An introduction to TRN version 0.1alpha, written by Matthew Crosby, mcrosby@nyx.net May 10, 1999 Introduction Many years ago, Usenet was passed around from machine to machine over normal phone lines. The only way to get access to usenet was to read it on a large time sharing machine, often a Unix box. A man by the name of Larry Wall (who later became famous for writing the Perl language) read news, but wanted a better interface then any than was available at the time. So he wrote a newsreader, rn--short for "read news". Time passed, and rn became more and more popular. Several derivatives were produced, the most important being "trn"--the threaded version of rn. Today trn is still a very popular newsreader, and is one of the several newsreaders available on Nyx. This document aims to take you through all the main screens of trn, beginning with how to start trn on nyx, and going from there... About news and trn This document will not explain the workings of the Usenet news system. There are other documents available that provide this information. See, for instance [insert URLs or whatever]. Trn is a very powerful newsreader which offers a lot of functionality and flexibility, and may appear daunting at first. Fortunately, there is help available. Aside from this document, at any time you are using trn, you can press "h" to access the help menu. This will provide you with a menu of different documents, such as the one below: figure 1: The add newsgroups menu --------------------------------------------------------- [1] Extended Help a Help on the Newsgroup Browse Mode b Trn Quickstart d What's New? e Helpful Hints f Sample Files -- Select an item (natural order) -- All [Z>] -- --------------------------------------------------------- At this point, you can press any of these letters to access the menu entry. Generally, the first entry (a) will give you a list of commands available in whatever screen you called help from, while the rest of the commands will take you to standard introductory materials. So, you can press "b" and then enter to read the Trn Quickstart, for example. You also should not let yourself become intimidated. The basics of trn are actually fairly easy. So, let us begin. To start using trn, of course, you must start it. That is easy to do. Starting trn Starting up trn is simple. From the menu, select "c" for the communications menu, "n" for news, and "trn". From the shell, simply type "trn". Trn's startup can be quite slow, particularly the first time you run it, as it polls the server to find all groups that have been created since last time you read news. Be patient. If you are running trn from the shell and know the names of the newsgroups you wish to read, or have already subscribed to all the newsgroups you wish, you can type "trn -q" to skip this step and have it take you directly to the newsgroup selection screen. Adding newsgroups: The add newsgroups menu Once trn finally comes up for the first time, you will be presented with a menu of all newsgroups on the system. (In future, the menu will just contain newsgroups that have been created since you last ran trn). It will look something like the following, figure 2: The add newsgroups menu --------------------------------------------------------- ADD newsgroups 27010 groups a nyx.projects b nyx.people d nyx.forsale e nyx.policy f nyx.chat g nyx.intro i nyx.education -- Select a newsgroup to add (natural order) -- Top 0% [>Z] -- --------------------------------------------------------- At this menu, you can select a newsgroup you wish to add to your newsgroup list by either selecting the letter in front of that newsgroup, or moving down to the newsgroup with the arrow keys and pressing "." You can scroll through the list of newsgroups with the left and right arrow keys, or space to advance to the next screen. You can select all newsgroups containing a particular word by typing "/" and then the word--for example, "/books" will select all newsgroups involving books. When you have selected all the newsgroups you wish to add, you can press "enter". trn will add all the newsgroups you have selected to your ".newsrc" file--the list of newsgroups that you have subscribed that it keeps around. You will then be taken to the next screen, the newsgroups selector. Selecting newsgroups: The Newsgroups Selector The main menu for trn is the newsgroup selection screen. This looks very much like the following: figure 3: The Newsgroups selector menu --------------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups ~201 groups a 93 nyx.projects b 84 nyx.chat d 2147 nyx.misc e 8 nyx.jobs f 37 nyx.outreach g 2 alt.books.thomas-ligotti -- Select a newsgroup (natural order) -- Top 14% [>Z] -- --------------------------------------------------------- This screen is fairly similar in layout to the add newsgroups screen, except that it only shows the newsgroups you are subscribed to. Instead of selecting the groups that are going to be