NN(1) UNIX System V (Release 6.5) NN(1)
NAME
nn, nn-tk - efficient net news interface (No News is good
news)
SYNOPSIS
nn [ options ] [ newsgroup | +folder | file ]...
nn-g [ -r ]
nn-a0 [ newsgroup ]...
also nn-tk
DESCRIPTION
Net news is a world-wide information exchange service
covering numerous topics in science and every day life.
Topics are organized in news groups, and these groups are
open for everybody to post articles on a subject related to
the topic of the group.
Nn is a `point-and-shoot' net news interface program, or a
news reader for short (not to be confused with the human
news reader). When you use nn, you can decide which of the
many news groups you are interested in, and you can
unsubscribe to those which don't interest you. nn will let
you read the new (and old) articles in each of the groups
you subscribe to using a menu based article selection prior
to reading the articles in the news group.
When a news group is entered, nn will locate all the
presently unread articles in the group, and extract their
sender, subject, and other relevant information. This
information is then rearranged, sorted, and marked in
various ways to give it a pleasant format when it is
presented on the screen.
When the article menu appears on the screen, nn will be in a
mode called selection mode. In this mode, the articles
which seems to be interesting can be selected by single
keystrokes (using the keys a-z and 0-9). When all the
interesting articles among the ones presently displayed have
been selected, the space bar is hit, which causes nn to
enter reading mode.
In reading mode, each of the selected articles will be
presented. You use the space bar to go on to the next page
of the current article, or to the next article. Of course,
there are all sorts of commands to scroll text up and down,
skip to the next article, responding to an article, decrypt
an article, and so on.
When all the selected articles in the current group have
been read, the last hit on the space bar will cause nn will
continue to the next group with unread articles, and enter
selection mode on that group.
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NN can (if compiled for it) to read news via NNTP as well as
local news files.
NN-TK
The TCL/TK code provides a GUI interface with command menus
and buttons.
The features include:
the use of the mouse to select articles
a scrolling panel for displaying articles
a panel displaying the article thread structure
group selection using either of scrolling panel or
cascading menus.
group sequence modification via the group list
If EXMH is available then there is also:
an internal editor for posting items
the ability to send and read MIME and PGP messages
the ability to view HTML inline (EXMH 2.0)
the ability to turn URL's into buttons for passing
to a WWW browser.
FREQUENTLY USED OPTIONS
nn accepts a lot of command line options, but here only the
frequently used options are described. Options can also be
set permanently by including appropriate variable settings
in the init file described later. All options are described
in the section on Command Line Options towards the end of
this manual.
The frequently used command line options are:
-a0 Catch up on unread articles and groups. See the
section "Catch up" below.
-A Don't read active file, instead use the .newsrc file
for the list of groups, this can be useful for slow
NNTP connections.
-g Prompt for the name of a news group or folder to be
entered (with completion).
-r Used with -g to repeatedly prompt for groups to enter.
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NN(1) UNIX System V (Release 6.5) NN(1)-lN Print only the first N lines of the first page of each
article before prompting to continue. This is useful
on slow terminals and modem lines to be able to see the
first few lines of longer articles.
-sWORD
Collect only articles which contain the string WORD in
their subject (case is ignored). This is normally
combined with the -x and -m options to find all
articles on a specific subject.
-s/regexp
Collect only articles whose subject matches the regular
expression regexp. This is normally combined with the
-x and -m options to find all articles on a specific
subject.
-nWORD or -n/regexp
Same as -s except that it matches on the sender's name
instead of the article's subject. This is normally
combined with the -x and -m options to find all
articles from a specific author. It cannot be mixed
with the -s option!
-i Normally searches with -n and -s are case independent.
Using this option, the case becomes significant.
-m Merge all articles into one `meta group' instead of
showing them one group at a time. This is normally
used together with the -x and -s options to get all the
articles on a specific subject presented on a single
menu (when you don't care about which group they belong
to). When -m is used, no articles will be marked as
read.
-R host
Connect to the specified NNTP server
-x[N]
Present (or scan) all (or the last N) unread as well as
read articles. When this option is used, nn will never
mark unread articles as read (i.e. .newsrc is not
updated).
-X Read/scan unsubscribed groups also. Most useful when
looking for a specific subject in all groups, e.g.
nn-mxX -sSubject all
news.group or file or +folder
If none of these arguments are given, all subscribed
news groups will be used. Otherwise, only the
specified news groups and/or files will be collected
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and presented. In specifying a news groups, the
following `meta notation' can be used:
If the news group ends with a `.' (or `.all'), all
subgroups of the news group will be collected, e.g.
comp.sources.
If a news group starts with a `.' (or `all.'), all the
matching subgroups will be collected, e.g.
.sources.unix
The argument `all' identifies all (subscribed) news
groups.
COMMAND INPUT
In general, nn commands consist of one or two key-strokes,
and nn reacts instantly to the commands you give it; you
don't have to enter return after each command (except where
explicitly stated).
Some commands have more serious effects than others, and
therefore nn requests you to confirm the command. You
confirm by hitting the the y key, and reject by hitting the
n key. Some `trivial' requests may also be confirmed simply
by hitting space. For example, to confirm the creation of a
save file, just hit space, but if one or more directories
also have to be created, you must enter y.
Many commands will require that you enter a line of text,
e.g. a file name or a shell command. If you enter space as
the first character on a line, the line will be filled with
a default value (if one is defined). For example, the
default value for a file name is the last file name you have
entered, and the default shell command is your previous
shell command. You can edit this default value as well as a
directly typed text, using the following editing commands.
The erase, kill, and interrupt keys are the keys defined by
the current tty settings. On systems without job control,
the suspend key will be control-Z while it is the current
suspend character on system with job control.
erase
Delete the last character on the line.
delete-word (normally ^W)
Delete the last word or component of the input.
kill
Delete all characters on the line.
interrupt and control-G
Cancel the command which needs the input.
suspend
Suspend nn if supported by the system. Otherwise,
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spawn an interactive shell.
return
Terminate the line, and continue with the command.
Related variables: erase-key, flow-control, flush-
typeahead, help-key, kill-key, word-key.
BASIC COMMANDS
There are numerous commands in nn, and most of them can be
invoked by a single keystroke. The descriptions in this
manual are based on the standard bindings of the commands to
the keys, but it is possible to customize these using the
map command described later. For each of the keystroke
commands described in this manual, the corresponding command
name will also be shown in curly braces, e.g. {command}.
The following commands work in both selection mode and in
reading mode. The notation ^X means `control X':
? {help}
Help. Gives a one page overview of the commands
available in the current mode.
^L {redraw}
Redraw screen.
^R {redraw}
Redraw screen (Same as ^L).
^P {message}
Repeat the last message shown on the message line. The
command can be repeated to successively show previous
messages (the maximum number of saved messages is
controlled via the message-history variable.)
! {shell}
Shell escape. The user is prompted for a command which
is executed by your favorite shell (see the shell
variable). Shell escapes are described in detail later
on.
Q {quit}
Quit nn. When you use this command, you neither lose
unread articles in the current group nor the selections
you might have made (unless the articles are expired in
the meantime of course).
V {version}
Print release and version information.
:command {command}
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Execute the command by name. This form can be used to
invoke any of nn's commands, also those which cannot be
bound to a key (such as :coredump), or those which are
not bound to a key by default (such as post and
unshar).
Related and basic variables: backup, backup-suffix,
confirm-auto-quit, expert, mail, message-history, new-
group-action, newsrc, quick-count.
SELECTION MODE
In selection mode, the screen is divided into four parts:
the header line showing the name of the news group and the
number of articles, the menu lines which show the collected
articles - one article per line, the prompt line where you
enter commands, and the message line where nn prints various
messages to you.
Each menu line begins with an article id which is a unique
letter (or digit if your screen can show more than 26 menu
lines). To select an articles for reading, you simply enter
the corresponding id, and the menu line will be high-lighted
to indicate that the article is selected. When you have
selected all the interesting articles on the present menu,
you simply hit space.
If there are more articles collected for the current group
than could be presented on one screenfull of text, you will
be presented with the next portion of articles to select
from. When you have had the opportunity to select among all
the articles in the group, hitting space will enter reading
mode.
If no articles have been selected in the current group,
hitting space will enter selection mode on the next news
group, or exit nn if the current group was the last news
group with unread articles. It is thus possible to go
through ALL unread articles (without reading any of them)
just by hitting space a few times.
The articles will be presented on the menu using one of the
following layouts:
0: x Name......... Subject.............. +123
1: x Name......... 123 Subject..............
2: x 123 Subject...................................
3: x Subject...........................................
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4: x Subject........................................
Here x is the letter or digit that must be entered to select
the article, Name is the real name of the sender (or the
mail address if the real name cannot be found), Subject is
the contents of the "Subject:" line in the article, and 123
is the number of lines in the article.
Layout 0 and 1 are just two ways to present the same
information, while layout 2 and 3 are intended for groups
whose articles have very long subject lines, e.g.
comp.sources.
Layout 4 is a hybrid between layout 1 and 3. It will
normally use layout 1, but it will use layout 3 (with a
little indentation) for menu lines where the subject is
longer than the space available with layout 1.
Layout 1 is the default layout, and an alternative menu line
layout is selected using the -L option or by setting the
layout variable. Once nn is started the layout can be
changed at any time using the " key {layout}.
The Name is limited to 16 characters, and to make maximum
use of this space, nn will perform a series of
simplifications on the name, e.g. changing first names into
initials, removing domain names from mail addresses (if the
real name is not found) etc. It does a good job, but some
people on the net put weird things into the From: field (or
actually into their password file) which result in nn
producing quite cryptic, and sometimes funny "names".
One a usual 80 column terminal, the Subject is limited to
about 60 characters (75 in layout 3) and is thus only an
approximation to the actual subject line which may be much
longer. To get as much out of this space, Re: prefixes (in
various forms) are recognized and replaced by a single `>'
character (see the re-layout variable).
Since articles are sorted according to the subject, two or
more adjacent articles may share the same subject (ignoring
any `>'s). In this case, only the first article will show
the subject of the article; the rest will only show the `>'
character in the subject field (or a `-' if there is no `>'
at the beginning of the line). A typical menu will thus
only show each subject once, saving a lot of time in
scanning the news articles.
If consolidated menus (see section below) are enabled,
adjacent articles sharing the same subject will be shown
with a single line on the menu corresponding to the first of
the articles. The number of articles with the same subject
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will be shown as a bracketed number in front of the subject,
e.g. with layout 1:
x Name......... 123 [4] Subject..............
For further information see the section on consolidated
menus below.
Related variables: collapse-subject, columns, confirm-
entry, confirm-entry-limit, entry-report-limit, fsort, kill,
layout, limit, lines, long-menu, re-layout, repeat, slow-
mode, sort, sort-mode, split, subject-match-limit, subject-
match-offset, subject-match-parts, subject-match-minimum.
NN-TK USE
NN-TK follows the NN reading method where all the desired
articles of each group are selected and then read, all the
normal NN keys and commands can be used. The left mouse
button can be used for selecting articles and dragged to
select a range of articles. The PAGE buttons are the
equivalent of SPACE key and provides paging through groups,
subject and articles reading any selected articles. The
right mouse button is used for the immediate reading of
selected articles
The mouse button usage
Dragging Mouse-button-2 will scroll text windows, entries
and lists.
Mouse-button-2 in an entry field will paste in the X
selection
Drag Mouse-button-1 for selection, dragging it outside
the widget scrolls the widget
Shift-Mouse-button-1 will extend the selection
EMACS commands work on entry and text areas
NN-TK MAIN WINDOW
The main window is divided into the article menu and article
display, with the group list window optionally attached to
left side.
For a lot of nn functions that require a dialog a popup will
appear at the top of the main menu and provide text based
interaction, it also provides progress reporting for various
activities such a decoding uuencoded articles. Some
functions such as posting have their own specialized popups.
The are small square handles on the borders between the
panels and these can be dragged with the left mouse button
to change the relative size of the panels. These changes can
be save with the "Save window geometry" menu option, the
exception is the border between the article display and
group menu panels, those changes will only be saved if the
middle mouse button is used to do the dragging.
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ARTICLE SELECTION
Articles can be selected either by normal nn methods
(the characters a-z 0-9) or by the left mouse button.
Dragging with the button depressed selects a range of
articles.
The right mouse button selects an article and goes into
immediate read mode
TOP ROW
The top row of buttons (apart from quit) are popup
menus.
Groups
cascading menus of all news groups.
Setup
nn-tk configuration menu
Save Window Geometry
save the size/position of any currently
displayed windows
Key bindings
Set the key bindings for the EXMH simple
editor and Entry widget
Exmh option
set the EXMH options. Help available by
clicking on the labels
Simple Editor
options for the internal editor
MIME Multi-purpose Internet Mail Extension
processing options
WWW options for calling WWW browsers
FS Box
options for file requester used with
internal editor
PGP interface
configuring the use of PGP for encrypted
messages
NN-TK General
config options. Help is displayed on top
panel when mouse is on an item.
NN-TK Group List
options to do with the group list
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NN-TK Group Cascade Menu
options to do with cascading group menus
NN variables
alter nn variables, these changes are stored
in ~/.nn/tk-init-nn and override the settings
in ~/.nn/init. These variables are divided
into a number of groups, also (all) is to
access all the nn variables and the
(modified) for just those that are different
from the default
user command menu
define labels and commands for USER menu
Color group list
allows entries in the group list to be colored if
they match specified strings.
article
functions related to single articles
Post news
Post a news article
Followup news
Followup a news article
Mail article
Mail a news article to someone
Mail reply
Reply to a news article via mail
Process articles
Turn URLs into Buttons
Scan the news item and turn anything
that looks like a URL into buttons that
call up a WWW browser to fetch that
item.
Treat selection as URL
Pass the current selection to a WWW
browser
View using PGP
Process the current article with PGP to
decode or verify signature
decode, patch, print, unshar
Pass the article for the given
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processing
Save articles
Save the article to a file
misc Misc functions that can be applied to an
article
menu functions related to article selection menu
sort type
Sort the article menu according to various
criteria
consolidated menu
Collapse/expand all items with the same
subject to/from a single menu item
menu mode
various nn function do with the article menu
menu misc
misc nn functions
functs
reload groups
Update the groups list by rereading the
active file
make window
Popup the folder window or the group list if
it is a separate window.
define Kill/Select
Article auto kill/select setup. This puts up
an option for editing the kill file plus a
menu of short-cuts applying to the current
article and group, the menu is defined in
nn-defaults and has entries like "kill all
articles in the current group with less than
100 lines"
For editing the group file a panel is poped up
containing the kill file entries, these can be
deleted, added to or edited using a window that is
a GUI interface to the fields in the kill file
entry.
cancel articles
Cancel articles you have sent
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unsubscribe group
previous message
Display previous nn error messages
USER
user definable menu
info Various information and help functions
nn-tk Help
nn-tk specific help items
nn Help
general nn help items
show info
various nn information items
Compose key sequences
Description of sequences for entering non
ASCII characters using the internal editor
Man Access the nn man page as a set of news items
TOP MODE LINE
As well as displaying NN group information this line
can also be configured to display NNTP transfer
information (compressed_prompt NN-TK config option).
MIDDLE MODE LINE
As well as displaying NN article information this line
can also be configured to display the NN user prompts.
The middle mouse button can be used to pased the
current X selection into this line where it will act as
if it had been typed in.
MIDDLE ROW
The middle row of buttons are related to the articles
menu panel
PrevG
return to previous group read
< previous page of article menu
= return to article selection menu mode
> next page of article menu
read/skip
read items if any have been selected otherwise
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skip group
nextG
leave group while not marking the articles as read
PAGE same as the NN space key, pages through articles,
pages through article menu, if at end do a
read/skip
NOTE This version of NN is still somewhat modal, if there is
a dark highlighted article in the the article menu NN
is in reading mode, otherwise it is in article
selection mode. The = button goes from article mode to
menu mode. It is generally not necessary
BOTTOM ROW
The bottom row of buttons deal with the article
display.
Opts This is a menu for toggling some options
temporarily
Mono font
Use a mono-space font for displaying the
article
Ballon Help
Turn on Balloon Help for the buttons
Prefetch articles
Turn on article and group information
prefetching
Searching panel
Search the articles backwards or forwards
leave
Leave the current article marked as still unread.
n-subj
skip articles in with current subject
previous
previous article
next skip current article
PAGE as above
ALL This button is created if the article is longer
than the configured length for displaying at once
or it has page breaks in it, pressing it causes
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the entire article to be displayed.
NN-TK Thread Display
This panel displays the tree of articles in discussion
threads created by followups to previous articles. Each
article is represented by a box containing the initials of
the sender. The article currently being read has its box
filled in.
The thread structure is worked out from the References:
headers. NN-TK attempts to reconstruct the thread structure
even if some of the earlier articles have expired. Articles
for which there is no information are shown as empty boxes,
articles that are excluded for reasons such as kill files
are shown as boxes with dashes in them. Selected articles
are indicated by a thicker border on the box.
The left mouse button can be used to toggle the
selected state of an article by clicking on the box.
Dragging the left mouse button will produce green box which
selects all articles in the box. Dragging the right mouse
button will produce a red box which unselects all articles
in the box.
NN-TK usually doesn't retrieve the information for
articles that have already been read, so these don't appear
in the thread display.
NN-TK Group List
Mouse button 1 is used to select the group to jump
to, this pops up a menu which has options for jumping to the
group, jumping while marking the current group as read,
jumping and displaying all articles etc. Jumping can be
canceled with ^G.
The first column of numbers indicates the number of
unread articles in each group. If the NN-TK option
group_list_all is set there is a second number in
parentheses which is the total number of articles in the
group, read or unread. The red N indicates a new group, the
blue U an unsubscribed group and a green | indicates the
groups who's sequence is set via the modify panel.
The modify button brings up the group list modify
panel. The text entry with the forward and backward buttons
is used to search the group list.
NN-TK Modify Group List
This panel allows the group list to be used for
subscribing and unsubscribing and also changing the group
order.
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Manipulate Selection
The groups in the group list can be selected
with mouse button 1. The Select button will select all
groups who's names contain the string in the text
field. The Clear Selection button will unselect all
groups.
Subscription
The Subscribe button subscribes to all selected
groups the unSubscribe button unsubscribes all selected
groups.
Clear new
This clears the newgroup status of a group
Move Groups
Mouse button 3 can be used to paste the
selected groups to a different position in the group
list (see NN variable newsrc-sequence). The Put First
button moves the selected groups to the start of the
group list. The Put Last button moves the selected
groups to the end of the group list. The Put Before
button moves the selected group to before the first
groups who's name is matched by the contents of the
entry.
NN-TK SEDIT
This is the EXMH built-in editor, sedit, it has a dozen or
so commonly used editing operations bound to keystrokes.
These are Emacs-like, but you can change them from within
the editor through the "Key bindings" dialog available under
the main "Setup" menu. In addition, the editor has a number
of buttons and menu entries used to manipulate your draft
messages.
Abort
This deletes the draft message and removes the editor
window.
Help This button brings up a window with a short explanation
of the editor.
Sign This appends your ~/.signature file to the draft. If
this file is instead an executable script or program,
it is executed in order to generate the signature.
Sign...
If you have multiple files that match the ~/.signature*
pattern, the Sign button is replaced with a menu of
possibilities. If you choose the autoSign Simple
Editor Preference, then this menu is used to choose
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which signature file (or program) is used when
automatically signing the message as it gets posted.
Send When you are done with the message, click Send.
Text...
This menu is used to add bold, italic, underline, etc.
to your messages. This results in a MIME message of
type text/enriched. The formatting commands are
supposed to be palatable to a non-MIME reader, but you
may want to take this into consideration. If you
disable the "Format mail" setting (described below),
the looks are discarded before sending the message.
More...
This menu contains a few entries for less common
operations. They are:
Keep on send
This is a checkbox menu item that is off (un-
highlighted) by default. If selected it prevents the
editor window from disappearing after you send or abort
a message. This is useful if you'd like to compose a
few similar messages. (I also use it to debug the
enriched text formatter.)
Format mail
This is a checkbox menu item that is enabled
(highlighted) by default. Formatting means to break
long lines (> 80 characters). This is done as the file
is saved, not as you type. So, while the Tk text
widget does line wrapping while you enter text, sedit
does not break these lines until you go to send the
message. If you insert a file into a message that has
critical formatting, you may want to disable the Format
option.
Quote Printable
If this is selected, then any text MIME parts are run
through the quoted-printable encoder to wrap up 8-bit
characters in a 7-bit safe encoding. The Quoted
Printable default preference setting under Simple
Editor can be set to automatic, never, or always. In
automatic mode, quoting is enabled when you enter a
Compose key sequence to generate an 8-bit character.
