| The KNode manual |
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Copyright © 2000, 2001, 2002 Stephan Johach, Thomas Schütz
KNode is an easy-to-use newsreader.
Table of Contents
| Introduction |
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KNode is an easy-to-use, convenient newsreader. It is intended to allow even newbies to use a newsreader under KDE. KNode also offers advanced features appealing to experienced users. KNode is a online-reader but could work together with a newsserver like leafnode as an offline-reader.
As of version 0.4 KNode complies with all the requirements of theGNKSA.
If you have problems or questions about this program, please contact the mailing list for KDE users (for subscription, seeHomepage of the KDE mailing lists ) or one of the KDE newsgroups:
| comp.windows.x.kde |
| de.comp.os.unix.apps.kde (german) |
If you found a bug or have suggestions regarding the functionality of KNode please report them via the menuHelp->Report bug....
Please make sure when asking questions in the above mentioned newsgroups and mailing lists to only ask questions that are not answered in this manual.
For those new to reading news and posting articles, I want to recommend the chapter A journey through Usenet. It is not so much about the program KNode as how to move about in the Usenet with its help. In general, it is not sufficient to just master a news reader for writing news articles. Imagine a car driver who masters his car perfectly but does not know about the traffic rules or signs. Do you want to encounter such a driver when out in traffic? So please take your time to learn at least a little about the “traffic rules” of the Usenet. The other participants will thank you.
KNode supports you in many cases with hints and warnings. If you do not simply ignore them, you will avoid many beginners' mistakes. But do not exclusively depend on them either.
Please address suggestions and critics at the author or at the responsible translator for your language.
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| Working with KNode |
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You find KNode in the K Menu under the entry Internet. The menu entry KNode launches the program.
If the entry for KNode can not be found or if KNode should not appear on the desktop after clicking on the menu entry, read Questions and Answers.
The main window of KNode should now be displayed on your desktop as shown. On first start, the settings dialog will be invoked.
KNode after first start
The windows shows the menu bar, the toolbar below and the status pane at the buttom. The area between the toolbar and the status pane is occupied by a three-part windows.
There is a folder view, which currently contains only three entries:
| The folderOutbox |
| The folderDrafts |
| The folderSent |
When KNode is completely and correctly configured, the news servers and the subscribed news groups will appear there.
In the upper section, is the article view. It is currently empty and does not show any articles. Directly below the article view, the article window is located. The body of the currently selected article appears there. These windows are also blank at the moment, as there are no articles, of course. You should not be confused because before reading and publishing news, some things have to be configured. This will be covered by the following section.
We are now beginning the setting up of KNode. Most settings are not important for daily use, but you should know what settings are possible and what they are for. Some may miss a “Quickstart” chapter but those who prefer a quick start will just glance over the manual anyway. For others, especially those who have not any or much experience with a news reader, this chapter offers the chance to fully perform the configuration, although some things may become clear only later on.
Via Settings->Configure KNode... you will enter the preferences dialog of KNode. The figure shows the dialog.
Entering personal information
The dialog is divided into two parts: There is a treeview, in which the top entry Identity is already highlighted. In the other, you see the corresponding input dialog. These settings relate to your identity with which you navigate through the newsgroups.
If you have already configured your personal settings in the KDE Control Center before the first start of KNode, they will be adopted.
In the field Name you enter your name, e.g. Joe Miller or Mary Gordon. This name will later appear in the newsgroups as sender, and can be seen by anyone.
Filling out the field Name is mandatory.
In most newsgroups, it is considered polite and appropriate to appear with one's real name. Other newsgroups are less strict about this. But there are also cases when one would not want to appear with one's real name, e.g. in newsgroups where one would like to (and can) talk about very personal matters without being exposed. These groups mostly do tell you in their Charter that the anonymity of their members is explicitly approved.
For those special cases, KNode offers settings that can be adjusted to each newsgroup individually. Further information can be found under Group local Identities.
The input field Organization is optional and does not have to be filled out. You can enter e.g. the name of your company or your university institute, if you use KNode there. If you leave this field blank, it will often be filled out later by your Internet provider.
The email address you enter here will be used as sender in news articles, i.e. as actual address of the author, in conjunction with the real name (set in the field Name).
The field Email Address shows up when someone wants to reply to you by email. The email will be sent to the address entered here. Many newsreaders display the sender address together with the name in the Header of the article.
Filling out the field Email Address is mandatory.
Note that the e-mail address will only be used for replies to you if the field Reply-to Address is not filled out. In this case, the field Email will be ignored for replies and the address given under Reply-to Address will be used.
Reply-to Address offers you the possibility to enter a different address than your sender e-mail address. If someone replies to you by email, this address will be displayed as target address in the reply. An example for using Reply-to Address would be that you write the article at the office during the day but want to receive the answer in your home inbox, because your boss co-reads your mail.
Only enter an e-mail address in that field if it actually differs from the field Email Address.
Some news readers deliberately set this to an invalid e-mail address in order to prevent spam mails from being received. What could happen though is that a reader sends an e-mail to this invalid address which you will therefore never receive. You should drop a note about this in the signature.
If you enter an email address here, every article will be sent to the usenet and to this email address.
If you have configured the use of PGP or GnuPG you can chose your signing key with Change....
If this option is selected, the file specified under Signature File will be used as Signature.
The field Signature File determines the file, the content of which is appended to each of your articles. The field is only enabled if the option Use a signature from file is selected.
The signature file is a simple text file, which should not contain more than four lines. It can for example contain a reference to your homepage with the corresponding link, your postal address with your telephone number (which would then be of course visible to the whole world with every article) or just a cool quote. The signature is your brand, so to speak, which will mark all your articles. Therefore your signature should be designed sloppily or in the long run annoying to others. An old joke that one would have to read over and over again does not foster sympathy or the interest of the other newsgroup subscribers.
You can directly enter the file name of the signature file but it is more convenient to use the button Choose.... This opens a file open dialog and you can conveniently choose the signature file with the mouse. The button Edit File enables you, after choosing the file, to edit the signature.
It is not necessary to include a separation line in the signature file as KNode inserts it automatically.
If this option is activated, the signature file is not handled as a text file, but as a program. The signature file will be started as a program and the output will be used as a signature. Through that you'll be able to chose a signature by accident or to use fortune to generate a cool slogan every time.
If this option is selected you can enter the text of the signature directly in the input field below.
Please make sure that in this case also your signature should not contain more than 4 lines. A separation line is not necessary as KNode inserts it automatically.
You can later adapt the identity individually for each of the subscribed groups via the Preferences dialog, e.g. you can specify an English signature for English groups and a German one for German groups. Apart from the language it is also possible to have context-sensitive signatures, e.g. your favorite recipe in a cooking group or the names of your twelve cats in a cat owner group.
You find more in the section Group local identities.
The next step in the configuration covers the news account.
Now we must tell KNode about where we get the news from or where to send the articless to later on. In the tree view on the right, there is an entry Accounts. Click on that with the mouse. Then two sub entries will be opened out. We choose the entry News, because we first want to configure the news account. The list of accounts is still empty.
Create a new account with New.... The following dialog appears:
The dialog New Account
The field Name can be filled in as you like. The text you enter will later be visible in the folder view. You can e.g. enter the name of your Internet Provider. For our example we enter the name My News Account.
The next field is labelled Server. Unlike the field Name, it is important what you enter here. The name of the news server is fixed and should be made public by your internet provider. If you do not know the name of the news server, you should get it now. Without this information you can not read any news. If your internet provider hasn't an own newsserver you can use a public one. Universities often provide public news servers.
For our example configuration we enter the name news.server.com. You will of course enter the real name of your news server.
If you deploy KNode with a local news server, enter the name localhost here!
Port, the next field, has already a default value. The Port designates, roughly speaking, a data channel, on which the server listens, whether someone wants to retrieve news. It defaults to the value 119, which is applicable in most cases. Therefore we do not change this default for our example.
The time value you enter here is effective if you have established a connection to the news server and if, for whatever reason, no data is received from or transmitted to the news server. After the specified time has expired, KNode automatically disconnects. This, among other things, relieves the server of unnecessary connections which reduce its availability for other subscribers. It also makes sure that an automatically established Internet connection is not held unnecessarily although no data is being sent or received.
This settings mainly makes sense if one receives and reads news online. For local news servers it is of almost no importance. If this waiting time is set too low, there can be waiting periods if you read a longer article and do not do “anything” for some time. KNode has canceled the connection to the server by then after the period has expired and has to reestablish it.
If this waiting time is set too high, you perhaps waste online time when doing nothing.
If KNode connects to the news server, it waits no longer for an answer of the news server than the time that is set here. If this period is exceeded, you will get a corresponding error message, because the server does not respond and KNode cancels the connection attempt.
Depending on the quality of your Internet account and the news server's current load. there can be waiting periods, so that KNode cancels the connection. If this happens frequently, you should set this setting to a higher value.
If this setting is selected, KNode additionally requests the available group descriptions. They will be displayed in the dialog Subscribe to Newsgroups.
There is not a group description for every group, so there is no error if no group description is shown when subscribing to a group later on.
The option Server requires authentication needs only to be selected if your news server requires a user name and a password when retrieving articles. If this is the case, you will find out from your Internet provider or the server's maintainer.
If you do not know exactly if this setting is necessary, forget about selecting it. If you encounter an error later on, you still can select it then. Otherwise select this option and enter your user name under User and the associated password under Password.
By now you have completed the setup of your news account. You confirm and save your settings by clicking on the button OK. As soon as you have done that, the account will appear in the list by the name that you have entered in Name before. And if you have a close look, you will see that the account is also appearing in the folder view.
Via the button Subscribe you can perhaps directly get to the dialog for subscribing to news groups. But we still have more to do and ignore it for now. There are several ways that lead to the goal.
In the chapter Managing multiple news accounts you will learn how to work with multiple news accounts. But first, we will stay with this one. In most cases, one account is sufficient.
Please note that some Internet providers only allow retrieving news if you are logged on via this provider.
We will now move on to configuring the email account. In order to do that, click on the entry Mail in the tree view on the left.
After selecting Mail in the tree view, the following Dialog Box appears.
Setting up the mail account
You will notice this Dialog Box to be very similar to the news account settings Dialog Box. But why do we need an email account in a newsreader?
Sometimes you need to answer to the author of an article directly, without posting to the newsgroup. For example, when you want to make a very personal comment or want to correct an error. Sometimes a dialog is more appropriate than a public remark.
Thats why KNode provides the possibility to reply by email. If you want to use this feature, you must tell KNode how to send emails. You just need to insert the mailserver. When you have already configured an email account, i.e. with KMail, you can reuse the settings used there.
If this option is active, KNode will use the mail program which is configured in the control-center. The other options in this dialog will be disabled.
The name of your mail server is not arbitrary. Your ISP , should provide you the informations, which mail server to use. All you have to do here is to enter the mailserver in the Server field.
In our example we entermail.server.de
If you have one, you can send your mail via a local mail server. When you use a local mail server, use localhost in the Server field.
Again, the Port field has a default value. In this case it Port 25. You should not need to change this, despite your ISP has a very exotic configuration and tells you to do so. We do not change this for the example.
This value is important, after you established a connection with your mail server. If there is no data transfer, KNode cancels the connection to your mailserver after this amount of time.
When KNode tries to connect to the mail server, it waits this long for a reply by the the server. Is this time exceeded, you get a error message.
Depending on the quality of your connection and the actual load of your mail server, you can get long reply times. If KNode cancels the connection due to this, you should increase the timeout.
