News Xpress Help Index

NOTICE: THIS HELP FILE IS INCOMPLETED!

Introduction

Setting up NX

Customizing NX

Author

Copyright Information

Reporting Bugs


Introduction

What is News Xpress?

News Xpress (NX) is a Windows Sockets compliant USENET news reader for Microsoft Windows that uses the NNTP to access newsgroups and articles on a  news server.

Some of the key features of NX are:

•	An integrated MDI application

•	Multiple groups can be opened at the same time

•	Support XOVER to access overview database from a news server

•	Support AUTHINFO for authorization

•	Support threads

•	Built-in uuencode and uudecode


Windows Sockets

The Windows Sockets specification defines a network programming interface for Microsoft Windows which is based on the "socket" paradigm popularized in the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) from the University of California at Berkeley. Network software which conforms to the Windows Sockets specification will be considered "Windows Sockets Compliant".


USENET News
USENET News System

The USENET News System is a set of bulletins, discussion groups, program sources, and other bits of information distributed around the world. The information is generally called "articles" and is broken up into "newsgroups". Each newsgroup deals with a subject or a set of subjects. The subjects for newsgroups are varied from discussions about particular versions of UNIX to movie reviews, from information on the X window system to commentary on current social and political issues.


News Server

An Internet host running a special software which provides services for exchanging USENET news.


Newsreader

Newsreader is an interface to the USENET news system that allows users to read and write articles by accessing a central news repository.


Mail Relay

An intermediate machine which is used to deliver electronic mail to recipient. It is also known as a mail gateway, or mail bridge.


NNTP

Network News Transfer Protocol is a standard for the distribution, inquiry, retrieval, and posting of articles among the ARPA-Internet community.


SMTP

Simple Mail Transfer Protocol is a standard for the exchange of mail between machines.


NEWSRC

NX uses a file called newsrc to store a list of all newsgroups from news server. Each line shows a newsgroup name in full, followed by the numbers of the articles that have been read. A colon after the newsgroup name indicates that the newsgroup is subscribed and an exclamation mark indicates that the newsgroup is unsubscribed.


Threads

NX uses articles' subject and references to order the discussions in a reply-ordered sequence, which is called threads. This makes following the discussion easier, and also makes it easy to backtrack a specific discussion from the beginning.


XOVER

XOVER is an NNTP extension for accessing the Overview database in a news server.


Signature

A few lines attached to the end of posting that give sender information.


Setting up NX

Setup Dialog Box

The Setup dialog box is where you specify hosts, personal, and others information. It is important to fill in this information correctly in order to run NX.

To bring up the Setup dialog box, choose Configure|Setup. See the descriptions below for more information.

NNTP News Server

A fully qualified Internet hostname or an IP address of a NNTP news server. You must have access to a news server in order to run NX.

NNTP Port Number

This specifies the protocol port number which NX can contact your news server. NX will use the default port number if you enter 0.The well-known port reserved for NNTP is 119.

SMTP Mail Relay (optional)

A fully qualified Internet hostname or an IP address of a SMTP mail relay. You can leave this blank if you are going to use other mail client.

SMTP Port Number (optional)

This specifies the protocol port number which NX can contact your mail server. NX will use the default port number if you enter 0. The well-known port reserved for SMTP is 25.

Fullname, E-Mail and Organization

This personal information is used to construct headers of articles and mails you write.

Signature File (optional)

A text file contains your signature.The maximum signature lines is 20.

Username and Password (optional)

This information is used to authorize yourself to your news server. Some news server restricts the access of part or all services to authenticated user only, e.g. protected groups access and posting articles. If you are an authorized user, you can enter the assigned username and password in these fields to have access of certain services. Otherwise, you should leave these fields empty. Note, NX encrypts your password and saves it in the profile.

Home Directory

This specifies the home directory for NX to keep newsrc,  log file, and temporary files.

News RC File

This specifies the name of your newsrc file. If you don't specify the pathname, NX will create it in the home directory.

Log File (optional)

This specifies the name of log file. If you don't specify the pathname, NX will create it in the home directory.

Time Zone (optional)

This specifies the time zone information for NX to generate GMT date and time stamps for outgoing messages. The format of the time zone string is shown as follows.

zzz[+/-]d[d][lll]

zzz	Three-character string representing the name of the current time zone. All three characters are required.

[+/-]d[d]	Required field containing an optionally signed number with 1 or more digits. This number is the local time zone's difference from GMT in hours.

- Positive number adjust westward from GMT.