Insert File...
This brings up a dialog box that lets you insert a file
into the message.
Insert Part...
This is similar to Insert File, except that it creates
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a MIME multipart message structure to wrap up the
inserted file. It tries to determine the type of the
file based on nametemplate entries in the metamail
mailcap description file. It presents a dialog that
lets you override the type, add a Content-Description,
and choose an encoding for the file. When you insert
the first Part of a message you are asked whether or
not to save the existing message body. If you save it,
it becomes the text/plain first part of the multipart
message.
Insert External...
This sets up an Message/External-Body MIME message
part. This is useful for sending around pointers to
files available via FTP or on your local file system.
Insert PGP Keys...
Insert your PGP keys into the mail message..
Spell...
This runs the UNIX spell command over the draft body
and puts the results into a second pane inside the
editor window. That's all - nothing fancy.
Find SEL
This searches the draft for the current X selection.
The intent is that you select misspelled words in the
output of the spell command and use this menu entry to
locate them in the draft.
Save Buffer
This saves the editor buffer into a file in your drafts
folder. Most likely you really want the "Keep on Send"
function instead of Save, because that function
preserves the draft after you send it, while ordinarily
(in spite of "Save") MH will rename the draft after you
send it.
Mime Preview
This displays the message as it will appear when an
exmh user receives it. A detached top-level window is
used, as with message Clip.
PGP...
This is a menu of options that use the Pretty Good
Privacy package to to encryption and authentication.
An explanation of PGP is beyond the scope of this
manual. This works by inserting a header into your
message that indicates what action to do. The actual
encryption or whatever is done after you hit the Send
button. If you use an external editor you can insert
the headers in that, and exmh will run your message
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through PGP for you when you send it. The four
supported headers are: pgp-action: signclear pgp-
action: signbinary pgp-action: encrypt pgp-action:
encryptsign
ARTICLE ATTRIBUTES
While nn is running and between invocations, nn associates
an attribute with each article on your system. These
attributes are used to differentiate between read and unread
articles, selected articles, articles marked for later
treatment, etc. Depending on how nn is configured, these
attributes can be saved between invocations of nn, or some
of them may only be used while nn is running.
The attribute is shown on the menu using either a single
character following the article id or by high-lighting the
menu line, depending on the attribute and the capabilities
of the terminal. You can also change the attributes to your
own taste (see the attributes variable).
The attribute of an article can be changed explicitly using
the selection mode commands described below, or it will
change automatically for example when you have read or saved
a selected article. If a command may change any article
attributes, it will be noted in the description of the
command. The following descriptions of the attributes will
only mention the most important commands that may set (or
preserve) the attribute.
The following attributes may be associated with an article:
read Menu attribute "." - indicates that the article has
been read or saved. When you leave the group, these
articles will be marked permanently read, and are not
presented the next time you enter the group.
seen Menu attribute "," - indicates that the article is
unread, but that it has been presented on a menu.
Depending on how nn is configured, these articles will
automatically be marked read when you leave the group,
they may remain seen, or they may just be unread the
next time you enter the group (see the auto-junk-seen,
confirm-junk-seen, and retain-seen-status variables).
Only the commands continue (space) and read-skip (X)
will mark unread articles on the current (or all) menu
pages as seen when they are used. Other commands that
scroll through the menu pages or enter reading mode
will let unread articles remain unread.
unread
Menu attribute " " - indicates an unread article.
These articles were unread when you entered the group,
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and they may remain unread when you leave the group,
unless they have been marked seen by the command that
you used to leave the group or enter reading mode.
selected
Menu line high-lighted (or menu attribute "*") -
indicates that you have selected the article. If you
leave the group, the selected articles will remain
selected the next time you enter the group. When you
have read a selected article, the attribute will
automatically change to read.
auto-selected
These articles have the same appearance as selected
articles on the menu, and the only difference is that
these articles have been selected automatically via the
auto-selection facility rather than manually by you.
Very few commands differentiate between these
attributes and if they do, it is explicitly stated in
this manual. The main difference is that these
articles are only marked as unread when you leave the
group (supposing they will also be auto-selected the
next the group is entered). This simplifies the
house-keeping between invocations of nn.
leave
Menu attribute "+" - indicates that the article is
marked for later treatment by the leave-article (l)
command. These articles may be selected (on demand)
when you have read all selected articles in a group.
However, if you do not select them then immediately,
they are stored as the leave-next attribute described
below.
leave-next
Menu attribute "=" - indicates that the article is
marked for later treatment by the leave-next (L)
command. This is a permanent attribute, which will
remain on the article until you either read the
article, change the attribute, or it is expired. So
assigning this attribute to an article will effectively
keep it unread until you do something. If the variable
select-leave-next is set, nn will ask whether these
articles should be selected on entry to a group (but
naturally, doing so will change the leave-next
attribute to select).
canceled
Menu attribute "#" - indicates that the article has
been canceled. This is mainly useful when tidying a
folder; it is set by the cancel (C) command, and can be
cleared by any command that change attributes, e.g. you
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can select and deselect the article.
killed
Menu attribute "!" - indicates that the article has
been killed (e.g. by the K {kill-select} command).
Killed articles are immediately removed from the menu,
so you should not normally see articles with this
attribute. If you do, report it as a bug!
The attributes are saved in two files: .newsrc (read
articles) and .nn/select (other attributes). Plain unread
articles are saved by not occurring in either of these
files. Both files are described in more detail later on.
Related variables: attributes, auto-junk-seen, confirm-
junk-seen, retain-seen-status, select-leave-next.
SELECTION MODE COMMANDS
The primary purpose of the selection mode is of course to
select the articles to be read, but numerous other commands
may also be performed in this mode: saving of articles in
files, replying and following up on articles,
mailing/forwarding articles, shell escapes etc.
As described above, the selected articles are marked either
by showing the corresponding menu line in standout mode
(reverse video), or if the terminal does not have this
capability by placing an asterisk (*) after the selection
letter or digit.
Most commands which are used to select articles will work as
toggle commands. If the article is not already selected,
the selectedattribute on the article(s), independent on the
previous attribute. Otherwise, the article(s) will be
deselected and marked unread. Consequently, any article can
be marked unread simply be selecting and deselecting it.
During selection, the cursor will normally be placed on the
article following the last article whose attribute was
changed (initially the first article). The article pointed
out by the cursor is called the current article, and the
following commands work relative to the current article and
cursor position.
abc...z 01..9 {article N}
The article with the given identification letter or
digit is selected or deselected. The following article
becomes the current article. If the variable auto-
select-subject is set, all articles with the same
subject as the given article are selected.
. {select}
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Select or deselect the current article and move the
cursor to the next article.
, {line+1}
Move the cursor to the next article. You can use the
down arrow as well.
/ {line-1}
Move cursor to previous article. You can use the up
arrow as well.
* {select-subject}
Select or deselect all articles with same subject as
current article. This will work across several menu
pages if necessary.
-x {select-range}
Select or deselect the range of articles between the
current article and the article specified by x. For
example you can select all articles from e to k by
simply typing e-k.
The following commands may change the attributes on all
articles on the current menu page, or on all articles on all
menu pages.
@ {select-invert}
Reverse selections. All selected articles on the
current page are deselected, and vice-versa. (Use the
find command to select all articles.)
~ {unselect-all}
Deselect all auto-selected articles in the group (this
works across all menu pages). If the command is
executed twice, the selected articles will also be
deselected.
+ {select-auto}
Perform auto-selections in the group (see the section
on "auto kill/select" below).
= {find}
Prompts for a regular expression, and selects all
articles on the menu (all pages) which matches the
regular expression. Depending on the variable select-
on-sender matching is performed against the subject
(default) or the sender of the articles. An empty
answer (= return) will reuse the previous expression.
Example: The command = . return will select all
articles in the group.
J {junk-articles}
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This is a very versatile command which can be used to
perform all sorts of attribute changes, either on
individual articles, all articles on the current menu
page, all articles with a specific attribute, or all
available articles. To access all the functions of
this command, the J key may have to be hit up to four
times, to loop through different one-line menus. The
full functionality of the junk-articles command is
described in a separate section below.
L {leave-next}
This is a specialized version of the generic J {junk-
articles} command to set the leave-next attribute on a
subset of the articles on the menu. It is also
described further below.
The following commands move between the pages belonging to
the same news group when there are more articles than will
fit on a single page. These commands will not change any
article attributes.
> {page+1}
Goto next menu page.
< {page-1}
Goto previous menu page, or to last menu page if on
first menu page.
$ {page=$}
Goto last menu page.
^ {page=1}
Goto first menu page.
The following commands are used to enter reading mode for
the selected articles, and to move between news groups (in
selection mode). They may change article attributes if
noted below.
space {continue}
Continue to next menu page, or if on last menu page,
read the selected articles. If no articles have been
selected, continue to the next news group. The unread
articles on the current menu page will automatically be
marked seen.
return {continue-no-mark}
Identical to the continue command, except that the
unread articles on the current menu page will remain
unread. (The newline key has the same effect).
Z {read-return}
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Enter reading mode immediately with the currently
selected articles. When all articles have been read,
return to selection mode in the current group. It will
mark selected articles read as they are read, but
unread articles are not normally changed (can be
controlled with the variable marked-by-read-return.)
X {read-skip}
Mark all unmarked articles seen on all menu pages (or
the pages defined by the marked-by-read-skip variable),
and enter reading mode immediately with the currently
selected articles. As the selected articles are read,
they are marked read. When all selected articles have
been read, nn will enter selection mode in the next
news group. When no articles are selected, it goes
directly to the next group. This can be used to skip
all the articles in a large news group without having
to go through all the menu pages.
If you don't want to read the current group now, but want to
keep it for later, you can use the following commands which
will only mark seen and read articles as read. Currently
selected articles will still be selected the next time you
enter the group. None of these commands will change any
attributes themselves (by default).
N {next-group}
Go forward to the next group in the presentation
sequence. If the variable marked-by-next-group is set
articles on the menu can optionally be marked seen
P {previous}
Go back to the previous group. This command will enter
selection mode on the last active group (two P commands
in sequence will bring you to the current group). If
there are still some unread articles in the group, only
those articles will be shown. Otherwise, all the
articles which were unread when nn was invoked will be
shown marked with the read attribute (which can be
changed as usual).
As described in the "Article Attributes" section, the read
and seen articles will normally be marked read when you
leave the group, and these articles are not shown the next
time you enter the group.
In all releases prior to release 6.4, it was impossible to
have individual articles in a group marked unread when you
left a group, and the default behavior of release 6.4
onwards will closely match the traditional behavior. This
means that the seen and read articles are treated alike for
most practical purposes with the default variable settings.
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If you don't like nn to silently mark the seen articles
read, you can set the variable confirm-junk-seen to get nn
to prompt you for confirmation before doing this, or you can
unset the variable auto-junk-seen to simply keep the seen
articles for the next time you enter the group. You then
have to use the J {junk-articles} to mark articles read.
Using return {continue-no-mark} will also allow you to keep
articles unread rather than marking them seen when scrolling
through the menu pages and entering reading mode. If this
is your preferred reading style, you can remap space to this
command.
Other commands
{reload}
Update group information by rereading active file
Related variables: auto-junk-seen, auto-preview-mode,
auto-select-subject, case-fold-search, confirm-auto-quit,
confirm-entry, confirm-junk-seen, marked-by-next-group,
marked-by-read-return, marked-by-read-skip, retain-seen-
status, select-on-sender.
CONSOLIDATED MENUS
Normally, nn will use one menu line for each article, so if
there are many articles with identical subjects, each menu
page will only contain a few different subjects. To have
each subject occur only once on the menu, nn can operate
with consolidated menus by setting the variable
consolidated-menu.
When consolidated menus are used, nn operates with two kinds
of subjects: open and closed.
An open subject is a subject which is shown in the
traditional way with one menu line for each article with the
given subject. In other words, when consolidated menus are
not used, all subjects are open (by default).
A closed subject is a multi-article subject which is
presented by a single menu line. This line will be the
normal menu line for the first (oldest) article with the
subject, but with the subject field annotated with a
bracketed number showing the number of articles with that
subject, e.g.
a Kim F. Storm 12 [4] Future plans for nn
b.Kim F. Storm 43 [3] More plans for nn
In this example, there are four unread articles with subject
`a' of which the first is posted by me and has 12 lines.
The rest of the articles are hidden, and will only be shown
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on request. The `.' marker on subject `b' shows that all
three articles within that subject have been read (or seen).
To select (or deselect) ALL the articles within a closed
subject, simply select the article shown on the menu; this
will automatically select (or deselect) the rest (see auto-
select-closed). When all the unread articles within a
closed subject are selected, the menu line will be high-
lighted.
If you want to view the individual articles in a subject
(maybe to select individual articles), you can open the
subject with the commands:
(x Open subject x on menu.
(( Open current subject.
When you have completed viewing the opened subject, you can
close it again using the commands:
)x Close subject x on menu (x is any article with the
subject).
)) Close current subject.
In the basic layout of the menu line for a closed subject as
shown above, ALL articles in the closed subject are supposed
to be either:
unread
The menu line is not high-lighted.
selected
Menu line is fully high-lighted (if all UNREAD are
selected).
read/seen
There is a `.' (read attribute) following the article
id.
If neither of these cases apply, i.e. there is a mixture of
unread, selected, and seen/read articles, the bracketed
number will have one of the following formats:
[U:T]
There are U unread articles of T total (U<T).
[S/T]
There are S selected articles of T total (S<U=T).
[S/U:T]
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There are S selected of U unread of T total (S<U<T).
If there are any selected articles (S>0), the information
between the brackets will be high-lighted (to show that
something is selected, but not all the unread articles).
Notice: Consolidated menus only work with the `subject',
`thread-lexical'and `lexical' sorting methods.
Variables related to consolidated menus are: auto-select-
closed, consolidated-menu, counter-delim-left, counter-
delim-right, counter-padding, save-closed-mode.
THE JUNK-ARTICLES AND LEAVE-NEXT COMMANDS
The J {junk-articles} command is a very flexible command
which can perform all sorts of attribute changes, either on
individual articles, all articles on the current menu page,
all articles with a specific attribute, or all available
articles.
To access all the functions of this command, the J key may
have to be hit up to four times, to loop through different
one-line menus:
Mark Read
This submenu allows you to mark articles read.
Unmark
This submenu allows you to mark articles unread.
Select
This submenu allows you to select articles based on
their attribute.
Kill This submenu allows you to mark articles read and
remove them from the menu based on their attribute.
The L {leave-next} command is an extension of the J command
with a fifth menu:
Leave
This menu allows you to mark articles for later
handling with the leave-next attribute which will keep
the article unread until you explicitly change the
attribute (e.g. by reading it) or it is expired.
For each of these submenus, nn will list the most plausible
choices you may use, but all of the following answers can be
used at all submenus. When you have entered a choice, nn
will afterward ask whether the change should be made to all
menu pages or only the current page.
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J Show next submenu.
L Change attribute on all leave articles.
N Change attribute on all leave-next articles.
R Change attribute on all read articles.
S Change attribute on all seen articles.
U Change attribute on all unmarked (i.e. unread)
articles.
A Change attribute on all articles no matter their
current attribute.
* Change attribute on all selected articles on the
current page.
+ Change attribute on all selected articles on all pages.
a-z0-9
Change attribute on one or more specific articles on
the current page. You end the list of articles by a
space or by using one of the other choices described
above.
Change attribute on current article.
, / Move the current article down or up the menu without
changing any attributes.
READING MODE COMMANDS
In reading mode, the selected articles are presented one
page at a time. To get the next page of an article, simply
hit space, and when you are on the last page of an article,
hit space to get to the next selected article. Articles are
normally marked read when you go to the next article, while
going back to the menu, quitting nn, etc. will retain the
attribute on the current article.
When you are on the last page of the last article, hit space
to enter selection mode on the next group (or the current
group if reading mode was entered using the Z command).
To read an article, the following text scrolling commands
are available:
space {continue}
Scroll one page forward or continue with the next
article or group as described above.
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backspace / delete {page-1}
Go one page backwards in article.
d {page+1/2}
Scroll one half page forward.
u {page-1/2}
Go one half page backwards.
return {line+1}
Scroll one line forward in the article.
tab {skip-lines}
Skip over lines starting with the same character as the
last line on the current page. This is useful to skip
over included text or to the next file in a shell
archive.
^ {page=1}
Move to the first page (excluding the header) of the
article.
$ {page=$}
Move to the last page of the article.
gN {line=@}
Move to line N in the article.
/regexp {find}
Search forward for text matching the regular expression
regexp in the article. If a matching text is found, it
will be high-lighted.
. {find-next}
Repeat search for last regular expression.
h {page=0}
Show the header of the article, and continue from the
top of the article.
H {full-digest}
If the current article is extracted from a digest, show
the entire digest article including its header.
Another H command will return to the current
subarticle.
D {rot13}
Turn rot13 (caesar) decryption on and off for the
current article, and redraw current page. If the
article is saved while it is decrypted on the screen,
it will be saved in decrypted form as well!
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c {compress}
Turn compression on and off for the current article and
redraw current page. With compression turned on,
multiple spaces and tabs are shown as a single space.
This makes it much easier to read right justified text
which separate words with several spaces. (See also
the compress variable)
The following commands are used to move among the selected
articles.
n {next-article}
Move to next selected article. This command skips the
rest of the current article, marks it read, and jumps
directly to the first page of the next selected article
(or to the next group if it was the last selected
article).
l {leave-article}
Mark the current article with the leave attribute and
continue with the next selected article. When all the
selected articles in the current group have been read,
these left over articles can be automatically selected
and shown once more, or the treatment can be postponed
to the next time you enter the group.
This is particularly useful if you see an article
which you may want to respond to unless one the
following articles is already saying what you intended
to say.
L {leave-next}
Mark the current article with the leave-next attribute
and continue with the next selected article.
p {previous}
Goto previous article.
k {next-subject}
Kill subject. Skips rest of current article, and all
following articles with the same subject. The skipped
articles are marked read. To kill a subject
permanently use the K command.
* {select-subject}
Show next article with same subject (even if it is not
selected). This command will select all following
articles with the same subject as the current article
(similar to the `*' command in selection mode). This
can be used to select only the first article on a
subject in selection mode, and then select all follow-
ups in reading mode if you find the article
interesting.
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a {advance-article}
Goto the following article on the menu even if it is
not selected. This command skips the rest of the
current article and jumps directly to the first page of
the next article (it will not skip to the next group if
it is the last article). The attribute on the current
article will be restored, except for the unread
attribute which will be changed to seen.
b {back-article}
Goto the article before current article on the menu
even if it is not selected. This is similar to the a
command, except for the direction.
The following commands perform an immediate return from
reading mode to selection mode in the current group or skip
to the next group.
= {goto-menu}
Return to selection mode in the current group (think of
= as the "icon" of the selection menu). The articles
read so far will be marked read.
N {next-group}
Skip the rest of the selected and unread articles in
the current group and go directly to the next group.
Only the read (and seen) articles in the current group
are marked as read.
X {read-skip}
Mark all articles in the current group as read and go
directly to the next group. (You will be asked to
confirm this command.)
Related variables: case-fold-search, charset, compress,
data-bits, date, header-lines, mark-overlap, monitor,
overlap, scroll-clear-page, stop, trusted-escape-codes,
wrap-header-margin.
PREVIEWING ARTICLES IN SELECTION MODE
In selection mode, it is possible to read a specific article
on the menu without entering reading mode for all the
selected articles on the menu. Using the commands described
below will enter reading mode for one article only, and then
return to the menu mode immediately after (depending on the
setting of the preview-continuation variable).
If there are more than 5 free lines at the bottom of the
menu screen, nn will use that space to show the article (a
minimal preview window can be permanently allocated with the
window variable). Otherwise, the screen will be cleared to
show the article.
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After previewing an article, it will be marked read (if the
preview-mark-read variable is set), and the following
article will become the current article.
%x {preview}
Preview article x.
%% {preview}
Preview the current article.
When the article is being shown, the following reading mode
commands are very useful:
= {goto-menu}
Skip the rest of the current article, and return to
menu mode.
n {next-article}
Skip the rest of the current article, and preview the
next article.
l {leave-article}
Mark the article as selected (!) on the menu for
handling later on. Then skip the rest of the current
article, and preview the next article.
%y {preview}
Preview article y .
If the variable auto-preview-mode is set, just hitting the
article id in menu mode will enter preview mode on the
specified article.
Related variables: auto-preview-mode, min-window, preview-
continuation, preview-mark-read, window.