Some ISP only allow you to send email over their mailserver after you checked your mailbox on new mails. This reduces spamming.
For same reasons, some ISP only allow you to send mail by their mailservers, when you are online with this ISP or if you are logged in at the mailserver. For example, this is the normal configuration at GMX and isn't supported by KNode or KMail yet.
With the dialog Appearance you are given the ability to set the colors, the character code and the font size of the texts in the article window. The picture below shows the dialog.
Setting up the dialog Appearance
If you select this option, you can adjust the color settings of KNode in the list field below. To change a color setting, do a double click with the left mouse button on the list entry to open the KDE color selection dialog.
The color selection can only be configured after the checkbox has been checked — otherwise, a double click on the list entries won't do anything.
If the setting Use custom colors is selected, KNode won't use colors which have been changed later globally for KDE but will only use the colors defined here instead.
If you select this setting, you can adjust the fonts which KNode uses for the display in the list field below. To choose a font, do a double click with the left mouse button on the list entry to open the KDE font selection dialog.
The font can only be configured after the checkbox has been checked - otherwise, a double click on the list entries won't do anything.
If the setting Use custom fonts is selected, KNode won't use later changes to the global font settings for KDE but will use the fonts defined here instead.
Now click on Reading news and then on the subentry General. The picture shows the dialog and the preferences you can configure there.
The dialog General Preferences
You don't need to change most of these settings, but we will discuss them step by step to give you an overview over the possibilities of KNode.
If this box is checked, KNode tries to request new articles from the server when selecting a newsgroup. These settings especially make sense when you use KNode together with a local news server. Downloading the messages obviously only works when the server is reachable. For a server which is only reachable via an Internet connection, this setting rarely makes sense and should stay deactivated.
If your system isn't set up to establish an Internet connection if necessary, you will get an error message each time you select a newsgroup.
If you want to keep control over when a connection to the server is established, the menu option Group-> Get new articles is appropriate.
This sets the restriction of the articles, which are requested from the server while downloading. The value configured here is for each Newsgroup separately. Set this for instance to 300, so that only the 300 newest articles of the newsgroup are requested. Other articles are discarded!
For newsgroups with relatively high traffic you might lose articles if this value is too low. This especially occurs when you've just subscribed to a newsgroup or download articles only occasionally and the traffic for this reason rises above the value specified here.
Articles you have opened in the article window are marked as read after the number of seconds specified here. If you set this value relatively high, you avoid that an articles you just glanced at is directly marked as read. On the other hand it can be annoying for relatively short articles for which you need less time to read than specified. If you browse in this case too fast through the articles they stay, although you've read them already, unread. Therefore, you should adjust this value to your personal preferences.
Sometimes an article will be posted to more than one group. That's called crossposting. If you activate this option, those crossposted articles will be marked as read in all newsgroups if you read it in one newsgroup.
This setting lets discussion be displayed completely (over multiple answer levels) if you click on the plus in front of the discussion. If this setting isn't checked, only the immediate answers to the current article are displayed.
Here you can toggle if the threads are expanded by default or if they aren't.
Here you can configure how much memory should be used for caching the headers.
Here you can change some navigation properties of KNode Normally everything here is switched off, but if you don't like this kind of navigation you can change it.
The keyboard behavior between KNode and KMail is a bit different. With the switch Emulate the keyboard behavior of KMail you can activate the same keyboard behavior as in KMail for KNode.
If the box Switch to next group is checked, KNode automatically switches to thenext group if you mark all articles as read.
If the box Close the current threadis checked, KNode automatically closes the actual thread if you mark this thread as read.
If the box Go to next unread thread is checked, KNode automatically shows the next thread if you mark the actual thread as read.
To sort the articles you have the possibility to score them. The standard score is 0, a higher score means, that the article is interesting, a lower score means it's boring.
In the middle of the window you see a big, white area. Here you can see your scoring rules. Scoring rules are used by KNode to score the incoming articles automatically. If for example a person always posts nonsense you can automatically score the articles of that person down and hide them.
With the buttons below the list of scoring-rules you can edit, add, remove and copy a rule. We will skip this feature for now, because it is not essential for the setup of KNode.
You will learn more about scoring; in the chapter Scoring, watching and ignoring.
Normally you only need the functions ignore and watch. This simply shows if a thread is interesting or not. Here you can configure a default score for the ignored threads. Choosing the menu item Scoring->Ignore Thread will give this score to all the posts in that thread, and will apply that score also to future posts that follow up the thread.
If an article is interesting, it will get a score above 0. Here you can enter the default score for those articles. Choosing the menu item Scoring->Watch Thread will give this score to all the posts in that thread, and will apply that score also to future posts that follow up the thread.
You can use the W key to watch a thread or the I key to ignore it.
This screenshot shows the filter settings.
The filter settings
This dialog shows two lists. The upper list, labeled Filters, shows all defined filters. When you use KNode for the first time, you only see the predefined filters.
With the buttons Add, Delete, Edit and Copy you can add new filters or delete filters no longer needed. We skip this feature for now, because it is not essential for the setup of KNode
You can find more detailed informations about filters in Defining and using filters.
The lower list, labeled Menu, shows the appearance of the menu View->Filter, which you can reach from the menu bar. The order of the filters in the this menu can be configured in this list.
The button Up shifts the selected filter one position up. Try it, select the second filter and press Up. This entry goes up one position.
The button Down does the opposite action. Select the filter, you just shifted one up, and pressDown until it reaches its old position.
With the two buttons Add Separator and Remove Separator you can group the filters optically. The separators are shown as ==== in the list. In the Menu they show up as some more appealing horizontal lines. Try to add a separator. Then you select the separator and remove it by pressing Remove separator wider.
Any changes you make here, you can see in View->Filter after closing this dialog.
In this dialog, you can set how the single header lines are displayed in the article window.
The dialog Customize displayed article headers
This list shows all the header lines which are intended for display in the article window. The identifier at the left will be displayed, the name in < > stand for the name of the according header line how it is transmitted in the Usenet, i.e. for From the name From.
Via Edit you can influence the shown identifier as well as the attributes of the shown identifier and the text. To make things clearer, we'll now simply select the entry From:<From> in the list and open the dialog for editing the header display by clicking on Edit.
The dialog Header Properties
The selection box Header shows the entry From. That is the name of the header line for the sender, as it's actually present in the article and evaluated by the newsreader. If you drop down the selection box, KNode shows a range of other identifiers, which stand all for a certain header line in the article. For now, we'll leave the identifier From configured. We'll work with this list later, when we add a header line to the display.
This field holds the name, which is later shown in the article window as a replacement for the actual identifier of the header line. For the header line From, it's the from. If you leave this field blank, only the content of the header line appears in the article window. This is for example the default setting for the header line Subject. We won't change anything here either, for now.
Here you can influence the attributes of the shown name with the checkboxes. In our case, the attribute Bold is selected for the name From, i.e. the text will be shown in bold letters in the article window. Of course, you can combine different attributes, for example Bold and Underlined.
The information given for Name is true for these checkboxes as well, but these attributes are associated to the content of the shown header line, in course case to the actual sender. You can later see the effects of these settings in the displayed articles. For example, select here the entry Italic, and the sender, i.e. “John Doe <johndoe@doubleguns.com>” appears in an italic font.
To explain the possibilities of this dialog to you, we're going to add a new header line to the display.
Example 2.1. Show the newsreader used for a post in the article window
This pictures show the dialog with the header line X-Newsreader.
The dialog Header Properties
It would be nice if one could see which newsreader another subscriber uses in the article window. Well, that's pretty easy because there's actually a (optional) header line which contains that information.
Drop down the selection field Header and select the entry X-Newsreader from the list.
In the field Displayed name, enter Newsreader.
Now you can select any attribute for the display of the field and it's content. Next, acknowledge your input with the OK. The new header line appears now in the list and will later be shown in the article window.
Use the up and Down buttons to arrange the order of the headers in the article window.
The statement that the new header line will be shown in the article window is actually pretty optimistic, because the entry X-Newsreader isn't required for Usenet articles. Therefore, not all articles will contain that header line. If the line doesn't exist, the according entry simply won't be shown. You will get more informations about headers at http://www.kirchwitz.de/~amk/dni/headerzeilen (german)
If this is active, the headers will be beautified a bit. Otherwise only the plain text is shown.
If this option is active, the text-wrapping in the viewer will automatically corrected.
If this is active, empty lines at the end of the article will automatically hidden.
If this setting is activated, the signature of the sender is displayed in the article window, if it isn't, the signature is surpressed.
Please notice that KNode can display the signature correctly only if it can be separated correctly from the article content in the current article. There are newsreaders which do this separation incorrectly. Two “-” with a following “ ” (space) are correct.
Many participants in the newsgroups give hints on their homepage or intentionally erroneous specified Email addresses in the header in the signature. If you disable displaying the signature, you might loose this information. On the other hand you might save yourself from reading strange quotes.
If this is active, all text format tags in the message like *bold*, /italic/ and _underline_ are shown directly in the viewer. These text format tags are an unofficial standard.
To display the quoted text in another size or color, KNode needs to recognize that it's quoted text. Quoted text is normally marked with a “>” at the beginning of the line, but sometimes there are other characters. In this field you can enter all characters that should mark quoted text.
If this setting is marked, KNode tries to display the contents of possible attachment directly in the window when opening an article. For instance, a picture would be displayed directly below the article text.
Additionally, you have the possibility to save the attachment or open it with the application you have associated with the MIME type of the attachment by using the context menu.
If this box is checked, attachments are opened with an external program with is configured for the MIME type. If there is no such association, a dialog for saving a file is opened and you can save the attachment in a separate file.
Articles which are sent as Multipart MIME contain the text of the message in multiple formats, for example as raw text and HTML. The newsreader decides which part of the article is displayed. This setting makes it possible that the other formats can be opened as if they were attachments with a mouse click.
If this setting is disabled, alternative contents are not displayed.
When you post articles with KNode the settings in the following Dialog Box is used.
The Dialog Box Technical Settings
When you choose the wrong settings here, your articles can be unreadable or not sendable at all. So please be careful with these settings.
Here you can choose the charset used for encoding your articles. Normally this is US-ASCII for English speaking countries, but your charset may differ. The default is the charset used in your global KDE settings, so you should not have to change this.
When you want to post articles in newsgroups with other charsets (e.g. eastern European or Asian) you can set the required charset here.
Here you set the encoding of the characters for the message transfer. You can choose between 8-bit and 7-bit (quoted-printable).
When you choose 8-bit encoding, most special characters are transfered correctly. This is for example the normal option for the German groups (de.*).
When you choose quoted-printable, 8-bit characters (e.g. german umlauts or special characters) are send as encoded 7-bit charcaters.
In the English newsgroups the 7-bit-coding is quite normal.
If this option is active, KNode uses your default charset for replying instead of the charset of the article you're answering on.
When this is active, KNode generates its own Message-IDs for all articles you post.
The Message-ID must be unique worldwide! There would otherwise be collisions between messages with the same Message-ID. The news server will reject the second article, because it thinks, this article was already received.
A Message-ID consists of a valid FQDN (Full Qualified Domain Name). This means it looks similar to an email address with an identification before the @ and the domain.
The identification is generated by KNode automatically, but you must provide a valid domain name in Hostname When you do not have your own domain, you should not activate this option. Let the newsserver generate a Message-ID for you.
