Pluto Help

The Original Pluto help files plus extras

This page up to date on: 18 Apr 2024
FILE: newsgroups-maillists-sources
From: Jonathan Duddington 
Subject: Newsgroups. MailLists, and Sources
Date: Fri, 04 Jul 1997 18:30
Source: docs


NewsGroup Management
====================

Before fetching or loading any news articles into Pluto, or doing
any NewsGroup management, you should select your news fetcher from
Pluto's  Preferences->News->Transports menu.  This causes Pluto to
read your list of subscribed newsgroups from your news fetcher.

You should add and remove NewsGroups using the NewsGroups option
from Pluto's icon bar menu.

There is no need to use the NewsGroup management features in ANT,
Voyager, Termite, etc.  However, if you do, you must re-select the
transport from Pluto's Preferences->News->Transports  menu. This
makes Pluto read the active newsgroup list to bring it back into
step.

Choose "Lists->Newsgroups" from the icon bar menu.

This allows you to add new newsgroups, remove them, or temporarily
unsubscribe and re-subscribe.  These actions change the active
newsgroups file inside your news fetcher. 

When you add or edit a NewsGroup, you will get the NewsGroup Edit
dialogue.  Select the "Newsgroup" option rather than "Mailing List".

You can specify an Expiry period in days which will take effect if
the Box in which news articles are stored has its "Use NewsGroups
Expiry" option set.

Box: specifies the Box into which newly arrived articles are placed.

Signature: specifies a signature file from the !Pluto.Signatures
directory which will be used as a default when replying to an
article from this newsgroup.



Mailing Lists
=============

If you receive emails from a mailing list, you can set this up to
look like a newsgroup, with articles sorted by their titles.

Look at the To: address in the emails, and take the name which is
before the @ symbol.  For example, the Ovation-Pro mailing list has
the "To:" address of:
   ovationp-l@risc.demon.co.uk

Set up a NewsGroup (using the "NewsGroups" option from the icon bar menu)
for:
   mail.ovationp-l

Set the "Mailing List" option.

Any emails which you receive which are addressed to ovationp-l will
now be put into your news-in box, in a newsgroup called "mail-ovationp-l".

An Expiry period, a Box (folder), and a default Signature can be
specified for each Mailing List, in the same way as for a NewsGroup.

The "Header Only" option does not apply to Mailing Lists. 

The unsubscribe and re-subscribe functions from the NewsGroups List
do not apply to Mailing Lists.



Sources
=======

For general use of Pluto, you do not normally need to manage
Sources.  They are set up automatically when you add NewsGroups,
Mailing Lists, and User Names.

Each article can be given one, and only one, Source identity.

For News articles, this may be  a newsgroup.  For other types of
article, it could be something else.

The Sources are listed by clicking the Sources option in the icon
bar menu. You can add additional Sources to this list.

Setting Newsgroups as Sources
=============================

Before you load News articles, you need to set up the Newsgroups
which are referred to in those articles, into the Sources list.

This is done automatically.  When you select from the Transport menu
in the News->Preferences dialogue, all the newsgroups to which you
are currently subscribed are added to the Sources list if they are
not already present.

Recognising the Source for a News Article
=========================================

When a News article is loaded, it's Source is set to be the first
newsgroup whose name is recognised from the Newsgroups: line in its
internet header.  If the article is cross-posted, it is still given
only this one Source, and it only appears once, in this one
newsgroup, in any Article List window.

The Source field in the Article Viewer window will indicate
additional crossposting newsgroups by adding "+ N" after the Source
name, where N is the number of additional groups.  To see what those
newsgroups are, you can click on the Show Internet Header toggle
(the up/down arrow icon) in the Article Viewer window.

If none of the Newsgroups in the article's internet header are
recognised, then its Source field is left empty, and the name of the
first Newsgroup is put into its Comment field.  You can therefore
look at the comment fields of articles which have no Source, and see
which Newsgroups need to be added to the Sources list.

Unrecognised Newsgroups
=======================

The Source is stored with each article as a single number.  So it's
important not to delete Newsgroups or other Sources from the Sources
list if there are still articles which use them.  An attempt to
delete such a Source will give a message indicating how many
articles are using it, and an option to re-assign those articles to
a different source before deleting it.

If an article has a source number which no longer corresponds to an
entry in the Sources list, that will be displayed as a question mark
followed by the source number.  This indicates that somehow the
source name has been deleted while still being used by articles.
<= Help Index
Please note that Pluto is supplied with a more comprehensive and up-to-date StrongHelp manual than these text files. Select Help… in Pluto’s iconbar menu.