SAVING ARTICLES
The following commands are used to save articles in files,
unpack archives, decode binaries, etc. It is possible to
use the commands in both reading mode to save the current
article and in selection mode to save one or more articles
on the menu.
The saved articles will be appended to the specified file(s)
followed by an empty line each. Both files and directories
will be created as needed. When an article has been saved
in a file, a message reporting the number of lines saved
will be shown if the save-report variable is set (default
on).
S {save-full}
Save articles including the full article header.
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O {save-short}
Save articles with a short header containing only the
name of the sender, the subject, and the posting date
of the article.
W {save-body}
Write article without a header.
:print {print}
Print article. Instead of a file name, this command
will prompt for the print command to which the current
article will be piped. The default print command is
specified at compile time, but it can be changed by
setting the printer variable. The output will be
identical to that of the O command.
:patch {patch}
Send articles through patch(1) (or the program defined
in the patch-command variable). Instead of a file
name, you will be prompted for the name of a directory
in which you want the patch command to be executed. nn
will then pipe the body of the article through the
patch command.
The output from the patch process will be shown on
the screen and also appended to a file named
Patch.Result in the patch directory.
:unshar {unshar}
Unshar articles. You will be prompted for the name of
a directory in which you want nn to unshar the
articles. nn will then pipe the proper parts of the
article body into a Bourne Shell whose working
directory will be set to the specified directory.
During the unpacking, the normal output from the
unshar process will appear on the screen, and the menu
or article text will be redrawn when the process is
finished.
The output is also appended to a file named
Unshar.Result in the unshar directory.
The file specified in unshar-header-file (default
"Unshar.Headers") in the unshar directory will contain
the header and initial text (before the shar data) from
the article. You can use the `G' {goto-group} command
to look at the Unshar.Headers file.
:decode {decode}
Decode uuencoded articles into binary files. You will
be prompted for the name of a directory in which you
want nn to place the decoded binary files (the file
names are taken from the uuencoded data).
nn will combine several articles into single files as
needed, and you can even decode unrelated packages
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(into the same directory) with one decode command.
To be able to decode a binary file which spans
several articles, nn may have to ignore lines which
fail the normal sanity checks on uuencoded data instead
of treating them as transmission errors. Consequently,
it is strongly recommended to check the resulting
decoded file using the checksum which is normally
contained in the original article. (Actually, you are
also supposed to do this after decoding with a stand-
alone uudecode program).
The header and initial information in the decoded
articles are saved in the file specified in decode-
header-file (default "Decode.Headers") in the same
directory as the decoded files.
If decode-skip-prefix is non-null, :decode will
attempt to ignore up to that many characters on each
line to find the encoded data. This is particularly
useful in some binaries groups where files are both
uuencoded and packed with shar; nn will ignore the
prefix added to each line by shar, and thus be able to
unshar, concatenate, and decode multi-part postings
automatically.
:deview {deview}
This decodes uuencoded, xxencoded, MIME and BinHex
encoded articles. You will be prompted for the name of
a directory in which you want nn to place the decoded
binary files (the file names are taken from the encoded
data).
nn will combine several articles into single files as
needed, and you can even decode unrelated packages
(into the same directory) with one deview command.
The deview command processes the articles and then
prompts for each file whether to decode it or not, the
deview-noprompt variable can be used to turn off this
prompting.
This is a superior replacement for :decode
In reading mode, the following keys can also be used to
invoke the save commands:
s Same as S.
o Same as O.
w Same as W.
P Same as :print.
The save commands will prompt for a file name which is
expanded according to the rules described in the section on
file name expansion below. For each group, it is possible
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to specify a default save file in the init file, either in
connection with the group presentation sequence or in a
separate save-files section (see below). If a default save
file is specified for the group, nn will show this on the
prompt line when it prompts for the file name. You can edit
this name as usual, but if you kill the entire name
immediately, nn will replace the default name with the last
file name you entered. If you kill this as well, nn will
leave you with a blank line.
If the quick-save variable is set, nn will only prompt for a
save file name when the current article is inside a folder;
otherwise, the default save file defined in the init file
will be used unconditionally.
If the file (and directories in the path) does not exist, nn
will ask whether the file (and the directories) should be
created.
If the file name contains an asterisk, e.g.
part*.shar
nn will save each of the articles in uniquely named files
constructed by replacing the asterisk by numbers from the
sequence 1, 2, 3, etc. The format of the string that
replaces the * can be changed with the save-counter
variable, and the first number to use can be changed via
save-counter-offset.
In selection mode, nn will prompt you for the identifier of
one or more articles you want to save. When you don't want
to save more articles, just hit space. The saved articles
will be marked read.
If you enter an asterisk `*' when you are prompted for an
article to save, nn will automatically save all the selected
articles on the current menu page and mark them read.
Likewise, if you enter a plus `+', nn will save all the
selected articles on all menu pages and mark them read.
This is very useful to unpack an entire package using the
:unshar and :decode commands. It can also be used in
combination with the save selected articles feature to save
a selection of articles in separate, successively numbered
files. But do not confuse these two concepts! The S* and
S+ commands can be used to save the selected articles in a
single file as well as in separate files, and the save in
separate files feature can be used also when saving
individual articles, either in the selection mode, or in the
article reading mode.
When articles are saved in a file with a full or partial
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header, any header lines in the body of the article will be
escaped by a tilde (e.g. ~From: ...) to enable nn to split
the folder into separate articles. The escape string can be
redefined via the embedded-header-escape variable.
Articles can optionally be saved in MAIL or MMDF compatible
format by setting the mail-format and mmdf-format variables.
These variables only specify the format used when creating a
new folder, while appending to an existing folder will be
done in the format of the folder (unless folder-format-check
is false).
Related variables: confirm-append, confirm-create, decode-
header-file, decode-skip-prefix, default-save-file, folder-
save-file, edit-patch-command, edit-print-command, edit-
unshar-command, folder, folder-format-check, mail-format,
mmdf-format, patch-command, printer, quick-save, save-
counter, save-counter-offset, save-report, suggest-default-
save, unshar-command, unshar-header-file.
FOLDER MAINTENANCE
When more than one article is saved in a folder, nn is able
to split the folder, and each article in the folder can be
treated like a separate article.
This means that you can save, decode, reply, follow-up, etc.
just as with the original article.
You can also cancel (delete) individual articles in a folder
using the normal C {cancel} command described later. When
you quit from the folder, you will then be given the option
to remove the canceled articles from the folder.
The original folder is saved in a file named `BackupFolder~'
in the .nn directory (see the backup-folder-path variable)
by renaming or copying the old folder as appropriate. When
the folder has been compressed, the backup folder will be
removed unless the variable keep-backup-folder is set.
If all articles in a folder are canceled, the folder will be
removed or truncated to zero length (whatever is allowed by
directory and file permissions). In this case no backup
folder is retained even when keep-backup-folder is set!
If the variable trace-folder-packing is set, nn will show
which articles are kept and which are removed as the folder
is rewritten.
Folders are rewritten in the format of the original folder,
i.e. the mail-format and mmdf-format variables are ignored.
Related variables: backup-folder-path, keep-backup-folder,
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trace-folder-packing.
FILE NAME EXPANSION
When the save commands prompts for a file name, the
following file name expansions are performed on the file
name you enter:
+folder
The + is replaced by the contents of the folder
variable (default value "~/News/") resulting in the
name of a file in the folder directory. Examples:
+emacs, +nn, +sources/shar/nn
+ A single plus is replaced by the expansion of the file
name contained in the default-save-file variable (or by
folder-save-file when saving from a folder).
~/file
The ~ is replaced by the contents of the environment
variable HOME, i.e. the path name of your home
directory. Examples:
~/News/emacs, ~/News/nn, ~/src/shar/nn
~user/file
The ~user part is replaced by the user's home directory
as defined in the /etc/passwd file.
|command-line
Instead of writing to a file, the articles are piped to
the given shell (/bin/sh) command-line. Each save or
write command will create a separate pipe, but all
articles saved or written in one command (in selection
mode) are given as input to the same shell command.
Example:
| pr | lp
This will print the articles on the printer after they
have been piped through pr.
It is possible to create separate pipes for each
saved article by using a double pipe symbol in the
beginning of the command, e.g.
|| cd ~/src/nn ; patch
The following symbols are expanded in a file name or
command:
$F will be expanded to the name of the current group with
the periods replaced by slashes, e.g. rec/music/synth.
$G will be expanded to the name of the current group.
$L will be expanded to the last component of the name of
the current group. You may use this to create default
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save file names like +src/$L in the comp.sources
groups.
$N will be expanded to the (local) article number, e.g.
1099. In selection mode it is only allowed at the end
of the file name!
$(VAR)
is replaced by the string value of the environment
variable VAR.
Using these symbols, a simple naming scheme for `default
folder name' is +$G which will use the group name as folder
name. Another possibility is +$F/$N.
As mentioned above, you can also instruct nn to save a
series of files in separate, unique files. All that is
required is that the file name contains an asterisk, e.g.
+src/hype/part*.shar
This will cause each of the articles to be saved in
separate, unique files named part1.shar, part2.shar, and so
on, always choosing a part number that results in a unique
file name (i.e. if part1.shar did already exist, the first
article would be saved in part2.shar, the next in
part3.shar, and so on).
Related variables: default-save-file, folder, folder-save-
file, save-counter, save-counter-offset.
FILE AND GROUP NAME COMPLETION
When entering a file name or a news group name, a simple
completion feature is available using the space, tab, and ?
keys.
Hitting space anywhere during input will complete the
current component of the file name or group name with the
first available possibility.
If this possibility is not the one you want, keep on hitting
space until it appears.
When the right completion has appeared, you can just
continue typing the file or group name, or you can hit tab
to fix the current component, and get the first possibility
for the next component, and then use space to go through the
other possible completions.
The ? key will produce a list of the possible completions of
the current component. If the list is too long for the
available space on screen, the key can be repeated to get
the next part of the list.
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The current completion can be deleted with the erase key.
The default value for a file name is the last file name you
have entered, so if you enter a space as the first character
after the prompt, the last file name will be repeated (and
you can edit it if you like). In some cases, a string will
already be written for you in the prompt line, and to get
the default value in these cases, use the kill key. This
also means that if you neither want the initial value, nor
the default value, you will have to hit the kill twice to
get a clean prompt line.
Related variables: comp1-key, comp2-key, help-key,
suggest-default-save.
POSTING AND RESPONDING TO ARTICLES
In both selection mode and reading mode you can post new
articles, post follow-ups to articles, send replies to the
author of an article, and you can send mail to another user
with the option of including an article in the letter. In
reading mode, a response is made to the current article,
while in selection mode you will be prompted for an article
to respond to.
The following commands are available (the lower-case
equivalents are also available in reading mode):
R {reply}
Reply through mail to the author of the article. This
is the preferred way to respond to an article unless
you think your reply is of general interest.
F {follow}
Follow-up with an article in the same newsgroup (unless
an alternative group is specified in the article
header). The distribution of the follow-up is normally
the same as the original article, but this can be
modified via the follow-distribution variable.
M {mail}
Mail a letter or forward an article to a single
recipient. In selection mode, you will be prompted for
an article to include in your letter, and in reading
mode you will be asked if the current article should be
included in the letter. You will then be prompted for
the recipient of the letter (default recipient is
yourself) and the subject of the letter (if an article
is included, you may hit space to get the default
subject which is the subject of the included article).
The header of the article is only included in the
posted letter if it is forwarded (i.e. not edited), or
if the variable include-full-header is set.
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:post {post}
Post a new article to any newsgroup. This command will
prompt you for a comma-separated list of newsgroups to
post to (you cannot enter a space because space is used
for group name completion as described below).
If you enter ? {help-key} as the first key, nn will
show you a list of all available news groups and their
purpose. While paging through this list, you can enter
q to quit looking at the list. You can also enter /
followed by a regular expression (typically a single
word) which will cause nn to show a (much shorter) list
containing only the lines matching the regular
expression.
Normally, you will be prompted for the distribution
of the article with the default take from default-
distribution, but this can be changed via the post-
distribution variable.
Generally, nn will construct a file with a suitable header,
optionally include a copy of the article in the file with
each non-empty line prefixed by a `>' character (except in
mail mode), and invoke an editor of your choice (using the
EDITOR environment variable) on this file, positioning you
on the first line of the body of the article (if it knows
the editor).
When you have completed editing the message, it will compare
it to the unedited file, and if they are identical (i.e. you
did not make any changes to the file), or it is empty, the
operation is canceled. Otherwise you will be prompted for
an action to take on the constructed article (enter first
letter followed by return, or just return to take the
default action):
a)bort c)c e)dit h)old i)spell m)ail p)ost r)eedit s)end v)iew w)rite 7)bit
Action: (post article)
You now have the opportunity to perform one of the following
actions:
a throw the response away (will ask for confirmation),
c mail a copy of a follow-up to the poster of the
article,
e edit the file again,
h hold response for later completion,
i run an (interactive) spell-checker on the text,
m mail a (blind) copy to a specified recipient,
n same as abort (no don't post),
p post article (same as send),
r throw away the edited text and edit the original
text,
s send the article or letter,
v view the article (through the pager),
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w append it to a file (before you send it),
y confirm default answer (e.g. yes post it), or
7 strip the high-order bit from all characters in the
message
If you have selected a 7-bit character set (this is
determined by the values of the charset and data-bits
variables), nn will not allow you to post an article or send
a letter whose body contains characters with the high-order
bit set. It will warn you after you have first edited the
message and disable the c)c, m)ail, p)ost, s)end and y)es
actions. You can then either e)dit the message to delete
those characters, use 7)bit to strip the high-order bits,
a)bort the message, or h)old it and select an 8-bit
character set from nn.
To complete an unfinished response saved by the h)old
command, simply enter any response action, e.g. R {reply}.
This will notice the unfinished response and ask you whether
you want to complete it now. Only one unfinished response
can exist at a time. Notice that the $A environment
variable may no longer be valid as a path to the original
article when the response is completed.
If your message contains 8-bit characters, the charset
variable is not set to "unknown" and the message does not
already have a MIME-Version or Content-XXX header, nn will
add the following headers to your message before sending it:
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=charset
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
It must be noted that sending 8-bit characters over the
current news and mail networks is risky at best; although
large parts of the network will pass through such characters
unchanged, high-order bits may occasionally be stripped.
Although the MIME standard provides solutions for this by
encoding the characters, this is not yet supported by nn.
Adding the above headers is an interim solution that is
compatible with current practice and is much better than
just sending the message without any hints about the
character set used.
Related variables: append-signature-mail, append-
signature-post, charset, data-bits, default-distribution,
follow-distribution, post-distribution, edit-response-check,
editor, include-art-id, include-full-header, included-mark,
mail-header, mail-record, mail-script, mailer, mailer-pipe-
input, news-header, news-record, news-script, orig-to-
include-mask, pager, query-signature, record, response-
check-pause, response-default-answer, save-counter, save-
counter-offset, save-report, spell-checker.
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JUMPING TO OTHER GROUPS
By default nn will present the news groups in a predefined
sequence (see the section on Presentation Sequence later
on). To override this sequence and have a look at any other
group the G {goto-group} command available in both selection
and reading mode enables you to move freely between all the
newsgroups.
Furthermore, the G command enables you to open folders and
other files, to read old articles you have read before, and
to grep for a specific subject in a group.
It is important to notice that normally the goto command is
recursive, i.e. a new menu level is created when the
specified group or folder is presented, and when it has been
read, nn will continue the activity in the group that was
presented before the goto command was executed. However, if
there are unread articles in the target group you can avoid
entering a new menu level by using the j reply described
below. The current menu level (i.e. number of nested goto
commands) will be shown in the prompt line as "<N>" (in
reverse video).
The goto command is very powerful, but unfortunately also a
little bit tricky at first sight, because the facilities it
provides depend on the context in which the command is used.
When executed, the goto command will prompt you for the name
of the newsgroup, folder, or file to open. It will use the
first letter you enter to distinguish these three
possibilities:
return
An empty answer is equivalent to the current newsgroup.
letter
The answer is taken to be the name of a newsgroup. If
a news group with the given name does not exist, nn
will treat the answer as a regular expression and
locate the first group in the presentation sequence (or
among all groups) whose name matches the expression.
+
The answer is taken to be the name of a folder. If
only `+' is entered, it is equivalent to the default
save file for the current group.
/ or ./ or ~/
The answer is taken to be the name of a file, either
relative to the current directory, relative to your
home directory, or an absolute path name for the file.
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% In reading mode, this reply corresponds to reading the
current article (and splitting it as a digest). In
selection mode, it will prompt for an article on the
menu to read.
@ This choice is equivalent to the archive file for the
current group.
= and number
These answers are equivalent to the same answers
described below applied to the current group (e.g. G
return = and G = are equivalent).
Specifying a folder, a file, or an article (with %) will
cause nn to treat the file like a digest and split it into
separate articles (not physically!) which are then
presented on a menu in the usual way, allowing you to read
or save individual subarticles from the folder.
When you enter a group name, nn will ask you how many
articles in the group you want to see on the menu. You can
give the following answers:
a number N
In this case you will get the newest N articles in the
group, or if you specified the current group (by
hitting return to the group name prompt or entering the
number directly), you will get that many extra articles
included on the same menu (without creating a new menu
level).
j This answer can only be given if there are unread
articles in the group. It will instruct nn to jump
directly to the specified group in the presentation
sequence without creating a new menu level.
u This instructs nn to present the unread articles in the
group (if there are any). If you have already read the
group (in the current invocation of nn), the u answer
will instruct nn to present the articles that were
unread when you entered nn.
a This instruct nn to present all articles in the group.
sword or =word
This instructs nn to search all articles in the groups,
but only present the articles containing the word word
in the subject. Notice that case is ignored when
searching for the word in the subject lines.
nword
Same as the s form except that it searched for articles
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where the sender name matches word.
eword
Same as the s form except that it Searched for articles
where either the subject or the sender name matches
word.
word = /regexp
When the first character of the word specified with the
s, n, and e forms is a slash `/', the rest of the input
is interpreted as a regular expression to search for.
Notice that regular expression matching is case
insensitive when case-fold-search is set (default).
return
The meaning of an empty answer depends on the context:
if there are unread articles in the specified group the
unread articles will be presented, otherwise all
articles in the group will be included in the menu.
If you specified the current group, and the menu already
contains all the available articles, nn will directly prompt
for a word to search for in the subject of all articles (the
prompt will be an equal sign.)
When the goto command creates a new menu level, nn will not
perform auto kill or selection in the group. You can use
the + command in menu mode to perform the auto-selections.
There are three commands in the goto family:
G {goto-group}
This is the general goto command described above.
B {back-group}
Backup one or more groups. You can hit this key one or
more times to go back in the groups already presented
(including those without new articles); when you have
found the group you are looking for, hit space to enter
it.
A {advance-group}
Advance one or more groups. This command is similar to
the B command, but operates in the opposite direction.
N {next-group}
When used within an A or B command, it skips forward to
the next group in the sequence with unread articles or
which has previously been visited.
P {previous}
When used within an A or B command, it skips backwards
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to the preceding group in the sequence with unread
articles or which has previously been visited.
Once you have entered an A or Bcommand, you can freely mix
the A, B, P, and N commands to find the group you want, and
you can also use the G command to be prompted for a group
name.
To show the use of the goto command some typical examples on
its use are given below:
Present the unread articles in the dk.general group
G dk.general return u
Jump directly to the gnu.emacs group and continue from there
G gnu.emacs return j
Include the last 10 READ articles in the current group menu
G 10 return
Find all articles in rec.music.misc on the subject Floyd
G rec.music.misc return
= floyd return
Open the folder +nn
G +nn return
Split current article as a digest (in reading mode)
G %
Related variables: case-fold-search, default-save-file,
folder-save-file
AUTOMATIC KILL AND SELECTION
When there is a subject or an author which you are either
very interested in, or find completely uninteresting, you
can easily instruct nn to auto-select or auto-kill articles
with specific subjects or from specific authors. These
instructions are stored in a kill file, and the most common
types of entries can be created using the following command:
K {kill-select}
Create an entry in your personal kill file. The
contents of the entry is specified during a short
dialog that is described in details below. This
command is available in both selection and reading
mode.
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Entries in the kill file may apply to a single newsgroup or
to all newsgroups. Furthermore, entries may be permanent or
they may be expired a given number of days after their
entry.
To increase performance, nn uses a compiled version of the
kill file which is read in when nn is invoked. The compiled
kill file will automatically be updated if the normal kill
file has been modified.