Example 2.2. Message-ID
An example for a valid domain would be: kde.org. A Message-ID generated with this domain will look like:
934lek9934@kde.org
An unique identification is only guaranteed, when you have your own domain. Even when you do not use KNode for generating your Message-IDs there may be collisions, when you are using a local newsserver. For example leafnode generates a Message-ID which it derives from the local hostname.
You'll get more information about this and an own free domain at http://www.qad.org/faq/faq-messageid.html.
Here you enter the Hostname of your computer. This is used to generate the Message-ID. When you do not have your own domain, you should not activate this option. Let the newsserver generate a Message-ID for you. Using the example above this would be: kde.org.
Here you can enter X-Headers, which are not provided by KNode For example: X-No-Archive: yes. This should prevent your articles to be archived by archive services such as Google.
X-Headers are experimental headers, which are not included in the standard for Internet-Messages. They are, for example, used for extended information transfer. To prevent collisions with later standard headers, they have a “X-” prefix.
When this option is checked, KNode does not include the corresponding line in the Header before posting.
This header is used for identification of the newsreader the article was written in. Besides statistical reasons, this allows to identify non-standard newsreaders. You should not activate this option, KNode has no need to hide.
The Composer settings Dialog Box
Here you can set the value at which KNode wraps the line. Besides you can deactivate the automatic word-wrapping completely.
It is recommended to use no more than 76 characters. Even when you are able to disable more. Many Usenet users will use a text-based newsreader which can not display more than 80 characters. It is difficult to read your articles in such a newsreader, if you increase this value. This reduces the probability of your articles to be read at all.
When you write a new article or a followup, your signature is appended automatically, if you have configured one in Settings->Configure KNode...+Identity.
When you write a followup, KNode inserts an introductionary phrase before the quoted original Text. You can put an arbitrary text here. You can use variables, which KNode extracts from the original article, e.g. the name of the author or the date the article was written.
The following variable are available:
The name of the original author.
The date the original article was written.
The original authors email address.
The Message-ID of the original article.
The name of the newsgroup -the article comes from.
Keep this short, because this introductory line appears in every followup. A too long iintroductionaryline can be as repelling as a too long signature.
Example 2.3. An example introductory line
On %DATE %NAME wrote in %MSID
Let us assume the original article was written by Konqui on Saturday the 17th of June at 17:42:32 - 0500. The article has the Message-ID <8igdg5.3vvijgt.3@lizard.physos.com>. KNode will then insert the following introductionary line.
On Sat, 17 Jun 2000 17:42:32 +0200 Konqui wrote in <8igdg5.3vvijgt.3@lizard.physos.com>:
When this is checked, the quoted text is wrapped at the correct border value. So, every new line is in the correct quoting level.
When this is activated, not only the text of the original message, but also the signature of the author is quoted in a reply.
Quoting a signature is unnecessary and is often considered impolite.
Normally the cursor will appear below the whole message when answering. With this option turned on the cursor appears below the introduction phrase.
This is especially helpful, when you quote an article and write between the quoted lines from top to bottom.
You can define an external editor here, which is opened by selecting Tools->Start external editor in the Composer window.
When Start external editor automatically is checked, the external editor is opened directly.
Notice the %f after the name of the editor. This is a variable for the filename of the article you want to edit. Do not delete this. You will get an error message when opening the external editor.
When you have problems with starting your external Editor, the reason may be the editor starting in "the background". This is called forking. KNode only notices the process started, is finished and thinks you have quit the editor. The editor gvim is an example for this. You can disable the forking of gvim with the commandline switch -f. It is recommended to refer to the documentation of the used editor for this.
When you want to use gvim in Specify Editor use the following input:
gvim -f %f
Here you can configure the behavior of the spell checker.
If this is checked a known word-root with an unknown affix will be automatically accepted as a new word.
Here you can toggle if two known words that run together and are unknown if they run together should be treated as an error or not.
Here you can tell KNode which encoding should be used for spell checking. For English texts this should normally be US-ASCII.
Here you can configure KNode for signing articles with GnuPG or PGP. Your GnuPG/PGP ID will be built automatically from your configured name and email address. It is identically with the from-line in the header of the article.
If this option is active you only need to type the passphrase for your private key once. KNode remembers your passphrase until you close KNode again.
If this option is activated, KNode shows the signed message in an extra window for confirmation before changing it in the editor.
Well, just ignore this option. You can't encrypt or decrypt an article in KNode because it doesn't make any sense to use encryption in the usenet. This option is shown because KMail and KNode use the same program for PGP.
The dialog below, shows the settings for the article cleanup. These settings are used to keep the amount of articles on your local harddisk in a reasonable value. KNode administrates the articles in memory, so there can be some decrease in speed, if you have to many articles lying around. Most of the time it makes no sense to keep articles for a very long time. Services like Google and Altavista make archiving unnecessary.
KNode isn't an offline reader, so all of the configuration refers to the headers which are managed by KNode! If you are running a local news server such as leafnode you should refer to it's documentation to handle expiring the articles on the server — KNode cannot do this for you.
The cleanup settings
When this option is active, all subscribed groups are checked for old articles in the time interval set here. The old articles are deleted at this time.
You can force this check by selecting Group->Expire group
Here you can configure how often subscribed groups should be checked for old articles and how often those articles should be deleted. This option only has effects when the mark in front of Expire old articles automatically is set.
Read articles are deleted by the next cleanup, if they are older than this value. KNode uses the make date for this.
Unread articles are deleted by the next cleanup, if they are older than this value. KNode uses the make date for this.
It may happen that you'll see a header in KNode but the article isn't available on the server. If this option is set, those articles will automatically deleted in KNode.
This selection forces a thread only to be deleted, if all articles contained, fulfill the delete conditions. This means, if the last article in the thread would be deleted, all articles of the thread will be deleted.
This prevents old articles in a long thread to vanish, before the dicussion is ended.
KNode can not predict, if there is a reply, after the set conditions are fulfilled. You have to find your own settings for this. Some newsgroups have days between replies others only hours. Use your own judgment.
This option refers to the memory behavior of KNode. If an article in a folder is deleted, it only will be marked as deleted but still uses the memory of your harddisk. With this option you can tell KNode to delete the articles really and free the hard disk space regularly.
You can force this check by selecting Folder->Compact folder or for all folders together with Folder->Compact all folder.
| Working with newsgroups |
| Prev | Working with KNode | Next |
After the configuration of KNode we will now try to read your first news. To achieve this, you need to do some more steps of configuration, but you don't have to do this very often.
If you want to read a newsgroup, you first have to subscribe to it. You click with your mouse on the entry of your newsserver in the folder-list. The right mouse button opens the context menu. Here you select the entry Subscribe to Newsgroups. KNode, at this moment, does not know which newsgroups are available from this server. KNode asks you if it should fetch a list of available newsgroups. Confirm with Yes. Now you should see the following dialog.
The Dialog Box Subscribe to Newsgroups
After some time, KNode has fetched the list of available newsgroups and shows them in the left window Groups on in a tree. This tree view shows the newsgroup hierarchy.
You find a short description about the structure of the usenet and the hierarchy of the single newsgroups at http://www.kirchwitz.de/~amk/dni/usenet-einfuehrung (german)
The simplest method to navigate in the tree is the input field Search. KNode filters the groups according to your input with every keystroke. If you are searching for a group about KDE, but you do not know the exact position in the hierarchy, just type kde in the Search field.
When you enter the k, you will already see the list changing. The second letter, d, give you a significantly reduced list of shown groups, and the final e reduces the list to the groups with kde in their name. You will most likely end with just one group:
| comp.windows.x.kde |
If your server carries the international groups, you might find your list is:
| comp.windows.x.kde |
| de.comp.os.unix.apps.kde |
This incremental search gives you the possibility to search for newsgroups without knowing the exact path.
On a close look, you will see KNode showing the groups without a tree if there are only a few groups left. This is not a bug, it is a feature.
Normally KNode shows all the groups in a tree. If this option is activated, all newsgroups are listed among one another.
If subscribed only is checked, the tree-view Groups on shows only the groups you are already subscribed to. This is very convenient, if you want to unsubscribe from some groups. You don't have to search the whole tree for these groups.
If new only is checked, the tree-view Groups on shows only the groups, which are new since you last fetched the group-list. For this to be functional, you first have to fetch a new group-list with New List.
The button New Groups give the possibility to show show all new groups since a specific date.
This list shows all newsgroups on this server. If you check one of the checkboxes subscribed only or new only you get the corresponding selection.
The window Current changes shows all changes you made, since you opened the dialog.
The list subscribe to shows the newsgroups you have chosen to subscribe.
Below you see the list unsubscribe from. This list shows all newsgroups you have chosen to unsubscribe. You can not unsubscribe from groups you are not subscribed to.
This button opens a dialog which allows you to configure the list of new groups. You can choose between showing all groups since the last refresh or all groups since a given date. With the date option, KNode provides a more flexible possibility to check for new groups. You can even check for new groups before the last refresh of the grouplist.
The button New List tells KNode to fetch a new group list from the news server.
The newsgroup hierarchy is in a constant flux. All the time there are groups introduced, renamed or moved. Some groups just disappear, they are no longer available and get deleted. To reflect this, KNode gives you the possibility to refresh the the group list. This is, normally, only needed to see if your server now provides a group which was not there before.
If you simply want to make sure to see every new group, it is more effective to use New Groups. Fetching the complete list is much more time consuming, but you make sure the deleted groups vanish from the grouplist.
Unfortunately there is no guarantee that your newsserver is providing all available newsgroups. Many newsserver refuse groups publishing binary attachments. Other groups are only available from special servers. KNode provides you the possibility to use more than one news-server, if you want to access alternative servers providing these groups. You can read more about this in the section called “Managing Multiple News Accounts” .
We now want to subscribe to the KDE group. Mark the the box beside the name. You can now see the group in the list labelled subscribe to. Another possibility is to use the arrows between the two windows.
If you picked the wrong newsgroup by mistake, you can undo your selection by unchecking the checkbox next to the groups name in the Groups on window. Again you can use the arrow. You probably noticed the arrow changing direction.
If you want to unsubscribe from a newsgroup it is as easy as to subscribe to it. You just uncheck the box next to its name. The groups you unsubscribed from are shown in the list unsubscribe from. Again the arrow is another way of doing things. For correcting your actions you can use the arrow again. This works as long as the dialog is not closed by clicking OK.
As a KDE and KNode user you will probably want to subscribe to the group. So make sure you checked the box and press OK. This group now appears in the tree view under the server entry it was chosen from. In our example this is My News Account. If you can not see the group, click on the cross next to the server entry or on the server entry itself. The list of subscribed newsgroups should appear.
Click on the newsgroup. Now you see on the right in the article view an empty folder. KNode has to fetch the articles for the new newsgroup. When you have in Settings->Configure KNode->Reading news->General, the check box Check for new article automatically checked, KNode tries to fetch the articles from the server, when the newsgroup is first selected. If this is unchecked, you have to use Account->Get new articles.
When you are using leafnode as a server, there will be a single article in the group. leafnode generates an article in every new subscribed group. This indicates leafnode will consider this group the next time it fetches articles. You can ignore an error message saying the article can not be found. If you select this article you tell leafnode you are really interested in this group.
You get the real articles, when your local newsserver fetches them from the Internet and provides them to you. Details about this you can find in the documentation of your local newsserver.
When everything worked, the articles of the subscribed newsgroup appear in the upper right window, the article view.
KNode always shows three views (folder view, article view and article window). You can change height and width of these views with the mouse. If you click in a window it gets the focus. This is important, if you want to use KNode with the keyboard. The Tab key changes the focus between the views. The currently active view is indicated by a small colored bar over the column headers.
