type tin. For example, if you telnet to cls108 then after the cls108% prompt you would simply type the word "tin" (no quotes). After a short wait the program will begin.

tin will likely begin by asking you if you want to subscribe to a group or something and give you a list of options [yYnN]. Lowercase responses say that you're answering just this question, uppercase say that you're answering all similar questions the same way. I recommend answering this question (and any others you get until you get to the main tin menu) with capital N.

Finally, you should get to a main tin menu, which will largely be blank with a menu of commands at the bottom of the screen. One of the menu items is ubscribe, which lets you subscribe to a newsgroup of your choice. Type capital S and you'll be prompted for a "regular expression" describing the group(s) you are interested in. Just type in the name of the group, in our example, "duq.cosc-445" (no quotes) and hit Enter. Now you can move the cursor (using the arrow keys, not the mouse) onto this group and hit Enter. You'll now see a list of posts to this group. Move to a title you're interested in and hit Enter. Q gets you out of tin.