The following dialog is used to build the kill file entry:
AUTO (k)ill or (s)elect (CR => Kill subject 30 days)
If you simply want nn to kill all articles with the
subject of the current article (in reading mode) or a
specific article (which nn will prompt for in selection
mode), just hit return. This will cause nn to create
an entry in the kill file to kill the current (or
specified) subject in the current group for a period of
30 days (which should be enough for the discussion to
die out).
You can control the default kill period, or change it
into a "select" period via the default-kill-select
variable.
If this "default behavior" is not what you want, just
answer either k or s to kill or select articles,
respectively, which will bring you on to the rest of
the questions.
AUTO SELECT on (s)ubject, (n)ame or >(c)ount crossposts (s)
(The SELECT will be substituted with KILL depending on
the previous answer). Here you specify whether you
want the kill or select to depend on the subject of the
article (s or space), or on the name of the author (n)
or articles with greater than a specified numeb of
crossposts.
SELECT NAME:
(Again SELECT may be substituted with KILL and SUBJECT
or >Crosspost may replace NAME). You must now enter a
name (or subject or number) to select (or kill). In
reading mode, you may just hit return (or %) to use the
name (or subject) of the current article. In selection
mode, you can use the name (or subject) from an article
on the menu by answering with % followed by the
corresponding article identifier.
When the name or subject is taken from an article (the
current or one from the menu), nn will only select or
kill articles where the name or subject matches the
original name or subject exactly including case.
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If the first character typed at the prompt is a slash
`/', the rest of the line is used as a regular
expression which is used to match the name or subject
(case insensitive).
Otherwise, nn will select or kill articles which
contain the specified string anywhere in the name or
subject (ignoring case).
SELECT in (g)roup `dk.general' or in (a)ll groups (g)
You must now specify whether the selection or kill
should apply to the current group only (g or space) or
to all groups (a).
Lifetime of entry in days (p)ermanent (30)
You can now specify the lifetime of the entry, either
by entering a number specifying the number of days the
entry should be active, or p to specify the entry as a
permanent entry. An empty reply is equivalent to 30
days.
CONFIRM SELECT ....
Finally, you will be asked to confirm the entry, and
you should especially note the presence or absence of
the word exact which specify whether an exact match
applies for the entry.
Related variables: default-kill-select, kill.
THE FORMAT OF THE KILL FILE
The kill file consists of one line for each entry. Empty
lines and lines starting with a # character are ignored. nn
automatically places a # character in the first position of
expired entries when it compiles the kill file. You can
then edit the kill file manually from time to time to clean
out these entries.
Each line has the following format
[expire time :] [group name] : flags : string [: string]...
Permanent entries have no expire time (in which case the
colon is omitted as well!). Otherwise, the expire time
defines the time (as a time_t value) when the entry should
be expired.
The group name field can have three forms:
news.group.name
If it is the name of a single news group (e.g.
comp.unix), the entry applies to that group only.
/regular expression
If it starts with a slash `/' followed by a regular
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expression (e.g. /^news\..*), the entry applies to all
groups whose name are matched by the regular
expression.
empty
An empty group field will apply the entry to all
groups.
The flags field consists of a list of characters which
identifies the type of entry, and the interpretation of each
string field. When used, the flag characters must be used
in the order in which they are described below:
~ (optional)
When this flag is present on any of the entries for a
specific group, it causes all entries which are not
auto-selected to be killed. This is a simple way to
say: I'm interested in this and that, but nothing else.
+ or ! (optional)
Specify an auto-select + or an auto-kill ! entry,
respectively. If neither are used, the article is
neither selected nor killed which is useful in
combination with the `~' flag.
> (optional)
When used with a subject (flag s), the kill entry only
matches follow-ups to that subject (i.e. where the
Subject: line starts with Re:). For example, to kill
all "Re:"'s in rec.humor use the following kill entry:
rec.humor:!>s/:.
< (optional)
When used with a subject (flag s), the kill entry only
matches base articles with that subject (i.e. where the
Subject: line does not start with Re:). For example,
to kill all articles asking for help (but not follow-
ups) in the tex group, add this to your kill file:
comp.text.tex:!s</:^HELP
One of nsfcClLa (mandatory)
Specify what the string applies to:
n Matches part of the name of the sender of the
article
s Matches part of he subject of the article
f Matches part of the full from line of the article
c If the article is crossposted to less than N
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groups
C If the article is crossposted to more than N
groups
l If the article is less than N lines
L If the article is more than N lines
a The string is ignored (but must be present), and
the entry applies to articles with a non-empty
References: line.
/ (optional)
Specifies that the corresponding string is a regular
expression which the sender or subject is matched
against. If not specified, a simple string match is
performed using the given string.
= (optional)
Specifies that the match against the name or subject is
case sensitive. Furthermore, when regular expression
matching is not used, the name or subject must be of
the same length of the string to match. Otherwise, the
match will be case insensitive, and a string may occur
anywhere in the name or subject to match.
| or & (mandatory if multiple strings)
If more than one string is specified, the set of flags
corresponding to each string must be separated by
either an or operator `|' or an and operator `&'. The
and operator has a higher precedence than the or
operator, e.g. a complex match expression a|b&c|d will
succeed if either of a, b&c, or d matches.
The string field in the entry is the name, subject or
regular expression that will be matched against the name or
subject of each article in the group (or all groups).
Colons and backslashes must be escaped with a backslash in
the string.
Example 1: Auto-select articles from `Tom Collins' (exact)
on subject `News' in all groups:
:+n=&s:Tom Collins:News
Example 2: Kill all articles which are neither from `Tom'
or `Eve' in some.group. Select only articles from Eve:
some.group:~n:Tom
some.group:+n:Eve
The second example can also be written as a single entry
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with an or operator (in this case, the select/kill attribute
only applies to the succeeding strings):
some.group:~n|+n:Tom:Eve
To remove expired entries, to "undo" a K command, and to
make the more advanced entries with more than one string,
you will have to edit the kill file manually. To recompile
the file, you can use the :compile command. When you invoke
nn, it will also recompile the kill file if the compiled
version is out of dat.
SHELL ESCAPES
The ! commands available in selection and reading mode are
identical in operation (with one exception). When you enter
the shell escape command, you will be prompted for a shell
command. This command will be fed to the shell specified in
the shell variable (default loaded from the SHELL
environment variable or /bin/sh) after the following
substitutions have been performed on the command:
File name expansion
The earlier described file name expansions will be
performed on all arguments.
$G will be substituted with the name of the current news
group.
$L will be substituted with the last component of the name
of the current news group.
$F will be substituted with the name of the current news
group with the periods replaced by slashes.
$N will be substituted with the (local) article number
(only defined in reading mode).
$A is replaced by the full path name of the file
containing the current article (only defined in reading
mode).
% Same as $A.
$(VAR)
is replaced by the string value of the environment
variable VAR.
When the shell command is completed, you will be asked to
hit any key to continue. If you hit the ! key again, you
will be prompted for a new shell command. Any other key
will redraw the screen and return you to the mode you came
from.
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Related variables: shell, shell-restrictions.
MISCELLANEOUS COMMANDS
Below are more useful commands which are available in both
selection and reading modes.
U {unsub}
Unsubscribe to the current group. You will not see
this group any more unless you explicitly request it.
If the variable unsubscribe-mark-read is set, all
articles in the group will be marked read when you
unsubscribe.
If the variable keep-unsubscribed is not set, the
group will be removed from .newsrc. If you are not
subscribing to the group, you will be given the
possibility to resubscribe to the group! This may be
used in connection with the G command to resubscribe a
group.
C {cancel}
Cancel (delete) an article in the current group or
folder. Canceling articles in a folder will cause the
folder to be rewritten when it is closed. In selection
mode, you will be prompted for the identifier of the
article to cancel. Normal users can only cancel their
own articles. See also the section on folder
maintenance.
Y {overview}
Provide an overview of the groups with unread articles.
" {layout}
Change menu layout in selection mode. The menu will be
redrawn using the next layout (cycling through ..., 2,
3, 4, 0, 1, ...)
Most of the commands in nn are bound to a key and can be
activated by a single keystroke. However, there are a few
commands that cannot be bound to a key directly.
As shown in the keystroke command descriptions, all commands
have a name, and it is possible to activate a command by
name with the extended command key (:). Hitting this key
will prompt you for the name of a command (and parameters).
For example, an alternative to hitting the R key to reply to
an article is to enter the extended command :reply followed
by return. The :post and :unshar commands described earlier
can also be bound to a key. The complete list of commands
which can be bound to keys is provided in the section on Key
Mappings below.
The following extended commands cannot be bound to a key,
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mainly because they require additional parameters on the
prompt line, or because it should not be possible to
activate them too easily.
:bug Prepare and send a bug report to the nn-bugs mailing
address.
:cd [ directory ]
Change current working directory. If the directory
argument is not provided, nn will prompt for it.
:clear
Clear the screen (without redraw). This may be useful
at the beginning of the init file (possibly guarded by
"on program nn"), or in some macros.
:compile
Recompile the kill file. This is not necessary under
normal operation since nn automatically compiles the
file on start-up if it has changed, but it can be used
if you modify the kill file while nn is suspended.
:coredump
Abort with a core dump. For debugging purposes only.
:define macro
Define macro number macro as described in the Macro
Definition section below. If macro is omitted, the
next free macro number will be chosen.
:dump table
Same as the :show command described below.
:help [ subject ]
Provide online help on the specified subject. If you
omit the subject, a list of the available topics will
be given.
:load [ file ]
Load the specified file. If the file argument is
omitted, the init file is reloaded. The sequence part
(if present) is ignored.
:local variable [ value ]
Make the variable local to the current group.
Subsequent changes to the variable will only be
effective until the current group is left. If a value
is specified, it will be assigned to the local
variable. To assign a new value to a boolean variable,
the values on and off must be used.
:lock variable
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Lock the specified variable so it cannot be modified.
:man Call up the online manual. The manual is presented as
a normal folder with the program name in the `From'
field and the section title in the `subject' field.
All the normal commands related to a folder works for
the online manual as well, e.g. you can save and print
sections of the manual.
:map arguments
This is the command used for binding commands to the
keys. It is fully described in the Key Mapping section
below.
:mkdir [ directory ]
Create the directory (and the directories in its path).
It will prompt for at directory name if the argument is
omitted.
:motd
Show the message of the day (maintained by the news
administrator in the file "motd" in the lib directory.
This file is automatically displayed on start-up
whenever it changes if the motd variable is set.
:pwd Print path name of current working directory on message
line.
:q Has no effect besides redrawing the screen if
necessary. If an extended command (one which is
prefixed by a :) produces any output requiring the
screen to be redrawn, the screen will not be redrawn
immediately if the variable delay-redraw is set (useful
on slow terminals). Instead another : prompt is shown
to allow you to enter a new extended command
immediately. It is sufficient to hit return to redraw
the screen, but it has been my experience that entering
q return in this situation happens quite often, so it
was made a no-op.
:q! Quit nn without updating the .newsrc file.
:Q Quit nn. This is equivalent to the normal Q command.
:rmail
Open your mailbox (see the mail variable) as a folder
to read the incoming messages. This is not a full mail
interface (depending on the nn configuration, you may
not be able to delete messages, add cc: on replies,
etc), but it can give you a quick glance at new mail
without leaving nn.
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:set variable [ value ]
Set a boolean variable to true or assign the value to a
string or integer variable. The :set command is
described in details in the section on VARIABLES.
:sh Suspend nn, or if that is not possible, spawn an
interactive shell.
:show groups mode
Show the total number or the number of unread articles
in the current group, depending on mode: all (list the
number of unread articles in all groups including
groups which you have unsubscribed to), total (list the
total number of articles in all existing groups),
sequence (list unread groups in presentation sequence
order), subscr (list all subscribed groups), unsub
(list unsubscribed groups only). Any other mode
results in a listing of the number of unread articles
in all subscribed groups including those you have
suppressed with the `!' symbol in the group
presentation sequence. To get just the currently
unread groups in the presentation sequence, use the `Y'
{overview} command.
:show kill
Show the kill entries that applies to the current group
and to all groups.
:show rc [ group ]
Show the .newsrc and select file entries for the
current or the specified group.
:show map [ mode ]
Show the key bindings in the current or specified mode.
:sort [ mode ]
Reorder the articles on the menu according to mode or
if omitted to the default sort-mode. The following
sorting modes are available:
arrival: list articles by local article number which
will be the same as the order in which they arrived on
the system (unless groups are merged),
subject: articles with identical subjects are grouped
and ordered after age of the oldest article in the
group,
lexical: subjects in lexicographical order,
age: articles ordered after posting date only,
sender: articles ordered after sender's name.
thread-lexical: articles ordered by thread, threads by
subject.
thread-date: articles ordered by thread, threads by
date.
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:tk commands
Call a set of TK commands (nn-tk)
:toggle variable
Toggle a boolean variable.
:unread [ group ] [ articles ]
Mark the current (or specified) group as unread. If
the articles argument is omitted, the number of unread
articles in the group will be set to the number of
unread articles when nn was invoked. Otherwise, the
argument specifies the number of unread articles.
:unset variable
Set a boolean variable to false or clear an integer
variable.
:x Quit nn and mark all articles in the current group as
read!
Related variables: backup, bug-report-address, delay-
redraw, keep-unsubscribed, unsubscribe-mark-read, mail,
pager, sort-mode.
CATCH UP
If you have not read news for some time, there are probably
more news than you can cope with. Using the option -a0nn
will put you into catch-up mode.
The first question you will get is whether to catch up
interactively or automatically. If you instruct nn to catch
up automatically, it will simply mark all articles in all
groups as read, thus bringing you completely up-to-date.
If you choose the interactive mode, nn will locate all
groups with unread articles, and for each group it will
prompt you for an action to take on the group. An action is
selected using a single letter followed by return. The
following actions are available:
y Mark all articles as read in current group.
n Do not update group (this is the default action if you
just hit return).
r Enter reading mode to read the group.
U Unsubscribe to the group.
? Give a list of actions.
q Quit. When you quit, nn will ask whether the rest of
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the groups should be updated unconditionally or whether
they should remain unread.
NNTP
With NOV it is possible to compile nn as a pure NNTP client.
The default NNTP server is defined in /usr/lib/nntp_server,
but this can be overridden by setting the NNTPSERVER
environment variable or by using the -R command option or
the -D option. If the NNTP server is set to the local host
or doesn't exist reading is done using local files.
If NNTP is being used over a slow line it is possible to
speed up initialization by setting the nn variable new-
group-action to less than 3 to stop the active.times file
being read and setting show-purpose-mode to 0 to stop the
newsgroups files being read.
If even faster startup is required the -A command option
will stop NN reading the active file via NNTP but it will
instead use the .newsrc file to provide a list of
newsgroups, this is the equivalent of setting the dont-
read-active variable. The dont-do-new-groups variable speeds
things up slightly by ignoring new groups. In this mode
information about a number of groups is read at once, the
variable nntp-group-readahead controls how many groups this
information is read for (if it is set to a too high value,
say 1000, it is counter productive and may cause problems).
The number of unread articles for groups that have not been
read ahead is not displayed.
Username and Password: To use the INN 1.4 authinfo feature
create ~/.nn/authinfo with the following contents:
username-on-server password-on-server
If the -D parameter is used to specify an alternate host
name the file read is ~/.nn/authinfo-host.name
NNTP PREFETCHING
NN will cache a small number articles and group infomation
entries.
NN will do prefetching of articles and group information, a
fairly simple algorithm is used, start prefetching the
information for the next group when selecting articles for
the current group, start prefetching the next article when
reading the current one. Prefetching is done via a separate
program (nnprefetch) which communicates with NN via pipes
and loads the cache.
NN-TK OPTIONS
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The value of these options can be set via the nn-tk options
menu entries in the SETUP menu, these changes are stored in
the tk-config file in the users .nn directory.
These options have their defaults defined in nn-defaults in
the nn lib directory. This global nn-defaults file entries
are overridden by the local tk-config file.
GENERAL
menu_min
The minimum size of the subjects panel on the main
window. the size when reading article
menu_max
The maximum size of the subjects panel on the main
window, the size when selecting articles. If
meuu_max equals menu_min NN won't try to vary the
size of the panels.
horizontal_scrollbars
When to show horizontal scroll bars for article
display and group list, either always (2), never
(0) or only the contents of the panel is larger
than the display area (1).
default_article_lines
The number of lines in an article that are
displayed by default, this is to speed up the
loading of articles
mono_font
Whether to display articles in mono space font by
default
middle_button_pos
Where to place the middle row of buttons on the
main screen, whether above the selection panel
(1), between the panels (0) or bellow the article
panel (2).
mime_handling
Under what circumstances to pass articles to EXMH
for MIME handling or other reasons, the options
are never (0), all except text/plain (1), all MIME
articles (3) or all articles (4).
scan_uri
If set automatically scan each article for
anything that looks like World Wide Web URL's and
turn them into buttons display them in a web
browser.
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nntp_progress
Display progress of nntp transfer for .overview
and active files ever N lines, 0 means never
display it.
nntp_progress_a
Display progress of nntp transfer for article
files ever N lines, 0 means never display it.
cprompt_delay
The delay in seconds before displaying the Cancel
button for NNTP transfers, this is so that it
doesn't flash on and off for quick transfers.
compressed_prompt
Sets whether to use popups or mode lines or both
for displaying prompts and information. Options
are popup only (0), both prompt line and popup (1)
or mode line only (2) . The mode line prompts may
not give all the information that was available
with the popups.
separate_prompt
If set the nn prompt window is a separate window
brought up when needed, if it's not set there a
three prompt lines at the bottom of the main
window.If compressed prompt is set to 2 then this
is not used.
xterm_path
Path for executing xterm
GROUP LIST
thread_height
Specifies height of thread display panel, if set
to 0 the thread panel won't appear.
group_list_all
Display the total number articles in each group
instead of just the number of unread articles
group_list_read
Display groups with no unread articles in them
group_list_unsub
Display groups that are unsubscribed
group_list_width
Set the width of group list
group_menu_max
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Maximum number of articles to display in group
list at one time
single_main
Put the group list into the main menu window
instead of as a separate window
GROUP CASCADING MENUS
mk_group_menu
Generate the group cascading menus at startup
instead of when required, this slows down startup
group_menu_read
Include groups with no unread articles in the
menus
group_menu_unsub
Include unsubscribed groups in the menus
group_menu_length
Length of the columns in the group menu display
Balloon help
balloon_on
Display the balloon help messages
balloon_start_delay
The delay in milli-seconds between the mouse
pointer moving over a button and the balloon help
being displayed
balloon_destroy_delay
The delay in milli-seconds until the balloon help
is deleted again.
balloon_number
The number of times a balloon help message for a
particular button is displayed.
NN-TK NN-DEFAULTS
The nn-defaults file is in X resource format, it contains
the defaults for the various nn-tk options. It also contains
resources setting other aspects of the interface such as
colors, fonts and adjustments to the EXMH interface. The
resources can also be set in the X server.
The split_group variable controls which of the group
cascading menus is split up by the first character to reduce
their length.
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The file is installed in the nn lib directory but it can be
overridden by a local nn-defaults file in .nn.
VARIABLES AND OPTIONS
It is possible to control the behavior of nn through the
setting (and unsetting) of the variables described below.
There are several ways of setting variables:
- Through command line options when nn is invoked.
- Through assignments on the command line when nn is
invoked.
- Through global set commands in the init file.
- Through set or local commands executed from entry macros.
- Through the :set extended command when you run nn.
- Through the nn-tk NN Variables menu item which produces a
panel for setting the value of these variables.
There are four types of variables:
- Boolean variables
- Integer variables
- String variables
- Key variables
Boolean variables control a specific function in nn, e.g.
whether the current time is shown in the prompt line. A
boolean variable is set to true with the command
set variable
and it is set to false with either of the following
(equivalent) commands:
unset variable
set novariable
You can also toggle the value of a boolean variable using
the command:
toggle variable
For example:
set time
unset time
set notime
toggle time
Integer variables control an amount e.g. the size of the
preview window, or the maximum number of articles to read in
each group. They are set with the following command:
set variable value
In some cases, not setting an integer value has a special
meaning, for example, not having a minimal preview window or
reading all articles in the groups no matter how many there
are. The special meaning can be re-established by the
following command:
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unset variable
For example:
set window 7
unset limit
String variables may specify directory names, default values
for prompts, etc. They are set using the command
set variable string
Normally, the string value assigned to the variable value
starts at the first non-blank character after the variable
name and ends with the last non-blank character (excluding
comments) on the line. To include leading or trailing
blanks, or the comment start symbol, #, in the string they
must be escaped using a backslash `\', e.g. to set
included-mark to the string " # ", the following assignment
can be used:
set included-mark \ \#\ # blank-#-blank
To include a backslash in the string, it must be duplicated
`\\'. A backslash may also be used to include the following
special characters in the string: \a=alarm, \b=backspace,
\e=escape, \f=form-feed, \n=new-line, \r=return, \t=tab.