This picture shows KNode with the subscribed KDE newsgroup.
The three views of KNode
It is possible to select more than one group or article. You can select an area by clicking on the first entry with the left mouse button, holding the Shift key and clicking on the last entry with the left mouse button again.
If you want to select more than one single entry, but they are not next to each other in the list, you have to select the first by clicking on it with the left mouse button, holding the Ctrl key and clicking on other entries with the left mouse button.
In either case you can clear your selection by clicking on another entry with the left mouse button.
If you have selected more than one entry, you have to activate the contextmenu with the Shift key pressed, otherwise you'll clear the selection.
The folder views contains not only the accounts you configured — in our example this is My News Account — but also three other folders. When you are subscribed to some newsgroups there will be cross next to the name of the account. Clicking on the cross or the name of the account opens the tree.
Using the right mouse button you get a context menu for the selected item (folders or newsgroups). If you select a newsgroup and choose Properties, you can, among other things, specify your identity for this particular group. You can find more about this in the chapter Local Identities.
When you select a newsgroup with your mouse, a list of articles of this group appears in the upper right window. If there are no articles in the upper left window, there are two possibilities. There are no articles for this newsgroup on the newsserver or the newsserver did not fetch them yet. Select Account->Get new articles in all groups. If there are still no articles appearing, you have some problems with your settings or there really are no articles for this group. Try another group. If there are no articles for this group, you most likely have to work through the first chapters, about the configuration of KNode, again. The chapter Frequently Asked Questions may help you, too.
If you are using a local newsserver, the articles only appear if the newsserver already got them from the internet. When you are using leafnode this is done by the the program fetchnews.
The newsgroup folders appear with the name the are given by the hierarchy on the newsserver. In our example this is comp.windows.x.kde. You can change the name shown in this view. In the context menu (click with the right mouse button on the newsgroups name) choose Rename group, then you can change the name in the inputfield. A good name for comp.windows.x.kde would be for example The KDE Newsgroup.
If you don't change this, the hierarchical name is shown.
Besides the name of newsgroups the folder view shows much more informations by the appearance. When there are new articles in a group or folder, the name is shown bold. The columns Total and Unread tell you how many articles are in the according group or folder and how many are marked as unread.
The folder Outbox contains all articles, which are supposed to be sent later or which could not be sent because of an error. If you want to sent an article later, choose File->Send Later in the editor. The article is then filed in the Outbox folder. It is possible to edit, delete, or send these articles later.
If an article was not sent because of an error, it is stored in this folder. You are not losing these articles!
This folder is used for storing drafts of your articles. For example if you want to do some further work on them, but you have no time for it right now. For storing an article in this folder choose File->Save as Draft in the editor.
You can edit, delete and send the articles in this folder.
Selecting this folder shows you the articles you successfully sent, including your e-mail replies. You can delete the messages in this folder, but this has no influence on the messages already sent.
If your are using a local newsserver, an article appearing in the folder Sent only indicates the local newsserver receiving the article. It is possible this article never appears in any newsgroup, because the local newsserver was not able to send it for some reason. If you notice some article not appearing in the according newsgroup, first make sure it was sent by the local newsserver.
If you are using leafnode articles, leafnode was unable to send, are normally found in /var/spool/failed.postings.
The article view gives you a list of all articles in the selected newsgroup or folder. You can change the appearance of this view with the View menu. The uppermost row of the view contains the column headers.
The Subject column shows the subjects of an articles, which, most of the time give you a clue about the content of this article. The subject is chosen by the article author. You can find more about this inHow to post and reply to news.
The column From shows the author or his e-mail address, if the author didn't give a name. You can configure your settings in Settings->Configure KNode+Identity. When you publish an article KNode will show these settings in the From column.
The column Score shows the scoring of an article as a number. The default is 0. Articles which are important to you can be scored up, articles you want to ignore, can be scored down. The range is -100000 to +100000. Read more about this in chapterScoring, Watching and Ignoring.
The column Score is only shown if Settings->Configure KNode...+Reading News+General+Show article score is activated.
The Date column shows the date and time when the article was written.
The column Lines shows the number of lines of the article. The column is only shown if Settings->Configure KNode...+Reading News+General+Show line count is activated.
This is a short explanation of the different symbols for labeling articles.
Already read articles are labeled with this symbol.
Articles labeled with this symbol are read and the body was fetched
from the server.
Articles labeled with this symbol are unread and the body has not yet
been fetched.
Articles labled with this symbol are unread but the body has already
been already fetched.
Articles labeled with this symbol are part of a thread with new and
unread articles in it.
Articles labled with this symbol are parts of a guarded thread. This
corresponds to a score of 100.
Besides different symbols, KNode is using the following highlighting:
The article is new in this group. It was fetched during the last connection with the server.
There are no unread follow-up articles.
You can navigate in articles, display an article and open or close threads with your mouse or keyboard.
When you select an article with your mouse, its entry in the the article view gets colored. At the same time the header and body of this article appear in in the article window. If you want to read an other article, you can use the mouse for selecting it or you can use the cursor keys. When you use the cursor keys, you can move the dashed frame to the article you want and then press Enter for marking and diplaying the article.
There are many key commands, which allow a comfortable navigation in a news group and for switching between newsgroups. Here the most common key commands of the standard key configuration are listed. You can configure this key bindings in Settings->Configure Shortcuts.
The replies on an article are either shown or hidden by multiply pressing this key. Another possibility for opening threads is using the Right Arrow key.
A dialog is shown where you can chose the filter for the articles.
A dialog is shown, where you can change the sorting of the articles. If you chose a column a second time it will change the sorting direction.
In this dialog are also that columns shown, which are not shown in the article window. Because of this you can sort the articles with those columns without showing the columns. You can activate those columns at Settings->Configure KNode...+Reading News+General.
This key gives you a convenient possibility for browsing through the article view. By pressing this key the article in the article window is scrolled. When you reach the end of the article by repeatedly pressing Space, it takes you to the next article. When you have read all articles in one newsgroup, Space takes you to the first article of the next newsgroup. By repeatedly pressing Space you can browse through all subscribed newsgroups like this.
This key binding jumps to the next unread article. The sequence follows the order of articles in the article view. A thread is opened if needed to do so.
This command jumps to the next thread containing unread articles. The first unread article is selected and shown. The sequence follows the order of articles in the article view.
This command jumps to the next article. The sequence follows the order of articles in the article view. Replies in closed threads are ignored.
This command jumps to the previous article in the group. The sequence follows the order of articles in the article view. Replies in closed threads are ignored.
This command jumps to the next newsgroup. The sequence follows the order of articles in the article view.
This command jumps to the previous newsgroup. The sequence follows the order of articles in the article view.
Some newsgroups are very crowded and contain lots of articles. Perhaps only some of them are interesting to you. One possibility to keep track is sorting your articles with certain criterias.
Sorting your articles and the choice of sorting criterias is done with the column titles in the article view. Clicking on a column title makes it the current sorting criteria. Another click on the same column title changes the order of sorting.
The current sorting criteria is indicated with an arrow next to the title. This gives you an easy sign, which column is used for sorting, too. You have to make the column wide enough, so that you can actually see the arrow. You can change the column width by moving the mouse pointer on the small area between two column titles. The pointer changes it's appearance in two horizontal arrows. Clicking and holding the left mouse button mouse button allows you now to change the width of the column left to the mouse pointer.
KNode gives you the possibility to reduce the flood of articles. You can show only the articles fitting in your specific criterias. KNode uses filters for this task. In this paragraphs we are just dealing with the predefined filters. For defining and using your own filters, please refer to the chapter Defining and using Filter.
Normally you will read most articles only once, and then never again. KNode labels the articles which are unread, but when there are more articles in a news group than can be shown by the article view, you often have to search for unread articles. It would be much easier to see only the new fetched and unread articles. KNode gives you this feature by the predefined filters.
In the status line at the bottom border of your main window behind the word Filter the actually active filter is shown. If you do not change the filter configuration, this is the filter all. This means all articles of a newsgroup are shown. all is one of the predefined filters. There are eight of them, which are described in more detail here.
This filter is the default setting. It shows all articles in a newsgroup. You can choose this filter by selecting View->Filter->All
This filter shows only unread articles. You can choose this filter by selecting View->Filter->Unread
This filter shows only articles fetched during the last connection. You can choose this filter by selecting View->Filter->New
This shows only threads chosen as watched threads by you. For example, because you are participating in this thread or you are particular interested in the answers. You can choose this filter by selecting View->Filter->Watched
This filter only shows something, if you selected one or more threads to watch. You can achieve this by selecting Article->Thread->Watch. Next to the subject appears a symbol, showing a pair of eyes.
This filter shows only thread containing unread articles. You can choose this filter by selecting View->Filter->Threads With Unread
This filter shows only threads with newly fetched articles. You can choose this filter by selecting View->Filter->Threads With New
This filter shows only articles you published. You can choose this filter by selecting View->Filter->Own Articles
This filter shows only threads containing articles you published. This filter shows only articles you published. You can choose this filter by selecting View->Filter->Own Articles
For everyday use the unread filter is propably the most useful. It shows all unread articles, including the old ones. The other filters are very special and seldom used. In the end it is a matter of taste which filter to select.
The article window shows the currently selected article. You can scroll in it like in a normal text editor window. The difference is, you can not change the article. The article window is for read only.
By pressing the right mouse button in the article viewer you can access the important functions in the contextmenu very quickly.
The window itself is divided in three areas. They are explained in more detail now.
This part shows the header lines or a part of the header. You will recognize some informations here from the article view. For example the subject and the address or name where the article originated. When you click on the From: address, KNode opens an editor window. The email address of the author and the subject of the referring article are already filled in for you. This enables you to reply to the author directly from her article.
The appearance and content of the shown header shown by default can be configured by choosing Settings->Configuring KNode...+Reading News+Headers. You can find a more detailed view on this in Configuring the Shown Headers.
By selecting View->Show all headers you force KNode to show the whole header as it is produced by the newsreader and newsservers. Normally you do not need this view, it needs a lot of space in the article window.
The last lines of the header contain, if necessary, some references to other articles, shown as numbers in the range from 1 to n. These References are articles referring to the current article. The article labled with 1 is the oldest article. This means it is the first one referring to the current article. The article with the highest number is the one the current article is referring to.
When you click on a reference, the according article is loaded and shown in the article view. It can occur, KNode is telling you, the referred article is no longer reachable. This always happens when an article is older and the article management of KNode or your newsserver decided to delete it from the newsgroup. How to get such an article, please refer to the Frequently Asked Questions.
The first lines in an article with the meta-information like the subject and the author are called headers.
The body of the article follows straight after the header. This is the actual message, the author published in the newsgroup. Be aware of an article possibly containing quotes from other articles, which are not always recognizable as quotes. This depends on the newseditor and the habits of the author.
KNode provides some highlightings, which are used in the article window. At the moment these are:
| /italic/ |
| *bold* |
| _underlined_ |
Do not use the highlighting too often. With increasing use of it, the impact decreases.
The main part of the message (the contents) is called the body.
Most of the time a quote is indicated by a prefixed > on every line. There are other possible signs. If you can not directly recognize a quote, the author did not obey the rules of proper quoting.
Furthermore it is usual to start an answer with a introductionary line.
Something like:
On 12/25/2000 Santa Claus wrote:
Normally you do not have to bother with these introductionary lines. KNode does this automatically, when you reply to an article. How to configure this line, you can read in chapter
In Settings->Configure KNode...+Reading News+Appearance you can choose how the articles are shown. In particular KNode provides the smart coloring of different reply levels. You can read more about this in the chapter Configuring the appearance.
