NewsWatcher is a news reader for Macintosh computers that allows you to join, read, and participate in USENET newsgroup discussions. This handout tells you how to identify relevant newsgroups, join them, and participate in online discussions with other users around the world.
To run NewsWatcher, you can use either an on-campus Macintosh already connected to UOnet, or you can use a Mac from home, provided you are running a Macintosh SLIP or PPP dial-in client.
If you installed the UO Network Applications package, you'll find NewsWatcher in the Network Applications folder on your hard drive. NewsWatcher is also available on the CC Public Domain server or the UO Duckware CD-ROM.
The first time you double-click NewsWatcher, it presents several boxes that prompt you for information.
1. Click Private, Shared, or Lab, to specify how you plan to use NewsWatcher. We are assuming in this handout that you are working from home or from an office, in which case you'd select Private.
2. Enter the names of news and mail servers. We recommend platform as the news server, and the name of the computer where you have an e-mail account (gladstone, DARKWING, or OREGON ) as the mail server.
3. Enter your personal information. (The organization name is optional.) If you have an account on GLADSTONE , it would look like this:
After entering your settings and clicking OK, NewsWatcher downloads all newsgroups on the server you specified. If you are connected over a modem, this can take several minutes.
When NewsWatcher opens, it displays the Full Group List and a small empty window. The Full Group List window contains thousands of newsgroups:
To search for a string of characters in a group's title:
1. Pull down the Edit menu and select "Find."
2. To continue to search for the same string of characters, pull down the Edit menu and select "Find Again."
If there are some groups you would like to read regularly, you can "subscribe" to them, which means NewsWatcher tracks the articles you have read and organizes the group's articles for you.
To subscribe to a newsgroup,
1. First click the "untitled" window once and select "Save..." from the File menu.
2. Name the file something like "My Newsgroups" and click Save.
NewsWatcher stores all of the newsgroups you've subscribed to in this file.
3. Position the "Full Group List" window and the "My Newsgroups" window so that both of them are visible.
4. Select a group in the "Full Group List" window that you want to subscribe to and drag it to your newsgroup window.
5. Repeat this process for all newsgroups you wish to join.
Dropping Out of Newsgroups. If, after your initial excitement, you find yourself with more newsgroups than you can manage, you can easily remove them from your newsgroups list.
To remove a group, click the group name in your newsgroups window and select "Clear" from the Edit menu.
When you read news using your "My Newsgroups" window, NewsWatcher keeps track of which articles you have read and displays only unread articles. When you read news using the "Full Group List" window, NewsWatcher shows all of the articles on the news server, whether you have already read them or not.
To read articles:
1. Double-click a group in the list to display the list of articles.
2. To open an article, double-click its subject line.
3. If you see articles in the list that you do not want to read, highlight them and select "Mark Read" from the News menu. Or, if you want to mark all articles as read, select "Mark Other Read."
Reading Threads. Often, when a person posts a new article, others send follow-up articles in response to the original article. This group of articles is called a thread. NewsWatcher always sorts its article lists so articles in the same thread are next to each other, in the order they were received by the news server.
The following commands, found in the News menu, are helpful for navigating through articles and threads:
Next Article closes the current article window and opens the next unread article.
Next Thread marks all the articles in the current thread as read and opens the first article in the next thread.
Next Group marks all the articles in the current group as read, closes the current subject window, then opens the subject window for the next group that has unread messages.
After reading an article, you can reply to either the entire readership of the newsgroup, or just to the article's author. To reply to an article:
1. With the article displayed, select "Reply" from the News menu.
NewsWatcher opens a window for you to compose your reply.
2. Using the icons along the top of the window, select the recipients for your message.
To have your reply go to the person who posted the article, click the envelope at the top of the screen. Their e-mail address automatically fills in. If you don't want your reply to go the the public newsgroup, click the News icon to "uncheck" it.
3. When you are ready to send the reply, click Send.
To compose a new article for posting,
1. Click the name of the group to which you want to post the article.
2. Pull down the News menu and select "New Message."
3. Compose the message and click Send.
Please use common sense and consideration when posting replies and new articles to entire newsgroups, many of which have tens of thousands of readers worldwide. Before posting any articles or replies in USENET, please read the articles in the newsgroup titled news.announce.newusers. Also, pick up and read a copy of the document Acceptable Use of Computing Resources in the Computing Center Documents Room (205 Computing Center).
When you're done using NewsWatcher, select "Quit" from the File menu. If you are connected remotely via modem, use your modem software to disconnect from UOnet.
Newswatcher includes an extensive online help system that you can access from the "?" icon near the top right corner of your screen. If you need more help, contact the consultants in the Microcomputer Support Center (Room 202 Computing Center; e-mail: microhelp@oregon.uoregon.edu; phone: 346-4412), Monday to Friday, 9 am - 5 pm. Or visit our Web site at http://micro.uoregon.edu.