Key variables control the keys used to control special
functions during user input such as line editing and
completion. They are set using the command
set variable key-name
A variable can be locked which makes further modification of
the variable impossible:
lock variable
This can be used in the setup init file which is loaded
unconditionally to enforce local conventions or
restrictions. For example, to fix the included-mark
variable to the string ">", the following commands can be
placed in the setup file:
set included-mark >
lock included-mark
The current variable settings can be shown with the :set
command:
:set (without arguments)
This will give a listing of the variables which have
been set in either the init file or interactively.
:set all
This will give a listing of all variables. Modified
variables will be marked with a `*' and local variables
will be marked with a `>'. A locked variable is marked
with a `!'.
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:set /regexp
This will give a listing of all variables whose name
matches the given regular expression.
:set partial-name space
The space (comp1-key) key will complete the variable
name as usual, but as a side effect it will display the
variable's current value in the message line.
Variables are global by default, but a local instantiation
of the variable can be created using the :local command.
The local variable will overlay the global variable as long
as the current group is active, i.e. the global variable
will be used again when you exit the current group. The
initial value of the local variable will be the same as the
global variable, unless a new value is specified in the
:local command:
:local variable [ value ]
The following variables are available:
also-full-digest (boolean, default false)
When a digest is split, the digest itself is not
normally included on the menu, and as such the initial
administrative information is not available. Setting
also-full-digest will cause the (unsplit) digest to be
included on the menu. These articles are marked with a
@ at the beginning of the subject.
also-subgroups (boolean, default true)
When set, a group name in the presentation sequence
will also cause all the subgroups of the group to be
included, for example, comp.unix will also include
comp.unix.questions, etc. When also-subgroups is not
set, subgroups are only included if the group name is
followed by a `.' in which case the main group is not
included, i.e. `comp.unix' is not included when
`comp.unix.' is specified in the presentation sequence,
and vice-versa. Following a group name by an asterisk
`*', e.g. comp.unix*, will include the group as well as
all subgroups independently of the setting of also-
subgroups.
append-signature-mail (boolean, default false)
When false, it is assumed that the .signature file is
automatically appended to responses sent via E-mail.
If true, .signature will be appended to the letter (see
query-signature).
append-signature-post (boolean, default false)
When false, it is assumed that the .signature file is
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automatically appended to posted articles. If true,
.signature will explicitly be appended to posted
articles (see query-signature).
attributes symbols (string, default ....)
Each element in this string represents a symbol used to
represent an article attribute when displayed on the
screen. See the section on Marking Articles and
Attributes.
auto-junk-seen (boolean, default true)
When set, articles which have the seen attribute (,)
will be marked read when the current group is left. If
not set, these articles will still be either unread or
marked seen the next time the group is entered (see
also confirm-junk-seen and retain-seen-status).
auto-preview-mode (boolean, default false)
Enables Auto Preview Mode. In this mode, selecting an
article on the menu using its article id (letter a-z)
will enter preview mode on that article immediately.
Furthermore, the `n' {next-article} command will
preview the next article on the menu only if it has the
same subject as the current article; otherwise, it will
return to the menu with the cursor placed on the next
article. The continue command at the end of the
article and the `=' {goto-menu} returns to the menu
immediately as usual.
auto-read-mode-limit N (integer, default 0)
When operating in auto reading mode, nn will auto-
select all unread articles in the group, skip the
article selection phase, and enter reading mode
directly after entry to the group.
Auto reading mode is disabled when auto-read-mode-
limit is zero; it is activated unconditionally if the
value is negative, and conditionally if the value is
greater than zero and the number of unread articles in
the current group does not exceed the given value.
auto-select-closed mode (integer, default 1)
Normally, selecting a closed subject (usually in
consolidated menu mode) will select (or deselect) all
unread articles with the given subject (or all articles
if they are all read). This behavior can be changed
via the value of this variable as follows:
0: select only the first article with the subject (shown on menu).
1: select only the unread articles with the subject.
2: select all available articles with the subject.
auto-select-rw (boolean, default false)
If set, a subject of an article read or posted is
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automatically used for subsequent auto-selecting (if
not already selected). This is the most efficient way
to see your own posts automatically.
auto-select-subject (boolean, default false)
When set, selecting an article from the menu using the
article id (a-z), all articles on the menu with the
same subject will automatically be selected as well.
backup (boolean, default true)
When set, a copy of the initial .newsrc and select
files will save be the first time they are changed. nn
remembers the initial contents of these files
internally, so the backup variable can be set any time
if not set on start-up.
backup-folder-path file (string, default "BackupFolder~")
When removing deleted articles from a folder, this
variable defines the name of the file where a
(temporary) copy of the original folder is saved. If
the file name doesn't contain a `/', the file will be
located in the .nn directory. Otherwise the file name
is used directly as the relative or full path name of
the backup file. If possible, the old folder will be
renamed to the backup folder name; otherwise the old
folder is copied to the backup folder.
backup-suffix suffix (string, default ".bak")
The suffix appended to file names to make the
corresponding backup file name (see backup).
bug-report-address address (string, default nn-
bugs@dkuug.dk)
The mail address to which bug reports created with the
:bug command are sent.
case-fold-search (boolean, default true)
When set, string and regular expression matching will
be case independent. This is related to all commands
matching on names or subjects, except in connection
with auto-kill and auto-select where the individual
kill file entries specifies this property.
charset charset (string, default "us-ascii")
The character set in use on your terminal. Legal values
are "us-ascii", "iso-8859-X", where X is a nonzero
digit, and "unknown". Setting this variable also sets
the data-bits variable to the default bit width of the
character set (7 for "us-ascii" and "unknown", 8 for
the "iso-8859-X" sets).
The value of this variable also determines whether nn
allows 8-bit characters in the body of articles being
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posted and letters being mailed (unless the value is
"unknown", in which case this is determined by the
value of the data-bits variable). If necessary, nn
will add extra headers to the message indicating its
the character set.
check-db-update-time H (integer, default 12)
When non-zero, nn will issue a warning if the database
has not been updated in the last H hours. The warning
will tell you whether no news has arrived (feed
broken?).
check-group-access (boolean, default false)
When set, nn will perform a check on the readability of
a group's readability before showing the menu for that
group. Normally, this is not necessary since all users
traditionally have access to all news groups. Setting
(and locking) this variable may be used to limit access
to a news group via the permissions and ownership of
the group's spool directory (this will only work for
non-NNTP sites).
collapse-subject offset (integer, default 25)
When set (non-negative), subject lines which are too
long to be presented in full on the menus will be
"collapsed" by removing a sufficient number of
characters from the subject starting at the given
offset in the subject. This is useful in source groups
where the "Part (01/10)" string sometimes disappears
from the menu. When not set (or negative), the
subjects are truncated.
columns col (integer, default screen width)
This variable contains the screen width i.e. character
positions per line.
comp1-key key (key, default space)
The key which gives the first/next completion, and the
default value when nn is prompting for a string, e.g. a
file name.
comp2-key key (key, default tab)
The key which ends the current completion and gives the
first completion for the next component when nn is
prompting for a string, e.g. a file name.
compress (boolean, default false)
This variable controls whether text compression (see
the compress command) is turned on or off when an
article is shown. The compression is still toggled for
the current article with the compress command key.
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confirm-append (boolean, default false)
When set, nn will ask for confirmation before appending
an article to an existing file (see also confirm-
create).
confirm-auto-quit (boolean, default false)
When set, nn will ask for confirmation before quitting
after having read the last group. If not confirmed, nn
will recycle the presentation sequence looking for
groups that were skipped with the `N' {next-group}
command. But it will not look for new articles arrived
since the invocation of nn.
confirm-create (boolean, default true)
When set, nn will ask for confirmation before creating
a new file or directory when saving or unpacking an
article (see also confirm-append).
confirm-entry (boolean, default false)
When set, nn will ask for confirmation before entering
a group with more than confirm-entry-limit unread
articles (on the first menu level). It is useful on
slow terminals if you don't want to wait until nn has
drawn the first menu to be able to skip the group.
Answering no to the "Enter?" prompt will cause nn to
skip to the next group without marking the current
group as read. If you answer by hitting interrupt, nn
will ask the question "Mark as read?" which allows you
to mark the current group as read before going to the
next group. If this second question is also answered
by hitting interrupt, nn will quit immediately.
confirm-entry-limit articles (integer, default 0)
Specifies the minimum number of unread articles in a
group for which the confirm-entry functionality is
activated.
confirm-junk-seen (boolean, default false)
When set, nn will require confirmation before marking
seen articles as read when auto-junk-seen is set.
confirm-messages (boolean, default false)
In some cases, nn will sleep one second (or more) when
it has shown a message to the user, e.g. in connection
with macro debugging. Setting confirm-messages will
cause nn to wait for you to confirm all messages by
hitting any key. (It will show the symbol <> to
indicate that it is awaiting confirmation.)
consolidated-manual (boolean, default false)
When set, the online manual will be presented with one
menu line for each program in the nn package.
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consolidated-menu (boolean, default false)
When set, nn will automatically close all multi-article
subjects on entry to a group, so that each subject only
occur once on the menu page.
counter-delim-left (string, default "[")
The delimiter string output to the left of the article
counter in a closed subject's menu line.
counter-delim-right (string, default "] ")
The delimiter string output to the right of the article
counter in a closed subject's menu line.
counter-padding pad (integer, default 5)
On a consolidated menu, the subjects may not be very
well aligned because the added [...] counters have
varying length. To (partially) remedy this, all
counters (and subjects without counters) are prefixed
by up to pad spaces to get better alignment.
Increasing it further may yield practically perfect
alignment at the cost of less space for the subject
itself.
cross-filter-seq (boolean, default true)
When set, cross posted articles will be presented in
the first possible group, i.e. according to the current
presentation sequence (cross-post filtering on
sequence). The article is automatically marked read in
the other cross posted groups unless you unsubscribe to
the first group in which it was shown before reading
the other groups. Likewise, it is sufficient to leave
the article unread in the first group to keep it for
later handling.
If not set, cross-postings are shown in the first
group occurring on the Newsgroups: line which the user
subscribes to (i.e. you let the poster decide which
group is most appropriate to read his posting).
cross-post (boolean, default false)
Normally, nn will only show cross-posted articles in
the first subscribed group on the Newsgroups: line.
When cross-post is set, nn will show cross-posted
articles in all subscribed groups to which they are
posted.
data-bits bits (integer, default 7)
When set to 7, nn will display characters with the 8th
bit set using a meta-notation M-7bit-char. If set to
8, these characters are sent directly to the screen
(unless monitor is set). Setting the charset variable
also sets this variable to the default bit width of
character set.
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It also controls whether keyboard input is 7 or 8 bits,
and thus whether key maps contain 127 or 255 entries.
See the key mapping section for more details.
If the charset has value "unknown", the value of data-
bits also determines whether nn allows 8-bit characters
in the body of articles being posted and letters being
mailed (this is normally determined directly by the
charset variable).
date (boolean, default true)
If set nn will show the article posting date when
articles are read.
debug mask (integer, default 0)
Look in the source if you are going to use this.
decode-header-file file (string, default "Decode.Headers")
The name of the file in which the header and initial
text of articles decoded with the :decode command is
saved. Unless the file name starts with a `/', the
file will be created in the same directory as the
decoded files. The information is not saved if this
variable is not set.
decode-skip-prefix N (integer, default 2)
When non-null, the :decode command will automatically
skip upto N characters at the beginning of each line to
find valid uuencoded data. This allows nn to
automatically decode (multi-part) postings which are
both uuencoded and packed with shar.
default-distribution distr (string, default "world")
The distribution to use as the default suggestion when
posting articles using the follow and post commands if
the corresponding follow-distribution or post-
distribution variable contains the default option.
default-kill-select [1]days (number, default 30)
Specifies the default action for the K {kill-select}
command if the first prompt is answered by return. It
contains the number of days to keep the kill or select
entry in the kill file (1-99 days). If it has the
value days+100 (e.g. 130), it denotes that the default
action is to select rather than kill on the subject for
the specified period.
default-save-file file (string, default +$F)
The default save file used when saving articles in news
groups where no save file has been specified in the
init file (either in a save-files section or in the
presentation sequence). It can also be specified using
the abbreviation "+" as the file name when prompted for
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a file name even in groups with their own save file.
delay-redraw (boolean, default false)
Normally, nn will redraw the screen after extended
commands (:cmd) that clear the screen. When delay-
redraw is set nn will prompt for another extended
command instead of redrawing the screen (hit return to
redraw). deview-nopromtp (boolean, default
false) Turn off per file prompting in the :deview
command
dont-do-new-groups (boolean, default true)
If not reading the active file, ignore new groups
dont-read-active (boolean, default false)
Don't read the active file at startup, instead use the
active file for the list of groups. Can be useful for
slow NNTP connections.
echo-prefix-key (boolean, default true)
When true, hitting a prefix key (see the section on key
mapping below) will cause the prefix key to be echoed
in the message line to indicate that another key is
expected.
edit-patch-command (boolean, default true)
When true, the :patch command will show the current
patch-command and give you a chance to edit it before
applying it to the articles.
edit-print-command (boolean, default true)
When true, the print command will show the current
printer command and give you a chance to edit it before
printing the articles. Otherwise the articles are just
printed using the current printer command.
edit-response-check (boolean, default true)
When editing a response to an article, it normally does
not have any meaning to send the initial file prepared
by nn unaltered, since it is either empty or only
contains included material. When this variable is set,
exiting the editor without having changed the file will
automatically abort the response action without
confirmation.
edit-unshar-command (boolean, default false)
When true, the :unshar command will show the current
unshar-command and give you a chance to edit it before
applying it to the articles.
editor command (string, default not set)
When set, it will override the current EDITOR
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environment variable when editing responses and new
articles.
embedded-header-escape string (string, default '~')
When saving an article to a file, header lines embedded
in the body of the article are escaped using this
string to make it possible for nn to split the folder
correctly afterwards. Header lines are not escaped if
this variable is not set.
enter-last-read-mode mode (integer, default 1)
Normally, nn will remember which group is active when
you quit, and offer to jump directly to this group when
you start nn the next time. This variable is used to
control this behavior. The following mode values are
recognized:
0: Ignore the remembered group (r.g.).
1: Enter r.g. if the group is unread (with user confirmation)
2: Enter r.g. or first unread group after it in the sequence (w/conf).
3: Enter r.g. if the group is unread (no confirmation)
4: Enter r.g. or first unread group after it in the sequence (no conf).
entry-report-limit articles (integer, default 300)
Normally, nn will just move the cursor to the upper
left corner of the screen while it is reading articles
from the database on entry to a group. For large
groups this may take more than a fraction of a second,
and nn can then report what it is doing. If it must
read more articles than the number specified by this
variable, nn will report which group and how many
articles it is reading.
erase-key key (key, default tty erase key)
The key which erases the last input character when nn
is prompting for a string, e.g. a file name.
expert (boolean, default false)
If set nn will use slightly shorter prompts (e.g. not
tell you that ? will give you help), and be a bit less
verbose in a few other cases (e.g. not remind you that
posted articles are not available instantly).
expired-message-delay pause (integer, default 1)
If a selected article is found to have been expired, nn
will normally give a message about this and sleep for a
number of seconds specified by this variable. Setting
this variable to zero will still make nn give the
message without sleeping afterwards. Setting it to -1
will cause the message not to be shown at all.
flow-control (boolean, default true)
When set, nn will turn on xon/xoff flow-control before
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writing large amounts of text to the screen. This
should guard against lossage of output, but in some
network configurations it has had the opposite effect,
losing several lines of the output. This variable is
always true on systems with CBREAK capabilities which
can do single character reads without disabling flow
control.
flush-typeahead (boolean, default false)
When true, nn will flush typeahead prior to reading
commands from the keyboard. It will not flush
typeahead while reading parameters for a command, e.g.
file names etc.
folder directory (string, default ~/News)
The full pathname of the folder directory which will
replace the + in folder names. It will be initialized
from the FOLDER environment variable if it is not set
in the init file.
folder-format-check (boolean, default true)
When saving an article with a full or partial header in
an existing folder, nn will check the format of the
folder to be able to append the article in the proper
format. If this variable is not set, folders are
assumed to be in the format specified via the mmdf-
format and mail-format variables, and articles are
saved in that format without checking. Otherwise, the
*-format variables are only used to determine the
format for new folders.
folder-save-file file (string, default not set)
The default save file used when saving articles from a
folder.
follow-distribution words (string, default see below)
This variable controls how the Distribution: header is
constructed for a follow-up to an original article.
Its value is a list of words selected from the
following list:
[ [ always ] same ] [ ask ] [ default | distribution ]
This is interpreted in two steps:
- First the default distribution is determined. If
same is specified and the original article has a
Distribution: header, that header is used. Else if
default is specified (or distribution is omitted), the
value of default-distribution is used. And finally, if
only a distribution (any word) is specified that is
used as the default.
- Then if ask is specified, the user will be asked to
confirm the default distribution or provide another
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distribution. However, if always (and same) is
specified, and the default was taken from the original
article's distribution, the original distribution is
used without confirmation.
The default value of follow-distribution is always same
default, i.e. use either the original distribution or
the default-distribution without confirmation in either
case.
from-line-parsing strictness (integer, default 2)
Specifies how strict nn must parse a "From " line in a
folder to recognize it as a mail format message
separator line. The following strictness values
determine whether a line starting with "From " will be
recognized as a separator line:
0: Always.
1: Line must have at least 8 fields.
2: Line must contain a valid date and time (ctime style).
fsort (boolean, default true)
When set, folders are sorted alphabetically according
to the subject (and age). Otherwise, the articles in a
folder will be presented in the sequence in which they
were saved.
guard-double-slash (boolean, default false)
Normally, when entering a file name, entering two
slashes `//' in a row (or following a slash by a plus
`/+') will cause nn to erase the entire line and
replace it with the `/' (or `+'). On some systems, two
slashes are used in network file names, and on those
systems guard-double-slash can be set; that will cause
nn to require three slashes in a row to clear the
input.
header-lines list (string, no default)
When set, it determines the list of header fields that
are shown when an article is read instead of the normal
one line header showing the author and subject. See
the full description in the section on Customized
Article Headers below.
help-key key (key, default ?)
The key which ends the current completion and gives a
list of possible completions for the next component
when nn is prompting for a string, e.g. a file name.
ignore-re (boolean, default false)
If set, articles with subjects already seen in a
previous invocation of nn or another newsreader - and
not auto-selected - are automatically killed. A great
way to read even less news!
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ignore-xon-xoff (boolean, default false)
Normally, nn will ignore ^S and ^Q in the input from
the terminal (if they are not handled in the tty
driver). Setting this variable will treat these
characters as normal input.
include-art-id (boolean, default false)
The first line in a response with included material
normally reads "...somebody... writes:" without a
reference to the specific article from which the
quotation was taken (this is found in the References:
line). When this variable is set, the line will also
include the article id of the referenced article: "In
...article... ... writes:".
include-full-header (boolean, default false)
When set, the mail (M) command will always include the
full header of the original article. If it is not set,
it only includes the header when the article is
forwarded without being edited.
include-mark-blank-lines (boolean, default false)
When set, the included-mark is placed on blank lines in
included articles. Otherwise, blank lines are left
blank (to make it easy to delete whole paragraphs with
`d}' in vi and `C-@ M-] C-W' in emacs).
included-mark string (string, default ">")
This string is prefixed to all lines in the original
article that are included in a reply or a follow-up.
(Now you have the possibility to change it, but please
don't. Lines with a mixture of prefixes like
: orig-> <> } ] #- etc.
are very difficult to comprehend. Let's all use the
standard folks! (And hack inews if it is the 50% rule
that bothers you.)
inews shell-command (string, default "INEWS_PATH -h")
The program which is invoked by nn to deliver an
article to the news transport. The program will be
given a complete article including a header containing
the newsgroups to which the article is to be posted.