KNode only supports the coloring of quotes, if the quoting lines starts with special characters. You can configure these characters at Settings->Configure KNode...+Reading News+Viewer.
When the body of an article contains links to internet addresses, you can invoke an internet browser, starting with this address, by clicking on the link. Details about configuring this feature you can find in General news settings.
Below the main text of an article, you find the signature of the author. Provided you did not turn this behavior off in Settings->Configure KNode...+Reading News+General. The signature is divided from the text by thin, horizontal line.
If an article contains attachment, they are shown below the signature in a table.
The multipart MIME format allows to send the body of an article in more than one format. For example in plain-text or HTML. It depends on the newsreader which format to provide for reading the article.
KNode allows showing the different formats by selecting Settings->Configure KNode...+Reading News+Viewer+Show alternative contents as attachments. When this option is checked, all alternative formats are shown as attachments and can be opened and viewed like them.
When this option is unchecked, you do not see the different text formats and KNode decides which one is best to be shown.
Before you start writing article or replying to other Usenet users, be sure you understand the habits in the current newsgroup. Again, reading A Journey Through Usenet would be a good idea.
For testing the Settings of KNode please resist sending an article to a random newsgroup. It is not very friendly to bother people with test articles. What if you are subscribed to a newsgroup and half of its articles are only containing the word “test”? This is like somebody calling you just for testing her phone.
This is the reason for the special groups having “test” in their name. An example is alt.test. In these groups you can test everything you want, without bothering somebody. Some groups even send you error messages back.
Here you can easily identify obvious mistakes like a missing or a wrong e-mail address or a wrong configured charset, which doesn't show all special characters.
You can find a selection of test groups in Test Groups.
Subscribe to one of the test groups now. Some newsservers have their own test groups, which are probably less crowded.
Remember, you have to download the articles of the new subscribed group. Perhaps there are many articles in these groups, so it will take some time to fetch them the first time. The only important articles are yours and the answers by the check handler. If you want to reduce the amount of fetched articles during the test. you can configure this in Settings+Configure KNode...+Reading News+General+Maximal number of articles to fetch. If you reduce this dramatically, you should not wait too long for fetching the new articles after sending your test article, otherwise your article can be a victim of your limitations. A tolerably fast newsserver, should provide your article right after you sent it. Maybe you have to wait a while, in worst case 1 or 2 days. Feel free to send another article, if can not see your initial one. This is what the test groups are for.
When you are using a local newsserver, the configuration of Maximal number of articles to fetch in KNode is probably unnecessary. You should consult the documentation of you newsserver instead.
If you did not encounter any errors, unsubscribe from the testgroups and set Maximal number of articles to fetch back to normal (1000).
You have seen a big part of KNode now. You used KNode passively so far, so lets get to some action. We will publish a test article now. Select the new subscribed test group in the folder view. With Article->Post to newsgroup...or the key P, the Editor is called.
You can use the KNode Editor like a normal Texteditor. There are some additional features for writing news articles.
When you look at the editor window, you see two input lines. One for the subject, which is empty at the moment, and another for the newsgroups this article is going to be posted to.
Enter the text This is a test in the subject field.
When you post an article, use a descriptive subject. Articles without a descriptive subject are often ignored. Avoid subjects like “Help, it doesn't work !!!!!” This subject gives no information about the content of your article.
The Groups: field already contains the test newsgroup you selected before. Do not change this.
Below the input field for the newsgroup there is an other inactive option-field. This function is explained later in the chapter The editor. For now it's irrelevant.
For simplicity reasons we only use a simple sentence. Type:
This is the body of my test article. @ $ %
Enter an empty line, followed by.
Did it work?
This may look funny to you, but it does what it is supposed to do, testing your configuration..
Your article should look like the screenshot below now.
Your first article
If you are using KNode with a local newsserver, choose File->Send Now in the Editor. If you do not have a connection to a newsserver at this point, you may want to send the article later. You can achieve this by using File->Send Later. KNode, then, stores this article in the folder Outbox. You can start sending the articles in the Outbox manually, by selecting File->Send pending messages.
After sending the article you will notice KNode stored a copy in the folder Sent.
Depending on how fast your article is published in the according newsgroup, you can check the result after some time. Mostly it is sufficient to check for new messages immediately after sending the article. Be patient it may take the article some hours before reaching the newsgroup. If the article does not arrive after some hours, most likely, something went wrong. Try again. If it is still not working, have a look at the Frequently Asked Questions.
Even when you are using a local newsserver, you have to check for new articles. The local newsserver just sends the article, it does not store it in the local newsgroup. So you have to synchronize with an external newsserver, if you want to see if your test article arrived.
If the article appears in the newsgroup you are successful. Now you should control if there is the correct sender and if the article is readable. Have a look on your language-specific characters like the german umlauts. If they are not readable, you have to change the coding at Settings->Configure KNode...+Posting News+Technicalto Allow 8-bit. Change this and repeat your test.
If everything is right you have successful published your first article in usenet with KNode.
After successfully publishing an article, we will now answer to your own article. You want to answer the question you asked, don't you?
Select your article in the article view and press the right mouse button. You see a context menu, where you choose Followup to newsgroup.
KNode opens the Editor again, but this time there is already a subject filled in for you. The subject line reads:
Re: This is a test
Re: is a shortcut for the latin “In re”, which means something in the lines of “relating to”. You should not change the subject and above all the Re:. Most newsreaders sort threads by the subject.
If you want to change the subject for some reason, put the new subject in front of the old and replace the Re: with a parenthesized (Was: ... ). In our example this would look like
A new subject! (Was: This is a test)
With this kind of subject you show the other readers, there is a branch in the original discussion. This happens, when a new topic occurs in the original discussion or the original subject changed for some reason.
If you answer to an article with such a subject, delete the parenthesized part of the subject. The first part with a prefixed Re: remains.
Re: A new subject!
Let us have look at the Editor now. The contents of the article, we want to reply to has already been copied to the Editor by KNode To indicate the text is a quote, every line is prefixed with a >.
In front of the quoted text, KNode has put an introduction line. The content of this line refers to the original author. You can change the standard text of this line in Settings->Configure KNode...+Posting News+Composer+Introduction Phrase:.
The original article contains the question: Did it work? We want to answer this question now.
Place the cursor below the quoted question and write in the next line:
Yes it worked, congratulations!
We are not finished now. It is considered polite to begin with greeting like “Hello” in the first line. If you call the author by his name or not, depends on your habits. Watch the newsgroup to get used to the habits there.
Next we delete all not mandatory parts of the quoted article. In our case, we delete all parts, except the question.
With such a short text this is unnecessary, but this just an example. If you have to read a message 100 lines long, again, just to find a [I agree] at the end, you will understand. Aside from this, articles get smaller and use less space on the server.
In the end we say good bye.
This screenshot shows our answer before sending it.
Your answer to your article
You can find a good guide for correct quoting at http://www.afaik.de/usenet/faq/zitieren (german).
Now we still need to post our reply. Like at the normal posting, you chose File->Send now or the alternative File->Send later, if you're not online at the moment and you're not using a local newsserver. If everything works normal, you will see your article in the newsgroup after a while. Easy, isn't it?
In the menuitem Options you can configure if you want to send an email, a news article or both.
The Mail Reply follows the same lines as posting a reply in a newsgroup. The Mail Reply is sent directly to the author and does not appear in any newsgroup. This is the only difference.
Sometimes it is better to use an emailed reply instead of posting a reply to newsgroup. Primarily, when you want to correct an error or misconduct by the author, without hurting his feelings by doing this publicly on the newsgroup.
For answering with an e-mail, you select your article, again, open the context menu with the right mouse button, and choose Reply by Email. KNode opens the Composer with the quoted article.
Subject and body are identical with posting an article, but the Groups: field is replaced by a To: field. Here appears the authors e-mail address. In our example this should be your own email address, if KNode is set up correctly.
For emails apply the same rules for quoting and politeness apply as for posting an article in a newsgroup.
After finishing your Reply, you can send it.
The screenshot shows the reply we distributed by email.
A Mail Reply
The Mail Reply only works, when you used the right settings in Settings->Configure KNode...+Accounts+Mail.
Depending on the configuration of your computer, you will find the reply in your mailbox. Perhaps you have to connect to your ISP first and fetch your new mails.
In the menuitem Options you can configure if you want to send an email, a news article or both.
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You already read about using Filters in the chapter explaining the configuration of KNode. We were talking about the built-in filters provided by KNode there. You can configure the built-in filters like all the others. The screenshot shows the Dialog Box for configuring the Filters.
While filters and scoring are very powerful and have many uses, one of the most common requirements is simply to add all posts written by someone you don't wish to read to a “killfile”. At the end of this section is a quick guide to using filters and scores to create such a killfile.
The dialog New Filter
First we will create a new filter. There will be the case, that you want to find your own articles among all the others. Or you do not want to see the articles of a particular person at all. Both cases can be solved by a simple filter on the Sender. Here are some examples:
Procedure 2.1. Do Not Show The Articles by a Particular Person
Settings->Configure KNode...+Reading News+Filters
Select New...
Insert Do not show idiot in the Text Box Name
For making the filter appear in the menu, check show in menu.
Go to the area From.
Choose does NOT contain from the Drop Down Box.
Insert the name of the moron you want to ignore in the now active Text Box for example Idiot.
Confirm the filter settings with OK.
The filter now shows all articles, except the ones containing “Idiot” in the From: line.
You can combine the settings of the tab for Subject + From line with the settings on the other tabs. For example:
Procedure 2.2. Show only discussion with unread follow-ups on own articles.
Settings->Configure KNode...+Reading News+Filters
Select the predefined filter threads with own articles
Select Copy
Insert My threads with unread in the Name field.
Select the tab Status
Select has new followups
Select true in the Drop Down Box next to it.
Confirm the filter settings with OK
This filter shows all threads your are participating in, which have unread messages. Also, you saw the possibility, to use already existing filters as a base for new ones. This makes life easier for complex filters.
Procedure 2.3. Show all articles, no older than 3 days, containing KNode in the subject.
Settings->Configure KNode...+Reading News+Filters
Select Add
Insert Latest KNode threads in the Name field.
For making the filter appear in the menu, check show in menu.
In the Drop Down Box apply on select single articles
Go to the area Subject and select does contain in the Drop Down Box.
Insert knode in the Text Box.
Change to Tab Additional
Select the Check Box Age
Place the following settings 0 < days <= 3
Confirm the filter settings with OK
This filter, now, shows all articles, no older than 3 days, containing knode in the subject.
KNode offers viewing filters (all, unread only, my posts, etc.) and scoring filters (threads and articles start with a score of zero and can be adjusted according to author, thread, etc.).
Using viewing filters you could hide articles according to poster, but this is not really suitable when you want to kill several posters universally.
Using the scoring gives lots of control but appears to filter only at the thread level: you can set watch and ignore (threads). Not good because you lose otherwise useful threads just because of one poster.
Solution is to use these in combination.
Procedure 2.4. Creating a Killfile
Go to Settings->Configure KNode+Reading News+Filters.
Create a new filter below unread, called killfile on. Be sure that Apply to single articles is set and then click on the Additional tab. Set score “equal to or less than zero” (<=); then click the OK until you have exited the dialog.