- Negative number adjust eastward from GMT.

This number is used in the calculation of timezone.

lll	Optional three-character field that represents the local time zone's daylight saving time.

- If this field is present, daylight is set to non-zero.

- If this field is absent, daylight is set to 0.

If the time zone string isn't in the specified form, NX presumes a default EST5EDT.


Customizing NX

Preferences Dialog Box

The Preferences dialog box is where you customize NX.

To bring up the Preferences dialog box, choose Configure|Preferences. See the descriptions below for more information.

Retrieve Active Groups on Connect

This specifies whether NX should retrieve latest active newsgroups from news server once a connection established.

Articles Sorted by

This specifies in what order should NX display headers information in articles list windows.

Display Headers

This specifies what headers to be displayed on article window. Select None if you don't want headers displayed. Select Minimum for displaying specific headers only, or All for all headers. By default, if Minimum is selected, NX displays  From, Subject, Date, and Organization headers. You could change this by modifying the headers list in the Config section of the profile as belows.

[Config]

Headers=Newsgroups,From,Subject,Date,Organization

Note, there is no space allowed in the headers list.

Threaded by

NX can thread articles by Subject and References. It will try to thread as much as possible if both options are checked.

Skip Old Articles

This specifies whether NX should retrieve all or minimum headers information from news server. If this option is checked, NX will retrieve headers information of unread articles only.

Suppress "Re:"

If this option is checked, "Re:" prefix in any subject header will not be displayed in articles list windows.

Max Header Per Read

This specifies the maximum range of headers information per read. For examples, if you specify this number as 20, and there are 50 articles available, NX will break up the request into 1-20, 21-40, and 41-50, thus you are able to stop the transfer in the middle of header transfer. If you specify this as 0 or 1, NX will send the request 1-50 at once. Note, you will suffer from a significant speed penalty, if you make this number too small. If you don't bother to stop the headers transfer or you have a higher network bandwitdth, make this number as 0 will give you a better performance.

Include Headers

This specifies whether or not to include headers of original article  in a reply article or mail.

Max Include Lines

This specifies the maximum lines of original article to be included in a reply article or mail.

Include Prefix

This is a string which will be inserted at the beginning of each line of original article included in a reply article or mail. The maximum include prefix length is 10.

Connect at Startup

If this option is checked, NX will automatically connect to your news server when it starts up.

Update Subscribed Groups at Startup

If this option is checked, NX will retrieve subscribed newgroups information after a connection established. This option is ignored, if NX retrieves active newgroups information from a news server.

Hide Groups without Articles

Check this option if you don't want groups with 0 unread count to be displayed in the newsgroups list window.

Prompt for New Groups

If this option is checked, NX will prompt you and let you subscribe to new newsgroups found after connect to your news server. Note, this feature can work only if you tell NX to retrieve active newsgroups on connect.

New Window for Each Article

If this option is checked, NX will open a new window for each article.

New Window for Each Group

If this option if checked, you can browse more than one group at the same time.

Confirm on Post and Send Mail

If this option is checked, NX will prompt you for confirmation before sending an article or a mail.

Enable Background Processing

NX performs tasks in background and allows other Windows applications to run smoothly, if this option is checked. Normally, NX does not consume too much CPU time, but only when it performs specific tasks. For examples, threading, encoding, and decoding. You can have these kind of tasks completed faster if this option is unchecked.

Fonts

You can specifiy which font to be used to display in a particular type of window. See the descriptions below.

Lists Font	Specifies a font used to browse newsgroups and articles.

Article Font	Specifies a font used to display article.

Status Bar Font	Specifies a font used to display status information in the status bar.

Printer Font	Specifies a font used to print.

Select one of the above commands to bring up a font dialog box and then specify the font typeface, style, and size in the dialog box.

Logging

Check Configure|Logging|Posting to enable posting log and check Configure|Logging|Mail to enable mail log. Both logging information goes to the log file specified in the Setup dialog.


Author

W.L. Ken, Ng

Rm F, 5/F, Odeon Bldg.,

26-28 Shu Kuk St., North Point,

Hong Kong

E-Mail:	kenng@hk.super.net

91465589@cityu.edu.hk


Copyright Information

Permission to use, copy and distribute this software and its documentation for any purpose and without fee is hereby granted, provided that it is not modified.

THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND WITHOUT ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.


Reporting Bugs

Mail your bug reports to Ken Ng <kenng@hk.super.net>. Please include the steps to reproduce the bugs, and any other information that might help developer locate and correct the cause.