See also inews-pipe-input. It is not used when
canceling an article!
inews-pipe-input (boolean, default true)
When set, the article to be posted will be piped into
the inews program. Otherwise, the file containing the
article will be given as the first (and only) argument
to the inews command.
initial-newsrc-file file (string, default '.defaultnewsrc')
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Defines the name of a file which is used as the initial
.newsrc file for new users. The name may be a full
path name, or as the default a file name which will be
looked for in a number of places: in the standard news
lib directory (where it can be shared with other news
readers), in nn's lib directory, and in the database
directory. Groups which are not present in the initial
.newsrc file will be automatically unsubscribed
provided new-group-action is set to a value allowing
unsubscribed groups to be omitted from .newsrc.
keep-backup-folder (boolean, default false)
When set, the backup folder (see backup-folder-path)
created when removing deleted articles from a folder is
not removed. Notice that a backup folder is not
created if all articles are removed from a folder!
keep-unsubscribed (boolean, default true)
When set, unsubscribed groups are kept in .newsrc. If
not set, nn will automatically remove all unsubscribed
from .newsrc if tidy-newsrc is set. See also
unsubscribe-mark-read.
kill (boolean, default true)
If set, nn performs automatic kill and selection based
on the kill file.
kill-debug (boolean, default false)
When set, nn will display a trace of the auto-
kill/select process on entry to a group. It is
automatically turned off if `q' is entered as the
answer to a "hit any key" prompt during the debug
output.
kill-key key (key, default tty kill key)
The key which deletes the current line when nn is
prompting for a string, e.g. a file name.
kill-reference-count N (integer, default 0)
When this variable is non-zero, all articles which have
N or more references on the References: line
(corresponding to the number of >>'s on the menu line)
will be auto-killed if they are not auto-selected (or
preserved) via an entry in the kill file. It should
probably not be used globally for all groups, but can
be set on a per-group via the entry macros.
layout number (integer, default 1)
Set the menu layout. The argument must be a number
between 0 and 4.
limit max-articles (integer, default infinite)
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Limit the maximum number of articles presented in each
group to max-articles. The default is to present all
unread articles no matter how many there are. Setting
this variable, only the most recent max-articles
articles will be presented, but all the articles will
still be marked as read. This is useful to get up-to-
date quickly if you have not read news for a longer
period.
lines lin (integer, default screen height)
This variable contains the screen height i.e. number of
lines.
long-menu (boolean, default false)
If set nn will not put an empty line after the header
line and an empty line before the prompt line; this
gives you two extra menu lines.
macro-debug (boolean, default false)
If set nn will trace the execution of all macros.
Prior to the execution of each command or operation in
a macro, it will show the name of the command or the
input string or key stroke at the bottom of the screen.
mail file (string, default not set)
file must be a full path name of a file. If defined,
nn will check for arrival of new mail every minute or
so by looking at the specified file.
mail-alias-expander program (string, default not set)
When set, aliases used in mail responses may be
expanded by the specified program. The program will be
given the completed response in a file as its only
argument, and the aliases should be expanded directly
in this file (of course the program may use temporary
files and other means to expand the aliases as long the
the result is stored in the provided file).
Notice: currently there are no alias expanders
delivered with nn.
Warning: Errors in the expansion process may lead to
the response not being sent.
mail-format (boolean, default false)
When set, nn will save articles in a format that is
compatible with normal mail folders. Unless folder-
format-check is false, it is only used to specify the
format used when new folders are created. This
variable is ignored if mmdf-format is set.
mail-header headers (string, default not set)
The headers string specifies one or more extra header
lines (separated by semi-colons `;') which are added to
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the header of mail sent from nn using the reply and
mail commands. For example:
set mail-header Reply-To: storm@texas.dk;Organization: TI - DK
To include a semicolon `;' in a header, precede it by a
backslash (which must be doubled because of the
conventions for entering strings).
mail-record file (string, default not set)
file must be a full path name of a file. If defined,
all replies and mail will be saved in this file in
standard mailbox format, i.e. you can use you favorite
mailer (and nn) to look at the file.
mail-script file (string, default not set)
When set, nn will use the specified file instead of the
standard aux script when executing the reply and mail
commands.
mailer shell-command (string, default REC_MAIL)
The program which is invoked by nn to deliver a message
to the mail transport. The program will be given a
complete mail message including a header containing the
recipient's address. See also mailer-pipe-input.
mailer-pipe-input (boolean, default true)
When set, the message to be sent will be piped into the
mailer program. Otherwise, the file containing the
message will be given as the first (and only) argument
to the mailer command.
marked-by-next-group N (integer, default 0)
Specifies the amount of (unmarked) articles on the menu
marked seen by the N {next-group} command in selection
mode. See marked-by-read-skip for possible values of
N.
marked-by-read-return N (integer, default 0)
Specifies the amount of (unmarked) articles on the menu
marked seen by the Z {read-return} command in selection
mode. See marked-by-read-skip for possible values of
N.
marked-by-read-skip N (integer, default 4)
Specifies the amount of (unmarked) articles on the menu
marked seen by the X {read-skip} command in selection
mode. The following values of N are recognized:
0: No articles are marked seen
1: Current page is marked seen
2: Previous pages are marked seen
3: Previous and current pages are marked seen
4: All pages are marked seen
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mark-overlap (boolean, default false)
When set, nn will draw a line (using the underline
capabilities of the terminal if possible) to indicate
the end of the overlap (see the overlap variable).
mark-overlap-shading (boolean, default false)
When set, nn will shade overlapping lines (see the
overlap variable) using the attributes defined by the
shading-on and shading-off variables (of if not set,
with the underline attribute). This is typically used
to give overlapping lines a different color on
terminals which have this capability.
menu-spacing mode (integer, default 0)
When mode is a non-zero number as described below, nn
will add blank lines between the lines on the menu to
increase readability at the cost of presenting fewer
articles on each page. The following values of mode
are recognized:
0: Don't add blank lines between menu lines.
1: Add a blank line between articles with different subjects.
2: Add a blank line between all articles.
merge-report-rate rate (integer, default 1)
When nn is invoked with the -m option (directly or via
nngrap), a status report of the merging process is
displayed and updated on the screen every rate seconds.
The report contains the time used so far and an
estimate of the time needed to complete the merge.
message-history N (integer, default 15)
Specifies the maximum number, N, of older messages
which can be recalled with the ^P {message} command.
min-window size (integer, default 7)
When the window variable is not set, nn will clear the
screen to preview an article if there are less than
size unused lines at the bottom of the menu screen.
mmdf-format (boolean, default false)
When set, nn will save articles in MMDF format. Unless
folder-format-check is false, it is only used to
specify the format used when new folders are created.
monitor (boolean, default false)
When set, nn will show all characters in the received
messages using a "cat -v" like format. Otherwise, only
the printable characters are shown (default).
motd (boolean, default true)
When set, nn will display the message of the day on
start-up if it has changed since it was last shown.
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The message is taken from the file "motd" in the lib
directory. It can also be shown (again) using the
:motd command.
multi-key-guard-time timeout (integer, default 2)
When reading a multi-key sequence from the keyboard, nn
will expect the characters constituting the multi-key
to arrive "quickly" after each other. When a partial
multi-key sequence is read, nn will wait (at least)
timeout tenths of a second for each of the following
characters to arrive to complete the multi-key
sequence. If the multi-key sequence is not completed
within this period, nn will read the partial multi-key
sequence as individual characters instead. This way it
is still possible to use for example the ESC key on a
terminal with vt100 like arrow keys. When nn is used
via an rlogin connection, you may have to increase the
timeout to get reliable recognition of multi-keys.
new-group-action action (integer, default 3)
This variable controls how new groups are treated by
nn. It is an integer variable, and the following
values can be used. Some of these actions (marked with
an *) will only work when keep-unsubscribed is set,
since the presence of a group in .newsrc is the only
way to recognize it as an old group. If options 0, 1 or
2 are chosen the file active.times is not read.
0) Ignore groups which are not in .newsrc. This will
obviously include new groups.
1*) Groups not in .newsrc are considered to be new,
and are inserted at the beginning of the .newsrc file.
2*) Groups not in .newsrc are considered to be new,
and are appended to the end of the .newsrc file.
3) New groups are recognized via a time-stamp saved in
the file .nn/LAST and in the database, i.e. it is not
dependent on the groups currently in .newsrc. The new
groups are automatically appended to .newsrc with
subscription. Old groups not present in .newsrc will
be considered to be unsubscribed.
4) As 3, but the user is asked to confirm that the new
group should be appended to .newsrc. If rejected, the
group will not be appended to .newsrc, and thus be
regarded as unsubscribed.
5) As 4, except that the information is stored in a
format compatible with the rn news reader (.rnlast).
This needs to be tested!
new-style-read-prompt (boolean, default true)
When set, the reading mode prompt line includes the
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group name and the number of selected articles in the
group.
newsrc-sequence (integer, default 0)
This determines how the group sequence is handled.
0 - the group sequence is determined by the SEQUENCE
directive in the init file. The .newsrc sequence is
only used when the RC directive appears in the init
file. The order of .newsrc file is preserved.
1 - the group sequence is still determined as above but
the .newsrc file is written in group sequence order.
This means that the part of the group sequence
corresponding to the RC can be edited via the NN-TK
group list but the rest is determined in the init
sequence. The RC:groupname form is useful here.
2 - the group sequence is determined totally by the
.newsrc sequence and the .newsrc is written out in
group sequence order. This means that the entire
group sequence can be edited using the NN-TK group
list.
news-header headers (string, default not set)
The headers string specifies one or more extra header
lines (separated by semi-colons `;') which are added to
the header of articles posted from nn using the follow
and post commands. See mail-header for an example.
news-record file (string, default not set)
Save file for follow-ups and postings. Same rules and
format as the mail-record variable.
news-script file (string, default not set)
When set, nn will use the specified file instead of the
standard aux script when executing the follow and post
commands.
newsrc file (string, default "~/.newsrc") Specifies the
file used by nn to register which groups and articles
have been read. The default setting corresponds to the
.newsrc file used by other news readers. Notice that
nn release 6.4 onwards does allow individual articles
to be marked unread, and some articles marked unread,
and thus no longer messes up .newsrc for other news
readers!
nntp-cache-dir directory (string, default "~/.nn")
When NNTP is used, nn needs to store articles and group
information temporarily on disk. This variable
specifies which directory nn will use to hold these
files. The default value may be changed during
configuration. This variable can only be set in the
init file.
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nntp-cache-size size (integer, default 10, maximum 10)
Specifies the number of temporary files in the nntp
cache. Also sets the number of items of group
information cached. The default and maximum values may
be changed during configuration.
nntp-debug (boolean, default false)
When set, a trace of the nntp related traffic is
displayed in the message line on the screen.
nntp-group-readahead (integer, default 50)
If not reading active file, read ahead info on this
many groups.
old [max-articles] (integer, default not set)
When old is set, nn will present (or scan) all (or the
last max-articles) unread as well as read articles.
While old is set, nn will never mark any unread
articles as read.
orig-to-include-mask N (integer, default 3)
When replying to an article, nn will include some of
the header lines which may be used to construct a
proper mail address for the poster of the original
article. These addresses are placed on Orig-To: lines
in the reply header and will automatically be removed
before the letter is sent. This variable specifies
which headers from the article are included; its value
N is the sum of the following values:
1: Reply-To:
2: From:
4: Path:
overlap lines (integer, default 2)
Specifies the number of overlapping lines from one page
to the next when paging through an article in reading
mode. The last line from the previous page will be
underlined if the terminal has that capability.
pager shell-command (string, default $PAGER)
This is the pager used by the :admin command (and
nnadmin) when it executes certain commands, e.g.
grepping in the Log file.
patch-command shell-command (string, default "patch -p0")
This is the command which is invoked by the :patch
command.
post-distribution words (string, default see below)
This variable controls how the Distribution: header is
constructed when posting an original article. Its
value is a list of words selected from the following
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list:
[ ask ] [ default | distribution ]
This is interpreted in two steps:
- First the default distribution is determined. If
default is specified (or distribution is omitted), the
value of default-distribution is used. Otherwise, the
specified distribution (any word) is used as the
default.
- Then if ask is specified, the user will be asked to
confirm the default distribution or provide another
distribution.
The default value of post-distribution is ask default,
i.e. use the default-distribution with confirmation
from the user.
prefetch (boolean, default true)
When set, prefetch the next article or group
information while the while the current article is
being read, this is done with a separate process
(nnprefetch).
prefetch-article-max number (integer, default 600)
Only prefech the articles if they are less than number
lines long, this is the stop a slow line being clogged
up with long prefetches
prefetch-debug (boolean, default false)
When set, display debugging infomation about
prefetching.
prefetch-group-max number (integer, default 360)
Only prefech the group information if there are less
than number articles to fetch the information for, this
is the stop a slow line being clogged up with long
prefetches.
preview-continuation cond (integer, default 12)
This variable determines on what terms the following
article should be automatically shown when previewing
an article, and the next-article command is used, or
continue is used at the end of the article. The
following values can be used:
0 - never show the next article (return to the menu).
1 - always show the next article (use 'q' to return to
the menu).
2 - show the next article if it has the same subject as
the current article, else return to the menu.
The value should be the sum of two values: one for the
action after using continue on the last page of the
article, and one for the action performed when the
next-article command is used multiplied by 10.
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preview-mark-read (boolean, default true)
When set, previewing an article will mark the article
as read.
previous-also-read (boolean, default true)
When set, going back to the previously read group with
P {previous} will include articles read in the current
invocation of nn even if there are still unread
articles in the group.
print-header-lines fields (string, default "FDGS")
Specifies the list of header fields that are output
when an article is printed via the :print command and
print-header-type is 1 (short header). The fields
specification is described in the section on Customized
Article Headers below.
print-header-type N (integer, default 1)
Specifies what kind of header is printed by the :print
command, corresponding to the three save-* commands: 0
prints only the article body (no header), 1 prints a
short header, and 2 prints the full article header.
printer shell-command (string, default is system dep.)
This is the default value for the print command. It
should include an option which prevents the spooler
from echoing a job-id or similar to the terminal to
avoid problems with screen handling (e.g. lp -s on
System V).
query-signature (boolean, default ...)
Will cause nn to require confirmation before appending
the .signature file to out-going mail or news if the
corresponding append-sig-... variable is set.
quick-count (boolean, default true)
When set, calculating the total number of unread
articles at start-up is done by simple subtracting the
first unread article number from the total number of
articles in each group. This is very fast, and fairly
accurate but it may be a bit too large. If not set,
each line in .newsrc will be interpreted to count every
unread article, thus giving a very accurate number.
This variable is also used by nncheck.
quick-save (boolean, default false)
When set, nn will not prompt for a file name when an
article is saved (unless it belongs to a folder).
Instead it uses the save file specified for the current
group in the init file or the default save file.
re-layout N (integer, default 0)
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Normally on the menu, nn will prefix the subject a
number of `>'s corresponding to the depth of references
on the thread tree. The re-layout variable may be set
to use a different prefix on the subjects:
0: One `>' per reference is shown (default).
1: A single `>' is shown if the Subject contains Re:.
2: The number of references is shown as `n>'
3: A single Re: is shown.
4: If any references use layout 0, else layout 1.
re-layout-read N (integer, default -1)
When the header-lines variable is not set, or contains
the "*" field specifier, a line similar to the menu
line will be used as the header of the article in
reading mode, including the sender's name and the
article's subject. When this variable is negative, the
subject on this header line will be prefixed according
to the re-layout variable. Otherwise, it will define
the format of the "Re:" prefix to be used instead of
the re-layout used on the menu.
read-return-next-page (boolean, default false)
When set, the Z {read-return} command will return to
the next menu page rather than the current menu page.
record file (string, no default)
Setting this pseudo variable will set both the mail-
record and the news-record variables to the specified
pathname.
repeat (boolean, default false)
When set, nn will not eliminate duplicated subject
lines on menus (I cannot imagine why anyone should want
that, but....)
repeat-group-query (boolean, default false)
When set, invoking nn with the -g option will always
repeat the query for a group to enter until you quit
explicitly. (Same as setting the -r option
permanently).
report-cost (boolean, default true)
This variable is ignored unless nn is running with
accounting enabled (see nnacct). When set, nn will
report the cost of the current session and the total on
exit.
response-check-pause pause (integer, default 2)
Specifies the number of seconds to wait after posting
an article to see whether the action *might* have
failed. Some commands run in the background and may
thus not have completed during this period, so even
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when nn says "Article posted", it may still fail (in
which case you are informed via mail).
response-default-answer action (string, default "send")
The default action to be taken when hitting return to
the "response action" prompt (abort, edit, send, view,
write). If it is unset, no default action is defined.
retain-seen-status (boolean, default false)
Normally, seen articles will just be unread the next
time the group is entered (unless they were marked read
by auto-junk-seen). If retain-seen-status is set, the
seen attribute on the articles will survive to the next
time the group is entered. (This is not recommended
because it may result in very large select files).
retry-on-error times (integer, default 0)
When set, nn will try the specified number of times to
open an article before reporting that the article does
not exist any more. This may be necessary in some
network environments.
save-closed-mode mode (integer, default 13)
When saving an article in selection mode (i.e. by
selecting it from the menu), nn will simply save the
specified article if the article's subject is open.
When the selected menu entry is a closed subject, the
save-closed-mode variable determines how many articles
among the closed articles should be saved:
0: save root article (the one on the menu) only
1: save selected articles within subject
2: save unread (excl selected) articles within subject
3: save selected+unread articles within subject
4: save all articles within subject
If `10' is added to the above values, nn will not save
the selected subject immediately; instead it will ask
which articles to save using the above value as the
default answer.
save-counter format (string, default "%d")
This is the printf-format which nn uses to create
substitution string for the trailing * in save file
names. You can set this to more complex formats if you
like, but be sure that it will produce different
strings for different numbers. An alternative format
which seems to be popular is ".%02d" .
save-counter-offset N (integer, default 0)
Normally, file names created with the part.* form will
substitute the * with successive numbers starting from
one. Setting this variable will cause these numbers to
start from N+1.
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save-header-lines fields (string, default "FDNS")
Specifies the list of header fields that are saved when
an article is saved via the O {save-short} command.
The fields specification is described in the section on
Customized Article Headers below.
save-report (boolean, default true)
When set, a message reporting the number of lines
written is shown after saving an article. Since
messages are shown for a few seconds, this may slow
down the saving of many articles (e.g. using the S*
command).
scroll-clear-page (boolean, default true)
Determines whether nn clears the screen before showing
each new page of an article.
scroll-last-lines N (integer, default 0)
Normally, nn will show each new page of an article from
the top of the screen (with proper marking of the
overlap). When this variable is set to a negative
value, nn will scroll the text of the new pages from
the bottom of the screen instead. If it is set to a
positive value, nn will show pages from the top as
usual, but switch to scrolling when there are less than
the specified number of lines left in the article.
select-leave-next (boolean, default false)
When set, you will be asked whether to select articles
with the leave-next attribute on entry to a group with
left over articles.
select-on-sender (boolean, default false)
Specifies whether the find (=) command in article
selection mode will match on the subject or the sender.
shading-on code... (control string, default not set)
Specifies the escape code to be sent to the terminal to
cause "shading" of the following output to the screen.
This is used if the mark-overlap-shading is set, and by
the `+' attribute in the header-lines variable.
shading-off code... (control string, default not set)
Specifies the escape code to be sent to the terminal to
turn off the shading defined by shading-on. Shading
will typically be done by changing the foreground color
to change, e.g.
on term ti924-colour
set shading-on ^[ [ 3 2 m
set shading-off ^[ [ 3 7 m
set mark-overlap-shading
unset mark-overlap
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end
shell program (string, default $SHELL)
The shell program used to execute shell escapes.
shell-restrictions (boolean, default false)
When set (in the init file), nn will not allow the user
to invoke the shell in any way, including saving on
pipes. It also prevents the user from changing certain
variables containing commands.
show-purpose-mode N (integer, default 1)
Normally, nn will show the purpose of a group the first
time it is read, provided a purpose is known. Setting
this variable, this behavior can be changed as follows:
0: Never show the purpose.
1: Show the purpose for new groups only.