added to your subscription list, the purpose of this menu is to select the newsgroups you wish to read this session. As soon as you have selected the groups you wish to read, either by selecting the letter for that group or moving with the arrow keys, you can press "enter", which will take you to the newsgroup screen (see the next section for more information on this). If you wish to add more groups that don't show up in this screen, you can do it in one of two ways. You can type "\g'newsgroup name'" if you know the name of the newsgroup, or you can type "\a" to get back to the add newsgroups menu (see above). Browsing News: The thread selector screen A "thread" is a logically grouped collection of newsgroup postings that follow a particular subject and follow up on each other. The thread selector menu lets you see which threads are active in a newsgroup, and choose the ones you wish to read. You are taken to the thread selector menu once you have selected the groups you wish to read. You will be shown a list of threads, like the following: figure 4: The thread selector menu --------------------------------------------------------- nyx.chat 84 articles a Darlene Cypser 3 >Nyxmas in June Paul Gilmartin Darlene Cypser b Darlene Cypser 12 Poetry Chris Cypser Darlene Cypser Thor T a K Avon -- Select threads (date order) -- Top 34% [>Z] -- --------------------------------------------------------- The thread selector consists basically of a list of all the threads, with a letter to select the thread on the left, a list of authors of posts in the thread in the center, the number of posts in the thread, and then the subject of the thread. You can navigate this menu just like previous menus: Select a letter to select a thread you are interested in, or move the cursor and press ".", while you can move through the thread lists with the left and right arrows, and read the threads you have selected by pressing "enter". If you wish to read _all_ threads, you can just press "X", while if you DON'T want to read the selected thread, you can press "k" to kill the thread. When you have finished reading the threads you are interested in, a very useful command is "c", to catch up on the newsgroup. This will mark all messages as read, and take you back to the newsgroups selector. Otherwise, you will be taken to the article reader. Reading News: The Article Reader Below you can see a sample of the news reader interface. This is where you will spend most of your time in trn. figure 5: The news reading interface --------------------------------- nyx.chat #20 (24 + 83 more) (1)+-[1]--[1] From: dcypser@nyx10.nyx.net (Darlene Cypser) \-[1]--[1]+-[1]+-[1]--[1] [1] rumble rumble | \-[1]--[1] Date: Sat Jun 20 17:00:24 MDT 1998 \-[1]--[1] Lines: 8 This sunshine has charged up some big thunderstorms and that now starting to rumble over the mountains. The drive down past Littleton in an hour could be exciting. -- ,___, ,___, (o o) Darlene A. Cypser http://www.nyx.net/~dcypser (o o) (_^((\ Treasurer, Nyx Net dcypser@blackhole.nyx.net /))^_) " " \\ (303) 938-9903 (remove the blackhole) // " " End of article 20 (of 94) -- what next? [npq] --------------------------------- In the top left, you can see the headers for the article. First is the name of the newsgroup, and the article number. The numbers in parentheses are, respectively, the number of articles left that you selected at the thread menu, and the total number left in the newsgroup. The shape on the right is the thread: Your current article is highlighted, with replies on the right and original articles on the left. You can move around in the thread with the arrow keys. Read articles in the thread are surrounded with parentheses and unread articles with square brackets. The article itself, including the subject, date of authorship and author is below, above the actual text. The text below the "--" is what is known as a signature. It is a common usenet custom to include one of things, which should be kept below 4 lines of length. You may set up a signature for trn by putting it into a file called ".signature" in your home directory, without the "--". Mostly, when reading news, you can just press "space" at the end of each article, which will take you to the next article. You can move around in threads with the "<" and ">" keys, and you can go to the previous article with the "-" key. You can press "+" to take you back to the thread selection menu. Occasionally, an article will be longer then one screen, in which case you will see a prompt at the bottom of your screen something like --MORE--(87%) Just press space when you finish reading the screenfull of text the article is on, and you will be taken to the next. Occasionally, text gets posted in a format called "rot 13". This is a very simple format, which consists of every letter being replaced by the letter 13 ahead of it. An a, for example, would be replaced with an "n". This format is used to post offensive