Open an article whose author should be killed and just type Ctrl+L(or select from Scoring menu Lower Score for Author). This opens the Rule Editor (a part of scoring). You can optionally give the rule a name that matches your author (Kook, for example.) and then if this is to be permanent, uncheck the expire automatically box. You'll see that this rule will change the author's score to minus ten (or as you wish). Save.
Go to the menu item View->Filter->killfile on.
This will cause any articles with scores less than zero will disappear. To kill additional authors you only need repeat the Ctrl+L part of these instructions.
The KNode composer provides many features, especially for posting and replying to articles.
By selecting the Button Browse you can choose additional newsgroups, you want to publish your article in.
It is generally undesirable to post articles in multiple newsgroups. Please think about it twice. If you are not sure, where to post your article, ask in one of the possible groups. Somebody will tell you were to post.
The main use of this feature is the case, when a thread has gone off topic for the newsgroup it is posted in. For example a thread in a KDE newsgroup about how to redirect a followup in KNode which leads to a dicussion about graphical and text based newsreaders.
Sometimes it happens that usenet users post an article into the wrong newsgroup. Very often those articles are just ignored. If it looks like the author did this unintentionally, you might like to tell it politely and make the followup articles go into the right group.
Another reason for using Followup-To: is a possible crossposting in multiple newsgroups. You should take care that the replies will be posted in one single newsgroup.
You can activate this by filling the text box Followups - To:. Here you can enter the suitable group. If there are multiple newsgroups in the Groups: field, they are shown in the drop down list.
When you enter poster here, instead of a newsgroup, the replies go directly to the author, not to the newsgroup.
Some people put an email address here, but this is not a valid entry. Use poster and correctly set your Reply-To address in the normal KNode settings.
Using Tools->Start External Editor you can start an editor of your choice, for editing the reply. So you can use your preferred Editor for writing articles and e-mails.
By selecting Attach->Attach File you open the File Selection Dialog Box. Here you can choose the file you want to attach.
Most of the time, KNode determines the correct MIME type for the attachment. If KNode errs, you can correct the MIME type manually.
This screenshot shows the Composer with 2 attachments. A text file and a PNG picture.
Sending Attachments
Only do this, if you know, what you're doing! An incorrect MIME type could cause a wrong sending of the attachment or that the attachment couldn't be rebuild after sending.
The English word attachment is used all over the world, you can use it in your language, too.
In most newsgroups, attachments are prohibited. Do not send unsolicited attachments. If you are asked to send them, look who is asking for. Mostly, this person wants you to send them by email.
The news server will probably reject article with attachments for most groups anyway, and those that do accept attachments will normally have the word “binaries” in their name. Some news servers even stop carrying non-binaries news groups that continuous receive attachments.
Sooner or later, you will start searching for one specific article. The KNode search feature is an easy way to do so.
You can reach the search function by selecting Edit->Search Articles... or the F4 key. The screenshot below shows the Search Dialog Box.
The Search Dialog Box
The Search Dialog Box has four tabs, which allow several search criteria. The first tab contains the settings for the criterion Subject and From. The second tab contains the settings for the message-IDs of an article and its references. The third tab contains the settings for the Status of an article. Additional contains the criteria, which do not belong to the first or second tab.
You probably already noticed the similarities between the Filter Dialog Box and the Search Dialog Box. The usage is the same and should not be too complicated, if you already defined your own filters.
KNode always searches in the currently active newsgroup. A search in all newsgroups is not possible at the moment. After the Search finished, the articles found appear in the article view. When you close the Search Dialog Box, When you close the Search Dialog Box with Closethe search results are deleted, and the old view of the newsgroup appears again.
With this button you start the Search with the search criteria you defined. All articles in the selected newsgroup, fulfiling this criterias, appear in the article view.
This chapter deals with superseding and canceling articles. You will not use this two features very often, but they belong to the comfort features of a newsreader.
Both functions need a news server prepared to handle them. You should remember that there is no guarantee that no one has already read your article, before it is superseded or canceled.
So first think, then post.
Canceling an article means deleting it from the newsgroup.
Why should you want to cancel an article? Well, perhaps you flamed somebody in a rage and now you want to get this article out of the newsgroup, because you regret what you wrote. A personal insult, read by everybody, looks not too good, especially when you regret it. So there is only one thing, cancel the article.
Select the article you want to cancel and choose Cancel article in the context menu. When you are sure it is the right article, confirm KNodes question with Yes. Now you are asked if you want to send the Cancel message now or later. For this example we decide to send it Later. You will notice the new message in the folder Outbox.
Now we want to look at the so called cancel message. In the subject you will find something like:
cancel of <n177m8.1m.ln@konqui.org>
This strange letters between the brackets are the Message-ID of the article, you want to cancel. This message tells the newsserver to delete your article. When you look at complete header of this message by selecting View->Show all headers you will notice a line with the name control and the content cancel <xxxxx@ddddd.dd> This line tells the server, this message is a control message. In our case, this message cancels your article.
You can still delete the control message from the Outbox.
Keep in mind, an article can only be identified by his Message-ID. You need this Message-ID if you want to cancel an article. Normally your article gets this Message-ID when it arrives at the newsserver. Thats why you can only cancel an article, when it is already published. The articles in the folder Sent have no Message-ID, so you can not cancel them from there.
There is one exception. If you have configured KNode to generate a Message-ID, you can cancel you articles in folder Sent, too.
KNode allows only to cancel your own articles. It refuses to cancel articles from other authors.
Since the cancel feature is so easily fooled, by newsreaders that let you cancel any post, many news servers do not acknowledge cancel messages from posters. Even if your own ISP accepts the cancel and passes it on, many other servers will ignore it and will not pass it on.
You should consider any previously sent article, canceled or not, to be published and publicly available.
Supersede overwrites your article with a new version. One reason for doing this could be:
You have written a long article and already posted it. Now you find an error in this article. You can cancel this article and post a new, corrected, article. Or you can use Supersede.
Select this article in the article view. In the context menu, select Supersede article.... KNode will ask you, if you really want to overwrite this article. Confirm with Yes and the Composer appears.
In the Composer you can now make the wanted corrections and changes. You can publish this article in the same way as you post every other article. When the newsserver receives this article, it reads some special lines in the header which tell the newsserver to supersede the older article. Select File->Send Later for now, because we want to look at the articles header in the Outbox.
Activate View->Show all headers, because we want to see all the header, the newsserver receives. You will notice a line like:
Supersedes: <oggcm8.4n5.ln@konqi.org>
This is the instruction for the newsserver for superseding the article with the Message-ID <oggcm8.4n5.ln@konqi.org> with the new article.
Besides this Supersede is used for periodical posted articles, e.g. a FAQ. The new article supersedes the old one and the newsgroups do not end up with lots of different versions.
Again, using this function is only possible, if the article already has a Message-ID. Normally articles get their by the newsserver. This means, you can only supersede articles, which are already published.
you can configure KNode to generate this message, then you can supersede your articles in the Outbox, too.
KNode allows only to supersede your own articles.
As with cancels, supersede messages have been abused in the past, with for example certain parties sending hundreds or even thousands of them to overwrite legitimate posts with random computer generated junk. Again, as with cancels, many news servers do not honor supersede messages, nor do they pass them on.
Score, Watch and Ignore are only different names for the same feature.
By scoring a thread, you determine its importance. KNode allows scores between -100000 and 100000. A normal article will get a score of 0 if you do not change this. So threads with a score below 0 are less important and threads with a score above 0 are more important than the average.
The score is an attribute of the thread and the articles in this thread. So you can use the score for filtering and searching articles. For example, you can define a filter, which shows only articles with a score > 0, that means all articles you are specially interested in.
The function Watch only sets the score of all article in a thread to 100. So they get a high score and KNode labels them with a special icon.
The function Ignore does the opposite. Ignore scores all articles with -100 and does not show this articles anymore.
The English word “scoring” is used in many other countries, too.
You can score an article or a thread manual with the right mousebutton or with the menu Scoring. Here you can score with Watch Thread and Ignore Thread directly. Besides you can let KNode score the articles with scoring rules automatically. You can configure those rules at Settings->Configure KNode...->Reading News->Scoring or at Scoring->Edit scoring rules.... The only different of these dialogs is that the last one has the rule-list next to the rule configuration. In the following guide I'm using the editor you get with Scoring->Edit scoring rules....
The Rule Composer
The composer consists of 4 areas. On the left side is the list of the rules. With the buttons below the list you can add, delete or copy an existing rule. Below that you have the possibility to limit the rules which are shown. You have the choice to show all rules or only the rules for a special newsgroup.
If you chose a rule-name in the list you will see the rule on the right side. Now you can edit the rule. At the top you can change the name and set the newsgroups this rule is for. You can chose one or more than one group. Several groups must be separated by a semicolon. Furthermore you can chose from the subscribed groups with the drop down list and the Add group button or use regular expressions and wild cards, e.g. “.*” for all groups. The option Expire rule automatically makes it possible to delete the rule automatically after the configured number of days. This is senseful if a special person behaves bad and you don't want to read anything from this person for a few days.
In the Condition field you enter the condition which should activate the rule. Normally you can enter only one condition, but you can change this by pressing the buttons More and Fewer. If you have more than one condition, you must tell knode if all conditions must be fulfilled or only one of them. If Match all conditions is activated, all conditions must be fulfilled, if Match any conditions only one of them needs to be be fulfilled.
Every condition consists of 2 drop down lists and a free text. In the first list you chose the part of the message which should be used for the condition. This part will be compared with the text field. And the second drop down list tells KNode how it's compared. For example, the free text should match the chosen header field exactly or just be a part of it. Regular expressions are allowed, too. If you check Not, the condition is fulfilled if the chosen things are false.
That was the theory, now lets have a look on some examples.
Maybe you want to filter away all postings of Theodor Test. Therefor you have to chose the header line From, enter his name in the text field and chose that the fields should match. But before doing that you should have a look on the header of an article of Theoder Test and check out, what's in the “From” line there.
If you don't want to read articles with more than 100 lines, you can chose the header entry Lines, in the second drop down you chose greater than and enter 100 in the text field. You probably want to score down the message.
Last example: Of course you're very interested in every article that refers to KNode. Now you can chose the header entry Subject, contains substring and enter knode in the text field. But what do you do if KNode is not mentioned in the Subject. I suggest to use a regular expression. Change contains substring to matches regular expression and type knode|newsreader|usenet in the text field. Alternatively you can make 3 conditions for that and activate Match any condition. But this needs a lot of space and is very inelegant, isn't it?
If your condition is ready you should set an action down in the Actions section. The most important action is adjust score. If this action is chosen, you can raise or lower the score for this articles by the configured value. KNode can also show you a little message when finding such an article or colorize the header in the article list, You can make interesting articles screeming pink, so you will see them very quickly.
When leaving the editor or choosing the menu item Scoring->Recalculate scores the rules are executed. Furthermore the rules are automatically used for new articles. Scoring makes the most sense when used with filters. You score some articles down and filter them away, so they won't appear in the article list.
With KNode you can use a different identity with every newsgroup you are subscribed to. This involves name, email, reply-to address and signature.
It is easy to set group identities. For setting up a group identity, select the according newsgroup. In the context menu, select Group Properties. The second tab is identical with the global identity settings. Confirm your settings with OK and your articles in this group are always posted with this identity.
When you unsubscribe from a group, you lose the identity settings for this group. If you resubscribe to this group, you have to repeat the settings. For new newsgroups, the global identity is used.