2: Show the purpose for all groups.
silent (boolean, default false)
When set, nn wont print the logo or "No News" if there
are no unread articles. Only useful to set in the init
file or with the -Q option.
slow-mode (boolean, default false)
When set, nn will cut down on the screen output to give
better response time at low speed. Normally, nn will
use standout mode (if possible) to mark selected
articles on the menu, but when slow-mode is set, nn
will just put an asterisk `*' next to the article
identifier on selected articles. Also when slow-mode
is set nn will avoid redrawing the screen in the
following cases: After a goto-group command an empty
menu is shown (hit space to make it appear), and after
responding to an article, only the prompt line is shown
(use ^L to redraw the screen). To avoid redrawing the
screen after an extended command, set the delay-redraw
variable as well.
slow-speed speed (integer, default 1200)
If the terminal is running at this baud rate or lower,
the on slow (see the section on init files) condition
will be true, and the on fast will be false (and vice-
versa).
sort (boolean, default true)
When set, nn will sort articles according to the
current sort-mode on entry to a group. Otherwise,
articles will be presented in order of arrival. If not
set on entry to a menu for merged groups, the articles
from each group will be kept together on the menu. If
sort is unset while merged groups are presented on the
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menu, the articles will be reordered by local article
number (which may not keep articles from the same group
together).
sort-mode mode (integer, default 1)
The default sort algorithm used `thread-lexical'. It is
a numeric value corresponding to one of the sorting
methods described in connection with the :sort command:
0 - arrival (ordered by article number)
1 - subject (subjects ordered after age of first article)
2 - lexical (subjects in lexicographical order)
3 - age (articles ordered after posting date only)
4 - sender (articles ordered after sender's name)
5 - thread-lexical (articles ordered by thread and threads
by subject)
6 - thread-date (articles ordered by thread and threads
by date)
spell-checker shell-command (string, default not set)
When set, responses can be checked for spelling
mistakes via the (i)spell action. The command to
perform the spelling is given the file containing the
full article including header as its only argument. If
the spell checker can fix spelling mistakes, it must
apply the changes directly to this file.
split (boolean, default true)
When set, digests will automatically and silently be
split into sub-articles which are then handled
transparently as normal articles. Otherwise, digests
are presented as one article (which you can split on
demand with the G command).
stop lines (integer, default not set)
When stop is set, nn will only show the first lines
lines of the of each article before prompting you to
continue. This is useful on slow terminals and modem
lines to be able to see the first few lines of longer
articles (and skipping the rest with the n command).
subject-match-limit length (integer, default 256)
Subjects will be considered identical if their first
length characters match. Setting this uncritically to
a low value may cause unexpected results!
subject-match-offset offset (integer, default 0)
When set to a positive number, that many characters at
the beginning of the subject will be ignored when
comparing subjects for ordering and equality purposes.
subject-match-parts (boolean, default false)
When set, two subjects will be considered equal if they
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are identical up to the first (differing) digit.
Together with the subject-match-offset variable, this
can be used in source groups where the subject often
has a format like:
vXXXXXX: Name of the package (Part 01/04)
Setting subject-match-offset to 8 and subject-match-
parts to true will make nn consider all four parts of
the package having the same subject (and thus be
selectable with `*').
Notice that changing the subject-match-... variables
manually will not have an immediate effect. To reorder
the menu, an explicit :sort command must be performed.
These variables are mainly intended to be set using the
:local command in on entry macros for source and binary
groups (entry macros are evaluated before the menu is
collected and sorted).
subject-match-minimum characters (integer, default 4)
When set to a positive number, that many characters at
the beginning of the subject must match before the
subject-match-parts option comes into affect. This is
important, because the part matching causes the rest of
the line to be ignored after the first digit pair is
discovered. This begins after any subject-match-offset
has been applied.
suggest-default-save (boolean, default true)
When set, nn will present the default-save-file when
prompting for a save file name in a group without a
specific save file, or folder-save-file when saving
from a folder. When not set, no file name is
presented, and to use the default save file, a single +
must be specified.
tidy-newsrc (boolean, default false)
When set, nn will automatically remove lines from
.newsrc which represent groups not found in the active
file or unsubscribed groups if keep-unsubscribed is not
set.
time (boolean, default true)
When set, nn will show the current time in the prompt
line. This is useful on systems without a sysline (1)
utility. TP tk-debug (boolean, default false)
Display calls from the NN C code to TCL code for
debugging.
tool-mode (boolean, default false)
If there is no new news check periodically for it.
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tool-update-delay (int, default 60)
Period to delay between each check for new news in tool
mode
trace-folder-packing (boolean, default true)
When set, a trace of the retained and deleted messages
is printed when a folder is rewritten.
trusted-escape-codes codes (string, default none)
When set to a list of one or more characters, nn will
trust and output escape characters in an article if it
is followed by one of the characters in the list. For
example, to switch to or from kanji mode, control codes
like "esc $" and "esc ( J" may be present in the text.
To allow these codes, use the following command:
set trusted-escape-codes ($
You can also set it to all to pass all escape codes
through to the screen. Notice that nn thinks all
characters (including esc) output to the screen as
occupy one column.
unshar-command shell-command (string, default "/bin/sh")
This is the command which is invoked by the unshar
command.
unshar-header-file file (string, default "Unshar.Headers")
The name of the file in which the header and initial
text of articles unpacked with the :unshar command is
saved. Unless the file name starts with a `/', the
file will be created in the same directory as the
unpacked files. The information is not saved if this
variable is not set. Setting it to "Unshar.Result"
will cause the headers and the results from the
unpacking process to be merged in a meaningful way
(unless mmdf-format is set).
unsubscribe-mark-read (boolean, default true)
When set, unsubscribing to a group will automatically
mark all current articles read; this is recommended to
keep the size of .newsrc down. Otherwise, unread
articles in the unsubscribe groups are kept in .newsrc.
If keep-unsubscribed is false, this variable has no
effect.
update-frequency (integer, default 1)
Specifies how many changes need to be done to the
.newsrc or select files before they are written back to
disk. The default setting causes .newsrc to be updated
every time a group has been read.
use-path-in-from (boolean, default false)
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When mail-format is set, saved articles will be
preceded by a specially formatted "From " line:
From origin date
Normally, the origin will be the name of the news group
where the article appeared, but if use-path-in-from is
set, the contents of the "Path:" header will be used as
the origin.
use-selections (boolean, default true)
When set, nn uses the selections and other article
attributes saved last time nn was used. If not set, nn
ignores the select file.
visible-bell (boolean, default true)
When set, nn will flash the screen instead of "ringing
the bell" if the visible bell (flash) capability is
defined in the termcap/terminfo database.
window size (integer, default not set)
When set, nn will reserve the last size lines of the
menu screen for a preview window. If not set, nn will
clear the screen to preview an article if there are
less than min-window lines at the bottom of the screen.
As a side effect, it can also be used to reduce the
size of the menus, which may be useful on slow
terminals.
word-key key (key, default ^W)
The key which erases the last input component or word
when nn is prompting for a string, e.g. the last name
in a path name.
wrap-header-margin size (integer, default 6)
When set (non-negative), the customized header fields
specified in header-lines will be split across several
lines if they don't fit on one line. When size is
greater than zero, lines will be split at the first
space occurring in the last size columns of the line.
If not set (or negative), long header lines will be
truncated if they don't fit on a single line.
CUSTOMIZED ARTICLE HEADER PRESENTATION
Normally, nn will just print a (high-lighted) single line
header containing the author, subject, and date (optional)
of the article when it is read.
By setting the header-lines variable as described below, it
is possible to get a more informative multi line header with
optional high-lighting and underlining.
The header-lines variable is set to a list of header line
identifiers, and the customized headers will then contain
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exactly these header lines in the specified order.
The same specifications are also used by the :print and
save-short commands via the print-header-lines and save-
header-lines variables.
The following header line identifiers are recognized in the
header-lines, print-header-lines, and save-header-lines
variables:
A Approved:
a Spool-File:(path of spool file containing the
article)
B Distribution:
C Control:
D Date:
E Content-transfer-encoding:
d Date-Received:
F From:
f Sender:
G Newsgroup:(current group)
g Newsgroup:(current group if cross-posted or
merged)
I Message-Id:
K Keywords:
L Lines:
M Mime-Version:
N Newsgroups:
n Newsgroups: (but only if cross posted)
O Organization:
P Path:
R Reply-To:
S Subject:
T Content-Type:
v Save-File:(the default save file for this
article)
W Followup-To:
X References:
x Back-References:
Y Summary:
The 'G' and 'g' fields will include the local article number
if it is known, e.g.
Newsgroup: news.software.nn/754
The following special symbols are recognized in the header-
lines variable (and ignored otherwise):
Preceding the identifier with an equal sign "=" or an
underscore "_" will cause the header field contents to be
high-lighted or underlined.
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A plus sign "+" will use the shading attribute defined by
shading-on and shading-off to high-light the field contents.
If no shading attribute is defined it will underline the
field instead.
Including an asterisk "*" in the list will produce the
standard one line header at that point.
Example: The following setting of the header-lines variable
will show the author (underlined), organization, posting
date, and subject (high-lighted) when articles are read:
set header-lines _FOD=S
COMMAND LINE OPTIONS
Some of the command line options have already been
described, but below we provide a complete list of the
effect of each option by showing the equivalent set, unset,
or toggle command.
Besides the options described below, you can set any of nn's
variables directly on the command line via an argument of
the following format:
variable=value
To set or unset a boolean variable, the value can be
specified as on or off (t and f will also work).
Notice that the init files are read before the options are
parsed (unless you use the -I option). Therefore, the
options which are related to boolean variables set in the
init file will toggle the value set there, rather than the
default value. Consequently, the meaning of the options are
also user-defined.
The explanations below describe the effect related to the
default setting of the variables, with the `reverse' effect
in square brackets.
-aN {set limit N}
Limit the maximum number of articles presented in each
group to N. This is useful to get up-to-date quickly if
you have not read news for a longer period.
-a0 Mark all unread articles as read. See the full
explanation at the beginning of this manual.
-A Don't read active file, instead use the .newsrc file
for the list of groups, this can be useful for slow
NNTP connections.
-B {toggle backup}
Do not [do] backup the rc file.
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Do not [do] split digests into separate articles.
-D server-name
Connect to the specified NNTP server and also
incorporate the server name in the NN status files so
that it is easy to use multilple NNTP servers. For
example with -D host.net .newsrc becomes .newsrc-
host.net.
-f {toggle fsort}
Do not [do] sort folders according to the subject
(present the articles in a folder in the sequence in
which they were saved).
-g Prompt for the name of a news group or folder to be
entered
-i {toggle case-fold-search}
Normally searches with -n and -s are case independent.
Using this option, the case becomes significant.
-I Do not read the init file. This must be the first
option!! The global setup file is still read.
-Ifile-list
Specifies an alternate list of init files to be loaded
instead of the standard global and private init files.
The list is a comma-separated list of file names.
Names which does not contain a `/' are looked for in
the ~/.nn directory. An empty element in the list is
interpreted as the global init file. The list of init
files must not be separated from the -I option by
blanks, and it must be the first option. Example: The
default behavior corresponds to using -I,init (first
the global file, then the file ~/.nn/init). The global
setup file is still read as the first init file
independently of the -I option used.
-k {toggle kill}
Do not [do] perform automatic kill and selection of
articles.
-lN {set stop N}
Stop after printing the first N lines of each article.
This is useful on slow terminals.
-L[f] {set layout f}
Select alternative menu layout f (0 to 4). If f is
omitted, menu layout 3 is selected.
-m {no corresponding variable}
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Merge all articles into one `meta group' instead of
showing them one group at a time. When -m is used, no
articles will be marked as read.
-nWORD
Collect only articles which contain the string WORD in
the sender's name (case is ignored). If WORD starts
with a slash `/', the rest of the argument is used as a
regular expression instead of a fixed string.
-N {no corresponding variable}
Disable updating of the rc file. This includes not
recording that groups have been read or unsubscribed to
(although nn will think so until you quit).
-q {toggle sort}
Do not [do] sort the articles (q means quick, but it
isn't any quicker in practice!)
-Q {toggle silent}
Quiet mode - don't [do] print the logo or "No News"
messages.
-r {toggle repeat-group-query}
Make -g repeat query for a group to enter.
-R server-name
Connect to the specified NNTP server
-sWORD
Collect only articles which contain the string WORD in
their subject (case is ignored). If WORD starts with a
slash `/', the rest of the argument is used as a
regular expression instead of a fixed string.
-S {toggle repeat}
Do not [do] eliminate duplicated subject lines on
menus.
-T {toggle time}
Do not [do] show the current time in the prompt line.
-w[N] {set window N}
Reserve N lines of the menu screen for a preview
window. If N is omitted, the preview window is set to
5 lines.
-W {toggle confirm-messages}
[Don't] Wait for confirmation on all messages.
-x[N] {set old N}
Present (or scan) all (or the last N) unread as well as
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read articles. This will never mark unread articles as
read.
-X {no corresponding variable}
Read/scan unsubscribed groups also. Most useful when
looking for a specific subject in all groups, e.g.
nn-mxX -sSubject all
MACRO DEFINITIONS
Practically any combination of commands and key strokes can
be defined as a macro which can be bound to a single key in
menu and/or reading mode.
The macro definition must specify a sequence of commands and
key strokes as if they were typed directly from the
keyboard. For example, a string specifying a file name must
follow a save command. This manual does not give a complete
specification of all the input required by the various
commands; it is recommended to execute the desired command
sequence from the keyboard prior to defining the macro to
get the exact requirements of each command.
Although it is possible to define temporary macros
interactively using the :define command, macro definitions
are normally placed in the init file. Macros are numbered
from 0 to 100, i.e. it is possible to define a total of 101
different macros (implicit macros defined with the map
command uses internal numbers from 101 to 200).
To define macro number M, the following construction is used
(the line breaks are mandatory):
define M
body
end
The body consists of a sequence of tokens separated by white
space (blanks or newlines). However, certain tokens
continue to the end of the current line.
The following tokens may occur in the macro body:
Comments
Empty lines and text following a # character (preceded
by white space) is ignored.
Command Names
Any command name listed in the key mapping section can
be included in a macro causing that command to be
invoked when the macro is executed.
Extended Commands
All the extended commands which can be executed through
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the command command (normally bound to the : key) can
also be executed in a macro. An extended command
starts with a colon (:) and continues to the end of the
current line. Example:
:show groups total
Key Strokes
A key stroke (which is normally mapped into a command
depending on the current mode) is specified as a key
name enclosed in single quotes. Examples (A-key, left
arrow key, RETURN key):
'A' 'left' '^M'
Shell Commands
External commands can be invoked as part of a macro
execution. There are two forms of shell command
invocations available depending on whether a command
may produce output or require user input, or it is
guaranteed to complete without input or output to the
terminal. The difference is that in the latter case,
nn does not prepare the terminal to be used by another
program. When the command completes, the screen is not
redrawn automatically; you should use the redraw
command to do that. The the forms are:
:!echo this command uses the terminal
:!!echo this command does not > /tmp/file
Strings
Input to commands prompting for a string, e.g. a file
name, can be specified in a macro as a double quoted
string. Example (save without prompting for a file
name):
save-short "+$G"
Conditionals
Conditionals may occur anywhere in a macro; a
conditional is evaluated when the macro is executed,
and if the condition is false the rest of the current
line is ignored. The following conditionals are
available:
?menu True in menu mode
?show True in reading mode
?folder True when looking at a folder
?group True when looking at a news group
?yes Query user, true if answer is yes
?no Query user, true if answer is no
Example (stop macro execution if user rejects to
continue):
prompt "continue? " ?no break
In addition to these conditionals, it is possible to
test the current value of boolean and integer variables
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using the following form:
?variable=value
This conditional will be true (1) if the variable is an
integer variable whose current value is the one
specified, or (2) if the variable is a boolean variable
which is either on or off. Examples:
?layout=3 :set layout 1
?monitor=on break
?sort=off :sort age
break
Terminate macro execution completely. This includes
nested macros. Example (stop if looking at a folder):
?folder break
return
Terminate execution of current macro. If the current
macro is called from another macro, execution of that
macro continues immediately.
input
Query the user for a key stroke or a string, for
example a file name. Example (prompt the user for a
file name in the usual way):
save-short input
yes Confirm unconditionally if a command requires
confirmation. It is ignored if the command does not
require confirmation. Example (confirm creation of new
files):
save-short "+$G" yes
no Terminate execution of current macro if a command
requires confirmation; otherwise ignore it. If neither
yes nor no is specified when a command requires
confirmation, the user must answer the question as
usual - if the user confirms the action execution
continues normally; otherwise the execution of the
current macro is terminated. Example (do not create
new files):
save-short "+$L/misc" no
prompt string
Print the string in the prompt line (highlighted). The
string must be enclosed in double quotes. Example:
prompt "Enter recipient name"
When the macro terminates, the original prompt shown on
entry to the macro will automatically be redrawn. If
this is not desirable (e.g. if the macro goes from
selection to reading mode), the redrawing of the prompt
can be disabled by using a prompt command with an empty
string (""). Example:
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prompt "Enter reading mode?" # old prompt is saved
?no return # and old prompt is restored
read-skip # changes the prompt
prompt "" # so forget old prompt
echo string
Display the string in the prompt line for a short
period. Example:
?show echo "Cannot be used in reading mode" break
puts string-to-end-of-line
The rest of the line is output directly to the terminal
without interpretation.
macro M
Invoke macro number M. The maximum macro nesting level
is five (also catches macro loops).
I use the following macro to quickly save all the selected
files in a file whose name is entered as usual. It also
works in reading mode (saving just the current article).
define 1
:unset save-report
save-short input yes
?menu '+'
:set save-report
end
KEY MAPPINGS
The descriptions of the keys and commands provided in this
manual reflects the default key mappings in nn. However,
you can easily change these mappings to match your personal
demands, and it is also possible to remap keys depending on
the terminal in use. Permanent remapping of keys must be
done through the init file, while temporary changes (for the
duration of the current invocation of nn) can be made with
the :map command.
The binding and mapping of keys are controlled by four
tables:
The multikey definition table
This table is used for mapping multicharacter key
sequences into single characters. By default the table
contains the mappings for the four cursor keys, and
there is room for 10 user-defined multikeys. The
fourteen multikeys are named: up, down, right, left
(the four arrow keys), and #0 through #9 for the user-
defined keys.
Multikey #i (where i is a digit or an arrow key name)
is defined using the following command:
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map #i key-sequence
where the sequence is a list of 7-bit character names
(see below) separated by spaces. For example, if the
HOME key sends the sequence ESC [ H, you can define
multikey #0 to be the home key using the command:
map #0 ^[ [ H
The input key mapping table
All characters that are read from the keyboard will be
mapped through the input mapping table. Consequently,
you can globally remap one key to produce any other key
value. By default all keys are mapped into themselves.
An entry in the input key mapping table to map input-
key into new-key is made with the command
map key input-key new-key
For example, to make your ESC key function as interrupt
you can use the command
map key ^[ ^G
The selection mode key binding table
This table defines for each key which command should be
invoked when that key is pressed in selection mode,
i.e. when the article menu is shown. The command to
bind a key to a command in selection mode is:
map menu key command
For example, to have the HOME key defined as multikey
#0 above bound to the select command, the following
command is used:
map menu #0 select
To remap a key to select a specific article on the menu
(which the `a' through `z' keys do by default), the
command must be specified as `article N' where N is the
entry number on the menu counted from zero (i.e. a=0,
b=1, ..., z=25, 0=26, ..., 9=35). For example, to map
`J' to select article `j', the following command is
used:
map menu J article 9
The reading mode key binding table
This table defines for each key which command should be
invoked when that key is pressed in reading mode, i.e.
when the article text is shown. The command to bind a
key to a command in reading mode is:
map show key command
In addition to the direct mappings described above, the
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following variations of the map command are available:
User defined keymaps
Additional keymaps can be defined using the command
make map newmap
This will create a new keymap which can initialized
using normal map commands, e.g.
map newmap key command
To activate a user-defined keymap, it must be bound to
a prefix key:
map base-map prefix-key prefix newmap
When used, the prefix key itself does not activate a
command, but instead it require another key to be
entered and then execute the command bound to that key
in the keymap which is bound to the prefix key.
For example, to let the key sequence "^X i" execute
macro number 10 in both modes, the following commands
can be used:
make map ctl-x
map ctl-x i macro 10
map both ^X prefix ctl-x
Mapping keys in both modes
Using the pseudo-keymap `both', it is possible to map a
key to a command in both selection and reading mode at
once. For example, to map the home key to macro number
5 in both modes, the following command can be used:
map both #0 macro 5
Aliasing
A key can also be mapped directly to the command
currently bound to another key. Later remapping of the
other key will not change the mapping of the `aliased'
key. This is done using the following command:
map keymap new-key as old-key
Binding macros to keys
A previously defined macro can be bound to a key using
the command:
map keymap key macro macro-number
Implicit macro definitions
An implicit macro can also be defined directly in
connection with the map command:
map keymap key (
body...
)
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Keys and character names are specified using the following
notation:
C A single printable character represents the key or
character itself.
^C This notation represents a control key or character.
DEL is written as ^?
125, 0175, 0x7D
Characters and keys can be specified by their ordinal
value in decimal, octal, and hexadecimal notation.
up, down, right, left
These names represent the cursor keys.
#0 through #9
These symbols represent the ten user-defined multikeys.