material, or otherwise material that the poster thinks that not everyone wished to read. Should you encounter this, which will usually say something like "ROT13" in the subject or above the text, you can read it quickly and easily in trn by pressing control X (^X). Finally, if you see a thread you don't wish to read, you can press "K", which will mark the thread in your "kill file". From then on, you will never see the thread again, it will be automatically marked as being read. The kill file is a very sophisticated tool that lets you quickly and easily customize your newsreading, however further use of the kill file is an advanced topic. There are many other commands available to aid your newsreading, however these are a little more estoric. But two important ones you should pay attention to are "r", to reply to news by mail, and "f", to follow up to an article. Posting News Eventually, inevitably, you will wish to post to news--to add your own message to the pool, and transform news from being a simple passive activity to an interactive activity. To do this, you need to post. Posting in trn is accomplished by the news reading interface, with the f (follow up) command. Both lower and upper case f are used, the important distinction between that upper case F will quote the message you are replying to. Generally, any time you respond to someone, you should ALWAYS use upper case F. Lowercase f should only be used if you are starting a new topic (and indeed, when you use it you will be asked if you are starting an unrelated topic). When you follow up to an article, you will be asked if you are absolutely sure that you want to do this. Hard as it is to believe in this day and age, but you should still pay attention to this message. The only asset you have on the net is your reputation, and while when you start out, people will not know who you are, if you post stuff that annoys people you will very quickly migrate into people's kill files and get labelled a loser. There are still people from the late 80s who are remembered as morons, and probably always will be, because of what they posted. However, assuming you are posting a useful, on topic message to a group, you should answer yes to the question by pressing y and then enter. You will then be asked Prepared file to include [none]: You should just press enter, unless you do in fact have a file you want to include in your post. Once you do this, you will be asked the name of your favourite editor (only on the first time you do this). You can just leave it with what it chooses by just pressing enter, or choose one yourself such as pico. You will then be taken to your editor, and presented with the outlines of a message, including all the text of the previous message quoted assuming you used "F". You should type in you post now. Pay attention to spelling and grammar-people DO care. Also, it is normal and polite to put new text at the bottom, below the quoted text, and to delete quoted text that is not used. In fact, trn won't let you post unless your message contains more new text then quoted text. When you have finished editing, you should save the message and quit your editor. You will be back in trn, which will ask you what you want to do with it. Something like the following: Your article's newsgroup: nyx.misc 2871 724 y Article is not PGP-signed. Check spelling, PGP, Send, Edit, List, or Abort? >From this point you can pretty much do what it is asking, by selecting the first letter from each selection. C will check your spelling, S will send off the article, E will let you edit it again and A will quit the posting. Assuming you wish to post and are happy, just press "S", and you will be on your way! (Important note re: test messages. You may want to test how to post. That's great. But don't post a message somewhere that says "testing". You'll annoy people. Either disguise your test message as a real message, by posting something relevant, or use the special newsgroup alt.test that was created for this very purpose). Sending Mail You can also reply to a post in email rather then news, if you just wish to talk to the person you are mailing. The interface for this is almost exactly the same as the one for posting, so I will not go into it, except to caution you that it is very easy to post when you thought you where mailing. Many people have been greatly embarrassed when what they had intended as private email got sent in the newsgroup all around the world and read by thousands of people. Don't let it happen to you. Finishing Up Generally, to quit you can just press the "q" key. "q" from the thread or article screens will take you back to the newsgroup selector, and "q" from there will quit trn, all ready to be started up another time. Speaking of which, that's about it for the basics of trn. More info may be found at [list resources here]. Please send comments, criticisms or contributions to this document to Matthew Crosby at mcrosby@nyx.net.