KNode can handle an unlimited number of news server accounts in addition to your main news server. Most users don't need this feature, but it can be very handy to if your main newsserver doesn't provide all groups you want to read. Typical cases are support groups for commercial software that are hosted on a special server or binary newsgroups.
Another example why you sometimes need more than one newsserver is, that there are sometimes not all interesting newsgroups on one server. In fact, there are very often only a selection of newsgroups. For example very many servers doesn't support binary groups with pictures or programs. If you want such a newsgroup and your newsserver provider don't want to serve it, you can configure KNode to get it from another server.
Or, perhaps you find you are just subscribed to too many newsgroups, and would like to organize them a little better. You could set up several accounts for the same server, perhaps one for groups you read every day, and one for groups you read less often, so that you don't have to search for your “everyday” groups in a long list of subscribed groups.
In order to add an new account, you have to open the preferences dialog via Settings->Configure KNode...+Accounts+NewsThe buttonNew creates a new account, you then have to enter the same data as for your first account, typically a name for the account, the host name and user name and password combination if the server requires authentication. When this is done the new server will appear both in the configuration dialog and in the group view. You can now subscribe to newsgroups.
You can delete the currently selected account by pressing the Delete button.
With Account properties in the context menu of the newsserver you can chose a special identity for only this newsserver.
PGP is the most spread method to encrypt or sign data. With the PGP-signature you can verify if the data are really from the original author or if they are changed by others. You will find PGP-programs and guides at http://www.pgpi.org.
With KNode you are able to sign an article with PGP and to verify a PGP signed article. After you configured the PGP support at Settings->Configure Knode...+Signing/Verifying, you can sign an article in the editor with the menu item Tools->Sign article with PGP. You will be asked for your passphrase and after that the article will be signed.
Your GnuPG/PGP ID is automatically built from your name and your email address and is identically with the sender of the message (“From”-header).
To verify a PGP-signature you have to chose the menu item View->Verify PGP-signature.
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The following keybinding assume you did not change the default settings.
Saves the selected article in a file.
Prints the selected article.
The messages in the folder Outbox are send.
Disconnects the current connection to a newsserver.
Quits KNode.
Copy the selected text in the clipboard.
Selects the whole article.
Opens the Search Dialog Box for searching in the active group.
Enables the download of an article with a specified article-ID.
When this is activated, KNode shows discussions as a tree view in the article view.
When this is activated, KNode shows the complete threads. This is only functional when Show threads is active.
When this is activated, KNode shows no threads. This is only functional when Show threads is active.
Toggles between showing and collapsing the selected thread.
Allows you to choose a filter for the article view.
Allows you to sort the article view.
Refreshes the article view
When this setting is activated, KNode shows the complete article header in the article window.
When this setting is activated, KNode shows all characters of the complete article rotated by 13 characters.
Checks the PGP signature in the article.
Activates the configured fixed font for the viewer.
Here you can configure the charset which is used for the articles.
Jumps to previous article in the article view.
Jumps to next article in the article view.
Jumps to the next unread article and to the first unread article of the next newsgroup if necessary.
Jumps to the next unread thread and to the next unread thread in the next newsgroup, if necessary.
Jumps to the previous news group in the folder view
Jumps to the next newsgroup in the folder view
Connects with the active account and fetches the new messages.
Opens the Dialog Box for subscribing to newsgroups for the active account.
Here you can expire all groups of an account manually.
Opens the properties dialog for the active account.
Deletes the active account and all subscribed newsgroups within.
Connects with the active account and fetches the new messages.
Checks if there are any old articles and deletes them.
Rebuilds the article view by using the configured sortings.
Sets the status of all articles in the active newsgroup to read.
Sets the status of all articles in the active newsgroup to unread.
Opens the dialog for the group properties.
Unsubscribes from the active newsgroup
Creates a new main folder.
Creates a new subfolder.
Here you can rename the active folder.
With this function it is possible to import an MBox folder into the active folder.
With this function you can export the active folder as a MBox folder.
Removes all deleted articles from the active folder.
Removes all deleted articles from the every folder.
Deletes all articles from the active folder.
Deletes the active folder.
Opens the Composer with the settings for writing new articles of the active newsgroup.
Opens the Composer for writing a followup with the content of the active article.
Opens the Composer for writing an e-mail to the author of the active article.
Opens the Composer for forwarding the active article as e-mail.
Set the status of the active article to“ read”
Set the status of the active article to“ unread”
Set the status of the active thread to“ read”
Set the status of the active thread to“ unread”
Generate a message which deletes the active Article in Usenet. You can only use this with your own articles.
Opens the Composer with the content of the active article. When this article is posted, it overwrites the original article. You can only use this with your own articles.
The active article is opened in a new window.
The sourcecode of the active article is opened in a new window.
Opens the Composer, for editing the active article. You can only use this in the folders Outbox and Drafts .
Deletes the active article. You can only use this in the folders Outbox and Drafts .
Sends the active article. You can only use this in the folders Outbox and Drafts .
The dialog to edit the scoring rules will be opened.
The scores will be reset and recalculated.
Creates a rule for lowering the score of all articles from the author of the active article.
Creates a rule for raising the score of all articles from the author of the active article.
Sets the score for this thread to the configured score of watched threads (standard = 100).
Sets the score for this thread to the configured score of ignored threads (standard = -100).
This option toggles if the toolbar is shown or not.
This option toggles if the statusbar is shown or not.
This option toggles if the group list is shown or not.
This option toggles if the header view is shown or not.
This option toggles if the article is shown or not.
Opens a dialog for configuring the key bindings.
Opens a dialog for configuring the toolbars.
Opens a dialog for configuring KNode.
Invokes the KDE Help system starting at the KNode help pages. (this document).
Changes the mouse cursor to a combination arrow and question mark. Clicking on items within KNode will open a help window (if one exists for the particular item) explaining the item's function.
Opens the Bug report dialog where you can report a bug or request a “wishlist” feature.
This will display version and author information.
This displays the KDE version and other basic information.
| The composer menus. |
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Send the current article immediately.
Store the current article in the Outbox to be sent later.
Save the current article in the Drafts folder, so you can finish editing it another time.
Delete the current article, closing the editor.
Close the editor window
Undo the last edit.
Redo the last action undone with the Undo menu entry.
Cut the currently selected text to the clipboard, deleting it from the editor window.
Copy the selected text in the clipboard.
Paste the current contents of the clipboard to the editor window.
Paste the current contents of the clipboard to the editor window with a quote char (“>”) at the beginning of the line.
Select all the text in the editor window.
Open the Find dialog.
Open the replace dialog.
Insert your signature at the end of the article you are editing.
Insert the contents of a file into the editor window.
Insert the contents of a file into the editor window and puts a box around of it.
Insert a file as an attachment.
Toggles the sending of the message as an article on/off
Toggles the sending of the message as an article on/off. If it's configured, an external editor will be activated.
Here you can configure the charset used for this article. Normally you use us-ASCII for the English speaking area.
Toggles the word wrapping in the editor on/off.
Puts “>” in front of the marked lines.
Removes the quote characters at the beginning of the marked lines.
Puts the marked lines in an ASCII box.
Removes the ASCII box around the marked area.
Signs the article with PGP.
Rebuilds the original posting when answering to an article.
Encrypts the marked text by rotating every character 13 characters of the alphabet.
Start the external editor (if one is configured), with the current contents of the editor window.
Opens a dialog box to check your spelling.
Toggles on and off the toolbar.
This option toggles if the statusbar is shown or not.
Opens a dialog for configuring the key bindings.
Opens a dialog for configuring the toolbars.
Open the KNode Preferences dialog.
Invokes the KDE Help system starting at the KNode help pages. (this document).
Changes the mouse cursor to a combination arrow and question mark. Clicking on items within KNode will open a help window (if one exists for the particular item) explaining the item's function.
Opens the Bug report dialog where you can report a bug or request a “wishlist” feature.
This will display version and author information.
This displays the KDE version and other basic information.
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| The Advanced KNode Features | Up | The composer menus. |
| Questions and Answers |
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| 4.1. | I have installed KDE 3, but KNode does not exist in the K Menu. |
Does the entry Internet exist? If not, maybe you didn't install the kdenetwork package because your distribution possibly doesn't do this for you. If the entry is there, but you don't have an itemKNode in it, you should try to open a Konsole and run KNode from there. Type
% knode &
If an error message appears that tells you that KNode could not be started or found, please check whether the file knode exists in $KDEDIR/bin and its permissions are correctly set. | |
| 4.2. | When I start KNode, a message appears in the task bar but suddenly disappears without KNode being started. |
Try to start KNode from the Konsole (see previous question) and keep attention for the messages displayed there. If those don't look obvious to you, mark them with your mouse and copy it to the clipboard. Turn to a KDE mailing list or use another news reader to ask for help in a KDE news group. | |
| 4.3. | I need an important article, but KNode doesn't have it any more. Where do I find this article? |
You can find some extensive usenet archives at groups.google.com or AltaVista. They even contain several years of old articles. | |
| 4.4. | How do I open and read several articles at the same time? |
Open the article with Open in own window. | |
| 4.5. | My articles don't appear in the newsgroup. |
When you publish an article it may last some time until your news server has it. Wait several hours before you send the Article again. | |
| 4.6. | I want to keep some article. How do I archive it? |
Choose the article in the article view. File->Save opens a file dialog. You can save the article to a file now. Another possibility is to copy the article in a folder. | |
| 4.7. | Some set headers don't appear for several articles in the article window. Am I doing something wrong? |
This is not unusual because many headers are optional and often not contained in articles. In this case KNode doesn't show those header lines. | |
| 4.8. | Sometimes I see an article which refers to other articles but KNode does not show any references. Why is that? |
This happens when somebody posted an article in another news group and checked the option Followup To. This article is sent to your news group but the referring article is absent. In many cases the poster tells the reason for his choice to set a followup. | |
| 4.9. | When I want to answer an article, an error message appears telling me that the external editor could not be started; but the editor is correctly set. |
Have a look whether you entered the place-holder for a filename after the editor command. If not, enter it. If you for example want to use KEdit enter kedit %f If the %f is absent, your editor can not be run. | |
| 4.10. | Why can't I receive data from my local newsserver? |
If you use KNode together with with a local news server, you must make sure that this server is correctly set up and started. For further details, please consult the documentation of your local news server. TipThe availability of the local news server can easily be verified with the program telnet. Open a console and type: % telnet localhost nntp Followed by that, the news server should respond with: Trying 127.0.0.1... Connected to localhost. Escape character is '^]'. 200 Leafnode NNTP Daemon, version 1.9.16 running at konqi.org You quit the telnet session with: % quit If that should not work, there is either no local news server set up or the server was not started. In this case, please consult the documentation of your local news server. Further, you need of course a (dial-in) connection to a news server on the Internet. From there, KNode or the local news server retrieves the articles. Your Internet provider should be able to give you information about which news servers you can use. You need this information in any case. |
| Prev | Home | Next |
| The composer menus. | Up | A journey in the World of Newsgroups |
| A journey in the World of Newsgroups |
| Prev | Next |
This chapter is supposed to glance over the World of Newsgroups and their“ inhabitants” . Someone who never dared to go there will encounter some strange customs, which may give you a feeling of being a lonely alien without backup. But stay calm, it is not like this. The Usenet is a meeting place for all kinds of normal and not-so-normal folks. It is here where they are distributing a lot of information but also gossip and other stuff.
References to more detailed and qualified essays on the Usenet can be found at More Resources
An online-reader connects to a newsserver and gives you access to its content. KNode is an online-reader. You are reading your News and publishing your own articles, while the online-reader stays connected.
