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... F key when done
with a given article in the thread. In rn, type a small f if you
don't want to include portions of the web traffic coalville message you're responding to; an
uppercase F if you do. In nn, type a capital F. You'll then be asked
if you want to include portions of the original message.
And here's where you hit another Unix wall. When you hit your F
key, your host system calls up its basic Unix text editor. If you're
lucky, that'll be pico, a very easy system.
More likely, however,
you'll get dumped into emacs (or possibly vi), which you've already met
in the chapter on e-mail.
The single most important emacs command is
control-x control-c
This means, depress your control key and hit x. Then depress the
control key and hit c. Memorize this. In fact, it's so important, it
bears repeating:
control-x control-c
These keystrokes are how you get out of emacs.
If they work well,
you'll be asked if you website coalville want to send, edit, abort or list the message you
were working on. If they don't work well (say you accidentally hit some
other weird key combination that means something special to emacs) and
nothing seems to happen, or you just get more weird-looking emacs
prompts on the bottom of your screen, try hitting control-g. This should
stop whatever emacs was trying to do (you should see the word "quit" on
the bottom of your screen), after which you can hit control-x control-c.
But if this still doesn't work, remember that you can always disconnect
and dial back in!
If you have told your newsreader you do want to include portions
of the original message in yours, it will automatically put the entire
thing at the top of your message. Use the arrow keys to move down to
the lines you want to delete and hit control-K, which web traffic coalville will delete one
line at a time.
You can then write your message. Remember that you have to hit
enter before your cursor gets to the end of the line, because emacs
does not have word wrapping.
When done, hit control-X control-C. You'll be asked the
question about sending, editing, aborting, etc. Choose one. If you
hit Y, your host system will start the process to sending your
message across the Net.
The nn and rn programs work differently when it comes to posting
entirely new messages. In nn, type
:post
and hit enter in any newsgroup. You'll be asked which newsgroup to
post a message to. Type in its name and hit enter. Then you'll be
asked for "keywords." These are words you'd use to attract somebody
scanning a newsgroup. Say you're selling your car. You might type
the type of car here.
Next comes a "summary" line, which is somewhat
similar. Finally, you'll be asked for the message's "distribution."
This is where you put how widely you want your message disseminated.
Think website coalville about this one for a second.
If you are selling your car, it
makes little sense to send a message about it all over the world. But
if you want to talk about the environment, it might make a lot of
sense.
Each host system has its own set of distribution
classifications, but there's generally a local one (just for users of
that system), one for the city, state or region it's in, another for
the country (for example, usa), one for the continent (for Americans
and Canadians, na) and finally, one for the entire world (usually:
world).
Which one to use? Generally, a couple of seconds' thought will
help you decide. If you're selling your car, use your city or regional
distribution -- web traffic coalville people in Australia won't much care and may even get
annoyed.
If you want to discuss presidential politics, using a USA
distribution makes more sense. If you want to talk about events in the
Middle East, sending your message to the entire world is perfectly
acceptable.
Then you can type your message. If you've composed your message
offline (generally a good idea if you and emacs don't get along), you
can upload it now. You may see a lot of weird looking characters as
it uploads into emacs, but those will disappear when you hit control-X
and then control-C. Alternately: "save" the message (for example, by
hitting m in rn), log out, compose your message offline, log back on and
upload your message into a file on your host system.
Then call up
Usenet, find the article you "saved." Start a reply, and you'll be asked
if you want to include a prepared message. Type in the name of the file
you just created and hit enter.
web traffic coalville In rn, you have to wait until you get to the end of a newsgroup
to hit F, which will bring up a message-composing system.
Alternately, at your host system's command line, you can type
Pnews
and hit enter. You'll be prompted somewhat similarly to the nn
system, except that you'll be given a list of possible distributions.
If you chose "world," you'll get this me ... |