If the variable data-bits is 7, key maps can specify binding
of all keys in the range 0x00 to 0x7F, and the 8th bit will
be stripped in all keyboard input. If the variable data-
bits is 8, the 8th bit is not cleared, and key maps are
extended to allow binding of keys in the range 0xA0 to 0xFE
(corresponding to the national characters defined by the ISO
8859 character sets). Binding commands to these keys can be
done either by using their numeric value, or directly
specifying the 8 bit character in the map command, e.g.
map menu 0xC8 macro 72
map key e %
To show the current contents of the four tables, the
following versions of the :map command are available:
:map Show the current mode's key bindings.
:map menu
Show the selection mode key bindings.
:map show
Show the reading mode key bindings.
:map #
Show the multikey definition table.
:map key
Show the input key mapping table.
STANDARD KEY BINDINGS
Below is a list of all the commands that can be bound to
keys, either in selection mode, in reading mode, or both.
For each command the default command key bindings in both
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modes are shown. If the key is not bound in one of the
modes, but it can be bound, the corresponding part will just
be empty. If the command cannot be bound in one of the
modes, that mode will contain the word nix.
Function Selection mode Reading mode
advance-article nix a
advance-group A A
article N a-z0-9 nix
back-article nix b
back-group B B
cancel C C
command : :
compress nix c
continue space space
continue-no-mark return nix
decode
find = /
find-next nix .
follow F fF
full-digest nix H
goto-group G G
goto-menu nix = Z
help ? ?
junk-articles J nix
kill-select K K
layout " nix
leave-article nix l
leave-next L L
line+1 , down return
line-1 / nix
line=@ nix g
macro M
mail M m M
message ^P ^P
next-article nix n
next-group N N
next-subject nix k
nil
overview Y Y
page+1 > nix
page+1/2 nix d
page-1 < delete
backspace
page-1/2 nix u
page=0 nix h
page=1 ^ ^
page=$ $ $
patch
post
preview % %
previous P p
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print P
quit Q Q
read-return Z nix
read-skip X X
redraw ^L ^R ^L ^R
reply R r R
rot13 nix D
save-body W w W
save-full S s S
save-short O o O
select . nix
select-auto + nix
select-invert @ nix
select-range - nix
select-subject * *
shell ! !
skip-lines nix tab
unselect-all ~ nix
unshar
unsub U U
version V V
See the descriptions of the default bindings for a
description of the commands. The pseudo command nil is used
to unbind a key.
THE INIT FILES
The init files are used to customize nn's behavior to local
conventions and restrictions and to satisfy each user's
personal taste.
Normally, nn reads upto four init files on start-up if they
exist (all init files are optional):
$LIB/setup
A system-wide file located in the library directory.
This file is always loaded before any other init file
(even when the -I option is specified). It cannot
contain a group presentation sequence.
$LIB/init
Another system-wide (global) init file located in the
library directory. This file may be ignored via the -I
option.
~/.nn/init
The private init file located in the user's .nn
directory. It is read after the global init file to
allow the user to change the default setup.
~/.nn/tk-init-nn
Another private init file located in the user's .nn
directory, this one is managed using the nn-tk setup
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menu and overrides any values set it ~/.nn/init. It
should be noted that once a value is changed using nn-
tk it writes the value of all variables that have been
changed from their builtin defaults to ~/.nn/tk-init-
nn, so that all variable changing from then on should
be done via the nn-tk setup menu.
The init file is parsed one line at a time. If a line ends
with a backslash `\', the backslash is ignored, and the
following line is appended to the current line.
The init file may contain the following types of commands
(and data):
Comments
Empty lines and lines with a # character as the first
non-blank character are ignored. Except where # has
another meaning defined by the command syntax (e.g.
multi-keys are named #n), trailing comments on input
lines are ignored.
Variable settings
You can set (or unset) all the variables described
earlier to change nn's behavior permanently. The set
and unset commands you can use in the init file have
exactly the same format as the :set and :unset commands
described earlier (except that the : prefix is
omitted.)
Variables can also be locked via the lock command; this
is typically done in the setup file to enforce local
policies.
Key mappings
You can use all the versions of the map command in the
init file.
Macro Definitions
You can define sequences of commands and key strokes
using the define...end construction, which can then be
bound to single keys with the map command.
Load terminal specific files
You can load a terminal specific file using the
load file
The character @ in the file will be replaced by the
terminal type defined in the TERM environment variable.
nn silently ignores the load command if the file does
not exist (so you don't have to have a specific init
file for terminals which does not require remapping).
If the file is not specified by an absolute pathname,
it must reside in your ~/.nn directory. Examples:
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# load local customizations
load /usr/lib/nninit
# load personal terminal specific customizations
load init.@
Switch to loading a different init
You can skip the rest of the current init file and
start loading a different init file with the following
command:
chain file
If this occur in the private or global init file, the
chained init file may contain a sequence part which
will replace the private or global presentation
sequence respectively.
Stop loading current init file
You can skip the rest of the current init file with the
following command:
stop
Give error messages and/or terminate
If an error is detected in the init file, the following
commands can be used to print an error message and/or
terminate execution:
error fatal error message...
Print the message and terminate execution.
echo warning message...
Print the message and continue.
exit [ status ]
Terminate nn with the specified exit status or 0
if omitted.
Change working directory of nn
You can use the cd command to change the working
directory whenever you enter nn. Example:
# Use folder directory as working directory inside nn
cd ~/News
Command groups
The init file can contain groups of commands which are
executed under special conditions. The command groups
are described in the section on command groups below.
One or more save-files sections
A save-files section is used to assign default save
files to specific groups:
save-files
group-name (pattern) file-name
...
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end
The group name (patterns) and save file names are
specified in the same way as in the presentation
sequence (see below). Example:
save-files
news* +news/$L
comp.sources* /u/src/$L/
end
The news group presentation sequence
The last part of the init file may specify the sequence
in which you want the news groups to be presented.
This part starts with the command sequence and
continues to the end of the init file.
Both init files may contain a presentation sequence. In
this case, the global sequence is appended to the private
sequence.
COMMAND GROUPS
Command groups may only occur in the init file, and they
provide a way to have series of commands executed at certain
points during news reading.
In release 6.4 onwards, these possibilities are still rather
rudimentary, and a mixture of normal init file syntax and
macro syntax is used depending on whether the command group
is only executed on start-up or several times during the nn
session.
A command group begins with the word on and ends with the
word end. The following command groups are conditionally
executed during the parsing of the init file if the
specified condition is true. They may also have an optional
else part which is executed if the condition is false:
on condition
commands
[ else
commands ]
end
The following conditional command groups may be used in the
init file to be executed at start-up:
on [ test ]
The commands (init file syntax) in the group are
executed only if the specified test is true. A shell
is spawned to execute the command "[ test ]", so all
the options of the test(1) command is available. For
example, to unset the flow-control variable if the tty
is a pseudo-tty, the following conditional can be used:
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on [ -n "`tty | grep ttyp`" ]
unset flow-control
end
on !shell command
The command group is executed if the given shell
command exits with 0 status (success). Care should be
taken that the command does not produce any output,
e.g. by redirecting its output to /dev/null. For
example, to prevent people from reading news if load is
above a specific level, the following conditional might
be placed in the global setup file.
on !load-above 5
error load is too high, try again later.
end
on `shell command` string...
The command group is executed if the first output line
from executing the specified shell command is listed
among the specified string values. The shell command
can be omitted on subsequent occurrences of this
conditional, in which case the output from the last
shell command is used. For example, the following
conditional can be used to switch to an init file which
has a limited sequence for news reading during working
hours, evenings, and nights:
on `date +%H` 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16
chain init.work
end
on `` 17 18 19 20 21
chain init.evening
else
chain init.night
end
on `` string...
This is equivalent to the previous form except that
instead of executing a shell command, the output from
the previous
on $variable [ value ]
If no value strings are specified, the command group is
executed if the given variable is defined in the
environment. Otherwise, the command group is executed
only if the value of the variable occur in the value
list. For example, if you want nn to look for mail in
whatever $MAIL is set to - if it is set - you can use
the following code:
on $MAIL
set mail $(MAIL)
end
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on slow
The commands (init file syntax) in the group are
executed only if the current terminal output speed is
less than or equal to the baud rate set in the slow-
speed variable. This can be used to optimize the
user-interface for slow terminals by setting suitable
variables:
on slow
set confirm-entry
set slow-mode
set delay-redraw
unset visible-bell
set compress
unset header-lines
set stop 5
set window 10
end
on fast
Same as on slow except that the commands are only
executed when the terminal is running at a speed above
the slow-speed value.
on term term-type...
The commands are executed if one of the term-type names
is identical to value of the TERM environment variable.
on host host-name...
The commands are executed if the local host's name
occur in the host-name list.
on program program-name...
The commands are executed if the current program (nn,
nncheck, etc) in the program-name list.
The following on command groups are really macros which may
be executed during nn's normal processing, and as such they
cannot have an else part.
on entry [ group list ]
These commands (macro format!) are executed every time
nn enters a news group. If a group list is not
specified, the commands are associated with all groups
which don't have its own entry macro specified in the
group sequence. Otherwise, the entry macro will be
associated with the groups in the list. The group list
is specified using the meta-notations described in the
presentation sequence section.
All `:' commands at the beginning of the command group
are executed before nn collects the articles in the
group, so it is possible to set or unset variables like
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cross-post and auto-read-mode before any articles are
collected and the menu is (not) shown.
The non-`:' commands, and `:' commands that follows a
command of another type will be executed immediately
after the first menu page is presented. The execution
of a `:' command can be postponed by using a double
`::' as the command prefix.
on entry comp.sources* alt.sources
:set cross-post on # set before collection
:local auto-read-mode on # set before showing menu
::unset cross-post # set after collection
end
on start-up
These `:' commands (macro format!) are executed on
start-up just before nn enters the first news group.
However, postponed commands (i.e. non-`:' commands)
will not be executed until the first group is shown (it
works like an entry macro).
GROUP PRESENTATION SEQUENCE
News groups are normally presented in the sequence defined
in the system-wide init file in nn's library directory.
You can personalize the presentation sequence by specifying
an alternative sequence in the private init file. The
sequence in the private init file is used before the global
presentation sequence, and need only describe the deviations
from the default presentation sequence.
The presentation sequence must start with the word
sequence
followed by a list of the news group names in the order you
want them to be presented. The group names must be
separated by white space. The sequence list must be the
last part of the init file (the parsing of commands from the
init file stops when the word sequence is encountered).
You may use a full group name like "comp.unix.questions", or
just the name of a main group or subgroup, e.g. "comp" or
"comp.unix". However, if "comp" precedes
"comp.unix.questions" in the list, this subgroup will be
placed in the normal alphabetic sequence during the
collection of all the "comp" groups.
Groups which are not explicitly mentioned in any of the
sequence files will be placed after the mentioned groups,
unless `!!' is used and it has not been disabled (as
described below).
Each group name may be followed by a file or folder name
(must start with either of `/' `~' or `+') which will
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specify the default save file for that group (and its
subgroups). A single `+' following the group name is an
abbreviation for the last save file name used. For example,
the following two sequences are equivalent:
group1 +file group2 +file group3 +file
group1 +file group2 + group3 +
When an article is saved, the default save name will be used
as the initial contents of the file name prompt for further
editing. It therefore does not need to be be a complete
file name (unless you use the quick save mode).
Each group name may also be associated with a so-called
entry action. This is basically an (unnamed) macro which is
invoked on entry to the group (following the same rules as
the `on entry' command group related to :set and :unset
commands).
The entry action begins with a left parenthesis `(' and ends
with a right parenthesis `)' on an otherwise empty line:
comp.sources. +src/$L/ (
:set cross-post
)
The last entry action can be repeated by specifying an empty
set of parenthesis, e.g.
comp.unix. +unix ()
The entry action of a preceding group in the sequence can be
associated with the current group(s) by specifying the name
of the group in the parentheses instead of the commands,
e.g.
comp.unix. +unix (comp.sources.unix)
A macro can also be associated with the entry action by
specifying its number in the same way as the group name
above, e.g.
rec.music. +music (30)
Notice that it is the current definition of the macro which
is associated with the group, so if the macro is later
redefined with the `:define' command, it will not have any
effect on the entry action.
Group names can be specified using the following notations:
group.name
Append the group (if it exists) to the presentation
sequence list. If also-subgroups is set (default), all
subscribed subgroups of the group will be included as
well (if there are any). Examples: "comp",
"comp.unix", "comp.unix.questions". If the group does
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not exits (e.g. "comp"), the subgroups will be
included even when also-subgroups is not set, i.e.
"comp" is equivalent to "comp.".
group.name.
Append the subgroups of the specified group to the
presentation sequence. The group itself (if it exists)
is not included. Examples: "comp.", "comp.unix.".
Append the groups whose name ends with the specified name to the
sequence. Example: ".test".
group.name*
Append the group and its subgroups to the presentation
sequence list (even when also-subgroups is not set).
Example: "comp.unix*".
The following meta notation can be used in a sequence file.
The group.name can be specified using any of the forms
described above:
! groups
Completely ignore the group or groups specified unless
they are already in the presentation sequence (i.e. has
been explicitly mentioned earlier in the sequence).
!:code groups
Ignore a selection of groups based on the given code
letter (see below), unless they are already included in
the sequence. Notice that these forms only excludes
groups from the presentation sequence, i.e. they do not
include the remaining groups at this point; that must
be done explicitly elsewhere.
!:U groups
Ignore unsubscribed groups, i.e. if they are neither
new, nor present and subscribed in .newsrc. This is
useful to ignore a whole hierarchy except for a few
groups which are explicitly mentioned in .newsrc and
still see new groups as they are created.
!:X groups
Ignore unsubscribed and new groups, i.e. if they are
not currently present and subscribed in .newsrc. This
is useful to ignore a whole hierarchy except for a few
groups which are explicitly mentioned in .newsrc. New
groups in the hierarchy are ignored unless `NEW' occurs
earlier in the sequence.
!:O groups
Ignore old groups, i.e. unless they are new. This is
useful to ignore a whole hierarchy but still see new
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groups which are created in the hierarchy (it might
become interesting some day). Individual groups can
still be included in the sequence if they are specified
before the `!:O' entry.
!:N groups
Ignore new groups in the hierarchy.
!! Stop building the presentation sequence. This
eliminates all groups that are not already in the
presentation sequence.
NEW This is a pseudo group name which matches all new
groups; you could place this symbol early in your
presentation sequence to see new groups `out of
sequence' (to attract your attention to them).
RC This is a pseudo group name which matches all groups
occurring in the .newsrc file. It will cause the
groups in .newsrc to be appended to the presentation
sequence in the sequence in which they are listed in
.newsrc.
RC:number
Similar to the RC entry, but limited to the first
number lines of the .newsrc file. Example: RC:10 (use
10 lines of .newsrc).
RC:string
Similar to the RC entry, but limited to the lines up to
(and including) the first line (i.e. group) starting
with the given string. For example: RC:alt.sources
< group.name
Place the group (and its subgroups) at the beginning of
the presentation sequence. Notice that each `<' entry
will place the group(s) at the beginning of the current
sequence, i.e. < A < B < C will generate the sequence C
B A.
> group.name
Place the group (and its subgroups) after all other
groups that are and will be entered into the
presentation sequence.
@ Disable the `!!' command. This can be included in the
personal presentation sequence if the global sequence
file contains a !! entry (see example 1 below).
% .... %
Starts and ends a region of the sequence where it is
possible to include groups which has been eliminated
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earlier. This may be useful to alter the sequence of
some groups, e.g. to place comp.sources.bugs after all
other source groups, the following sequence can be
used:
! comp.sources.bugs comp.sources* % comp.sources.bugs %
Example 1: In a company where ordinary users only should
read the local news groups, and ignore the rest (including
new news groups which are otherwise always subscribed to
initially), can use the following global presentation
sequence:
general
follow
! local.test
local
!!
The "expert" users in the company must put the @ command
somewhere in their private sequence to avoid losing news
groups which they have not explicitly mentioned in their
init file.
Example 2: This is the global sequence for systems with
heavy news addicts who setup their own sequences anyway.
# all must read the general news first
< general
# test is test, and junk is junk,
# so it is placed at the very end
> test
> .test
> junk
# this is the standard sequence which everybody may
# change to their own liking
local # our local groups
dk # the Danish groups
eunet.general # to present it before eunet.followup
eunet # the other European groups
comp # the serious groups
news # news on news
sci # other serious groups
rec # not really that important (don't quote me)
misc # well, it must be somewhere
# the groups that are not listed above goes here
Notice the use of comments in the sequence where they are
allowed at the end of non-empty lines as well.
Example 3: My own presentation sequence (in the init file)
simply lists my favourite groups and the corresponding
default save files:
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sequence
!:U alt* # ignore unsubscribed alt groups
news.software.nn +nn
comp.sys.ti* +ti/$L
NEW # show new groups here
news*
rec.music.synth +synth/
comp.emacs*,gnu.emacs +emacs/misc
comp.risks +risks
eunet.sources +src/unix/
comp.sources* +src/$L/
The presentation sequence is not used when nn is called with
one or more news group names on the command line; it is thus
possible to read ignored groups (on explicit request)
without changing the init file. (Of course, you can also
use the G command to read ignored groups).
MERGING NEWS GROUPS
The third example above contains the following line:
comp.emacs*,gnu.emacs +emacs/misc
This is the syntax used to merge groups. When two or more
groups are merged, all new articles in these groups are
presented together as if they were one group. To merge
groups, their names must be listed together in the sequence,
and only separated by a single comma. To merge the groups
resulting from a single group pattern (e.g. comp.emacs*),
the group pattern must be followed by a comma and a blank
(e.g. comp.emacs*, ...).
Merged groups are presented as the first group in the
"list", and the word "MERGED" will be shown after the group
name. The Y {overview} command will still show merged
groups as individual groups, but they will be annotated with
the symbol `&' on the first of the groups, and a `+' on the
rest of the groups.
In the current version, the concept of the current group in
connection with merged groups is a bit fuzzy. This should
only be noticeable with the G command, which will take the
most recently used group among the merged groups as the
current group. So things like G = ... may not always work
as expected.
ENVIRONMENT
The following environment variables are used by nn:
EDITOR. The editor invoked when editing replies, follow-
ups, and composing mail. nn knows about the following
editors: vi, ded, GNU emacs, and micro-emacs, and will try
to position the cursor on the first line following the
header, i.e. after the blank line which must not be deleted!
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If an article has been included, the cursor is placed on the
first line of the included text (to allow you to delete
sections easily).
LOGNAME. This is taken as the login name of the current
user. It is used by nn to return failed mail. If it is not
defined, nn will use the value of USER, or if that is not
defined either, nn will use the call `who am i' to get this
information. If all attempts fail, the failed mail is
dropped in the bit bucket.
PAGER. This is used as the initial value of the pager
variable.
SHELL. This is the shell which is spawned if the system
cannot suspend nn, and it will be used to execute the shell
escapes.
TERM. The terminal type.
FILES
~/.newsrc The record of read articles.
~/.nn/select The record of selected and seen articles.
~/.nn/init Personal configuration and presentation
sequence.
~/.nn/kill The automatic kills and selections.
~/.nn/KILL.COMP The compiled kill file.
~/.nn/LAST The time stamp of the last news group we
have seen.
~/.nn/NEXTG Active group last time nn was quit.
~/.nn/.param Parameter file for the aux script
$lib/setup System-wide setup - always read first.
$lib/init System-wide setup and presentation
sequence.
$lib/aux The response edit and send script.
$lib/routes Mapping rules for mail addresses (on non-
domain systems).
$db/* The news data base.
/etc/termcap Terminal data base [BSD].
/usr/lib/terminfo/*Terminal data base [SysV].
/usr/lib/nntp-serverName of remote nntp server.
The name $lib and $db are the directories used for the
auxiliary files and the news data base respectively. Their
name and location is defined at compile time. Common
choices are /usr/local/lib/nn or /usr/lib/news/nn for $lib
and /usr/spool/nn or /usr/spool/news/.nn for $db.
SEE ALSO
Other netnews documentation.
RFC 1341, MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions)
nncheck(1), nngoback(1), nngrab(1), nngrep(1), nnpost(1),
nntidy(1)
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AUTHOR
Kim F. Storm, Texas Instruments A/S, Denmark
E-mail: storm@texas.dk (but see the addresses below)
The NNTP support was designed and implemented by Rene
Seindal, Institute of Datalogy, University of Copenhagen,
Denmark.
Bugs and fixes, suggestions, ideas, critique, etc. can be
sent to the following address:
nn-bugs@dkuug.dk
The news.software.nn group is used for discussion on all
subjects related to the nn news reader. This includes, but
is not limited to, questions, answers, ideas, hints,
information from the development group, patches, etc.
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