An offline-reader connects to the Server and fetches only the headers of new articles. Then the connection is closed and you can offline mark the articles, you are really interested in. When you connect the next time, the offline-reader fetches the articles you marked and sends the articles you have written offline.
There is no connection while you are reading or writing articles.
You can look at newsgroups as public bulletin boards and forums, where evereybody is allowed to participate. Articles you have published in a newsgroup can be read by everybody subscribed to this newsgroup. And normally everybody is allowed to publish her articles in a newsgroup.
| Online Manners |
| Prev | A journey in the World of Newsgroups | Next |
There are lot of different people meeting and talking in newsgroups. It is seen as some kind of courtesy to obey some rules of manner, some basics are listed here.
Before you ask questions be sure you read the newsgroups FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) and didn't find the answer.
If you take part in a discussion, be aware the fact, everybody can read the answer. Say nothing you wouldn't say to the others when you were facing them. Avoid insults.
Try to avoid crossposting. Do not ask a question in more than one newsgroup when you don't know which is the right one. Ask in one newsgroup. If it is wrong, you are told which is right one.
Formulate your articles accurately. Nobody likes to read an article with lots of typos, even with content worth a Pulitzer. Think of your articles as letters. Your letter speaks for you, it represents you. Somebody reading your article will draw conclusions about you from it, wrong or right.
Remember, nobody sees your grin when you are writing an ironical sentence. It may be funny for you, but it can be very serious for the one reading it. It is very difficult to include emotions in an article.
The most important rule: Use your common sense when you are answering or publishing an article.
| Prev | Home | Next |
| A journey in the World of Newsgroups | Up | The Usenet language |
| The Usenet language |
| Prev | A journey in the World of Newsgroups | Next |
You won't be surprised about English being the main language on the Usenet. There are special trees with German (de.*), French (fr.*) and many other languages. If you are unable to determine the main language of a newsgroup, the only possibility is careful listening or a possible explanation in the description of the group in the grouplist.
In addition over the time the Usenet developed his own language, but happily it is easy to learn.
When you read news, after some time you will read some strange combinations of letters. For example you can get a reply like:
RTFM
Nothing else. Strange but absolutely intended. To solve the riddle: Those, most of the time, are shortcuts, acronyms. It is easier to drop some letters, than writing the same sentence over and over again.
But what is the meaning of RTFM? The writer demands you, to read the manual, documentation or FAQ before asking questions in the newsgroup. Clearer: (R)ead (T)he (F)ucking (M)anual. BTW an advice you should adopt.
Wait, what is BTW now? Another often seen acronym which means (B)y (T)he (W)ay. It is easy when you know it. Now, for you not to be continously speculating over acronyms there is table at he end of this section, containing the most often used acronyms. ;-)
This table does not try to be complete and bases on a list from Martin Imlau.
Table 5.1. Acronyms on Usenet
| Acronym | Meaning |
|---|---|
| <g> | grins |
| AAMOF | As a matter of fact |
| ACK | Acknowledge |
| AFAIK | As far as I know |
| AFAIR | As far as I remember |
| AWGTHTGTTA | Are we going to have to go through this again? |
| ASAP | As soon as possible |
| BFN | Bye for now! |
| BTW | By the way |
| BYKT | But you knew that |
| CMIIW | Correct me if I'm wrong |
| CU | See you! |
| CU2 | See you too! |
| CYL | See you later! |
| DAU | German abbreviation for the silliest user you can imagine (DÂümmster anzunehmender User) |
| EOD | End of discussion |
| ESOSL | Endless snorts of stupid laughter |
| FYI | For your information |
| GOK | God only knows |
| HAND | Have a nice day! |
| HTH | Hope that helps |
| HSIK | How should I know? |
| IAE | In any event |
| IANAL | I am not a lawyer |
| IIRC | If I remember correctly |
| IMCO | In my considered opinion |
| IMHO | In my humble opinion |
| IMNSHO | In my not so humble opinion |
| INPO | In no particular order |
| IOW | In other words |
| LMAO | Laughing my ass off |
| LOL | Laughing out loudly |
| NAK | Not acknowledged |
| NBD | No big deal |
| NFW | No fucking way |
| ROTFL | Rolling on the floor, laughing |
| RTFM | Read the fucking manual |
| SCNR | Sorry, could not resist |
| TIA | Thanks in advance |
Again such a strange thing. What is this ;-) meant to be? Turn your head so the left side of your Screen is on top. Got it? You spot the smile with a wink? This is a so called emoticon. Emoticons are an often used possibility to express mimic. One thing missing in conversation on the Usenet. (But there is a substitute, remember? ;-)
It is very difficult to express emotions in emails or news. Your joking comment can be very serious for the recipient and can lead to unmeant reactions or conflicts (flames). So use emoticons to express your intention.
There are a lots of emoticons, which express a great variety of emotions. You will see, the interpretation is easy if you turn your head and think of a face.
This PLONK! looks like some comic-sound, doesn't it? And that is exactly what it is used for. The one who reads it knows he was just added to the killfile of a newsreader. Normally this means the recipient of the PLONK! ticked off the sender. The PLONK! plays back the sound of the recipients name hitting the ground in the killfile. The sender turned his back to the recipient.
| Prev | Home | Next |
| Online Manners | Up | Further Information |
| Prev | Home | Next |
| Questions and Answers | Up | Online Manners |
| Further Information |
| Prev | Next |
In this paragraph we will offer you some more information resources which could be useful to you. Many of the below listed articles (for which URLs are given) are posted to news groups regularly. Some of those groups are also listed here.
| news.answers |
| news.newusers.questions |
| de.newsusers.infos (german) |
| de.answers (german) |
| de.comp.os.unix.linux.infos (german) |
| de.newusers.answers (german) |
| de.newusers.questions (german) |
For beginners it is especially recommended to read these articles at least partially. Informed users have strong advantages in news groups. There are some more specialized news groups where FAQs and introducing articles are posted frequently, e.g. the newsgroup de.comp.os.unix.linux.infos (german), which contains a lot of useful articles about the operating system Linux®. Just have a look on the group list of your newsserver for it.
| Test Groups |
| Prev | Further Information | Next |
The following groups were created especially for testing, i.e. after successfully configuring KNode you should post some articles to those groups to test your settings.
Some groups support automatic replies thru email to enable you to test whether your entered identity is correct and mail-replies actually arrive in your mailbox.
In addition, some scripts are offered which check your articles for erroneous settings and generate a followup with useful hints.
| de.test (german test newsgroup) |
| misc.test |
| alt.test |
| alt.test.ignore |
| Prev | Home | Next |
| Further Information | Up | Informative technical articles in the world wide web |
| Informative technical articles in the world wide web |
| Prev | Further Information | Next |
These URLs are from the corresponding article in the newsgroup de.newusers.infos and have the same contents like the articles posted there.
| Prev | Home | Next |
| Test Groups | Up | Informative technical articles |
| Informative technical articles |
| Prev | Further Information | Next |
If you are interested in further technical information in connection to news, you should not miss the following URLs.
| Header entries: http://www.kirchwitz.de/~amk/dni/headerzeilen (german) |
| A very useful message-ID FAQ: http://www.qad.org/faq/faq-messageid.html |
| A lot of links about newsreaders and related topics: http://www.leafnode.org/links |
| RFCs, Drafts and documents for the technical interested: http://www.landfield.com/usefor/ |
| Prev | Home | Next |
| Informative technical articles in the world wide web | Up | Credits and License |
| Prev | Home | Next |
| The Usenet language | Up | Test Groups |
| Credits and License |
| Prev | Next |
KNode
Program Copyright 1999,2000,2001,2002 KNode developers
Developers
Christian Gebauer <gebauer@kde.org>
Christian Thurner <cthurner@web.de>
Dirk Mueller <mueller@kde.org>
Mark Mutz <mutz@kde.org>
Roberto Teixeira <roberto@kde.org>
Mathias Waack <mathias@atoll-net.de>
Documentation
Copyright 2000,2001 Stephan Johach<lucardus@onlinehome.de>
Copyright 2001,2002 Thomas Schütz < Thomas.Schuetz@gmx.li>
Thanks go to the KNode developers who answered all my stupid questions with patience. Then Thomas Diehl and Matthias Kiefer who always were competent contacts regards to translation. Many Thanks to Malcom Hunter who checked this english translation. Not to forget Michael McBride, always there to help me out with documentation-related and general stuff, and everybody else in the KDE Team who contributed to the creation of this document.
This documentation is licensed under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.
This program is licensed under the terms of the GNU General Public License.
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| Informative technical articles | Up | Installation |
| Installation |
| Prev | Next |
KNode is part of the KDE project http://www.kde.org/.
KNode can be found in the kdepim package on ftp://ftp.kde.org/pub/kde/, the main FTP site of the KDE project.
| Requirements |
| Prev | Installation | Next |
If you want to successfully install KNode, you need a KDE 3.x. If, in addition, you want to use KNode as an offline newsreader, you need a local news server, e.g. leafnode.
| Prev | Home | Next |
| Installation | Up | Compile and install |
| Compile and install |
| Prev | Installation | Next |
KNode is part of the package kdenetwork of KDE 3.x and is installed together with it if you have chosen to install the kdenetwork package. So in general, there is no need for a user to compile the sources of KNode.
In order to compile and install KNode on your system, type the following in the base directory of the KNode distribution:
% ./configure % make % make install
Since KNode uses autoconf and automake you should have no trouble compiling it. Should you run into problems please report them to the KDE mailing lists.
| Prev | Home | Next |
| Requirements | Up | Notes about updating an older version of KNode |
| Notes about updating an older version of KNode |
| Prev | Installation | Next |
This section contains notes about what to take care of when installing a newer version of KNode with an older version already installed.
Since version 0.2 the format of the configuration files and the saved articles has changed. An update is not readily possible. Unfortunately, your old configuration files can not be imported.
If you update from a version >= 0.4 the local folders will automatically be converted into the new format. You can't use this data with an older version of KNode any more!
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| Compile and install | Up | Glossary |
| Prev | Home | Next |
| Credits and License | Up | Requirements |
| Glossary |
| Prev |
To delete an own article from the newsserver. The newsreader generates a special control message to tell the server to delete this article.
The posting of an article in several newsgroups. This is very often disliked, because it disturbs the topic-oriented association of the newsgroups.
GNKSA is a kind of seal of approval for newsreaders. You can get more information at http://www.gnksa.org.
Somebody who is new somewhere, in relationship of usenet somebody who is new to the newsgroup, or new to usenet in general.
A kind of bulletin board in the usenet about a special topic or a group of topics. This is where you post your articles.
A program for reading and writing news.
Network News Transport Protocol. This is the protocol, which defines how the articles in the usenet are spread.
A kind of address for the application to listen for data and for connecting to another computer. The standard-port for the connection between the newsreader and the newsserver is 119.
A digital signature. You can use it to check out if the document has been changed since the signing or if it's the original text from the author.
An article which is sent to usenet or the sending itself. You are “posting” an article into a newsgroup.
This is the valuation of an article or a thread.
The signature is a personal sign of the author which is attached at the normal contents of the article. It's a kind of visiting card, very often there are e-mail addresses, a homepage URL or other personal data. The signature shouldn't be longer than 4 lines. The signature shouldn't be mixed up with the PGP-signature.
This is the overwriting of an existing article. The newsreader generates a special article with a control message in the header which tells the newsserver to overwrite the existing article with this one.
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| Notes about updating an older version of KNode | Up |
| Next | ||
| Introduction |