Pluto Help
The Original Pluto help files plus extras
This page up to date on: 04 May 2024
FILE: newsgroups-maillists-sources
From: Jonathan DuddingtonSubject: 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.
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.