239 lines
11 KiB
Plaintext
239 lines
11 KiB
Plaintext
Preliminary cppnews documentation $Revision: 1.2 $
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The significance of the cppnews.ini variables
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=============================================
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File and directory names
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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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<news_dir> is set from your CPPNEWS environment variable. If there is no
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CPPNEWS environment variable, the SNEWS environment variable is tried
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instead. If there is no SNEWS environment variable either, the current
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directory is used.
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Filenames for the various files used by the system, and the use of each
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of these files, is given below ...
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cppnews.ini - <news_dir>\cppnews.ini
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This is where the cppnews.ini file is expected. If none exists, the
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default values of the variables are taken from any existing SNEWS.RC file.
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The file is re-written to this directory on normal program exit.
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To change most of the other variables, the normal method is to edit this
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file. It is not normally necessary to edit any of the other files used by
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the system (except the signature file), and in many cases an incorrect
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edit can prevent the proper function of the news reading system.
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Newsgroups index - <newsdir>\active
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This is created by the snews unbatch, addgroup and rmgroup programs. It
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contains a list of all active groups, with a line for each group giving
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the group name, the filename and the first and last message numbers.
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DO NOT attempt to edit this file yourself, unless you REALLY know what you
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are doing.
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To add or remove groups, use the snews addgroup and rmgroup programs,
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respectively.
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Articles read list - <news_dir>\<userid>.nrc
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This is a list of all the newsgroup articles that have been read. It
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contains records, one per logical line, of a newsgroup name followed by a
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space-separated list of article numbers. A logical line is split over
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multiple physical lines by including a backslash character (\) at the end
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of each physical line.
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DO NOT attempt to edit this file yourself, unless you know what you are
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doing.
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The file is automatically maintained by cppnews. You can mark articles,
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threads and whole groups as read or unread using cppnews menu options.
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Kill file - <news_dir>\<userid>.kil
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This is a list of hash codes of subject lines that have been "killed".
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Hash codes are used for speedy lookup, and to allow some "fuzzy matching"
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in subject lines.
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I can't see any purpose behind editing this file - it is just a list of
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apparently meaningless numbers !
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This file is automatically maintained by cppnews on normal exit from the
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program. Thread/Kill and Thread/Revive menu options are provided to add
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and remove subject lines from the kill list.
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Incoming mail folders - <maildir>\*.<mailext>
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Cppnews uses this mask to look for mail folders. If you create a new folder
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within cppnews, it will be created in the <maildir>, so it can be found
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next time.
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The contents of this file are mail messages. The start of a new message is
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recognised by the <startofheader> string at the beginning of a line.
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My mailer justs throws the messages onto the end of the file, so I use
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"From " (note the space) as my <startofheader>. Some mailers place a
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special marker between each message (e.g. a ^A character) - if yours does,
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use this as your <startofheader> (you will need a good editor to place a
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^A character in your cppnews.ini).
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Once cppnews has read the mailbox, it reformats it to place its own
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markers between each message. This header includes the size of the
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message, and offsets to various important header lines, so subsequent
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reading of the file is much faster. New messages added to the end by your
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mailer are recognised as such the next time you run cppnews.
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DO NOT attempt to edit this file yourself, unless you know what you are
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doing - you could lose mail messages altogether if you change the number
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of characters of text in a message that has been reformatted by cppnews.
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You can add new messages to the end of the file, though, but beware of
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text editors that invisibly change the text (e.g. removing trailing
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spaces, expanding tabs, changing line feed delimiters).
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Group file -<news_dir>\newsbase\*
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Group index - <news_dir>\newsbase\*.idx
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The snews unbatch and expire programs create and maintain these files.
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There is one text file and one index file per group. The filename is
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obtained from the Newsgroups Index. The text file contains all the news
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postings, separated by a line containing "@@@@END" (although this latter
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is not essential). The index file contains one line per posting, with the
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offset of the article in the file, the article number, the date the
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article was added to the file by unbatch, and the article subject.
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DO NOT attempt to edit these files yourself, unless you REALLY know what
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you are doing. The index file contains pointers into the text file, so
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they must be kept in step (e.g. when doing backup/restore).
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Signature - <home>\<signature>
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You can edit this file to place any signature text you want to follow all
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your mail messages and news postings. It is automatically read in to the
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editor buffer ready for you to compose your message. Please bear in mind
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that your signature uses up net bandwith, so don't go overboard !
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Outgoing mail sequence number file - <mailqueue>\sequence.seq
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Outgoing mail work files - <mailqueue>\*.wrk
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Outgoing mail text files - <mailqueue>\*.txt
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Cppnews places all outgoing mail messages into the <mailqueue> directory.
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The sequence.seq file contains the number of the last item posted to the
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queue. This file is updated during each posting. This form of posting is
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known to be compatible with KA9Q. Support for other mail agents with
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different queue schemes will be considered. If your mailer is different,
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let me know the details by mailing cppnews@trmphrst.demon.co.uk.
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The .wrk and .txt file use this posting number as the filename. Each .txt
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file contains the complete message, and the .wrk file contains routing
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information - the destination machine, the fully qualified sender name,
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and the fully qualified recipient name.
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Unused cppnews variables - <tempdir> and <newsdir>
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These are not currently used in cppnews, but are maintained in case of
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future enhancement.
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Posting messages
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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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Cppnews expects messages posted to newsgroups to be handled by a news/mail
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server. Cppnews versions up to 1.18 only support one kind of newsserver -
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a dummy mail address "mail2news@<newsserver>" which accepts articles for
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posting, and despatches them to the newgroups in the header.
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There is another kind of news/mail server, which accepts articles posted
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to a user name derived from the newsgroup name, and posts to that group.
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Some of these servers accept the newsgroup name unchanged, and some need
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the full stops (.) in the newsgroup name changed to some other character.
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Cppnews 1.18 will introduce improved newsserver support using a new
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cppnews.ini variable <servername>. This can be set to ...
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The name (like "mail2news") of the first kind of server above.
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A single punctuation character (.,-% etc.) to indicate the second kind of
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server above. The newsgroup name will have any full stops (.) in the name
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changed to the specified character. Specify a full stop (.) character for
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no translation.
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Cppnews generates default headers for mail and news postings, as follows ...
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Path: <nodename>.<domain>!<userid>
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From: <userid>@<nodename>.<domain> (<name>)
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ReplyTo: <userid>@<nodename>.<domain>
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Subject: Re: The subject of the message/article to which this is a reply
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References: The message ID of the message/article to which this is a reply
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Cc: <mailcc> or <newscc> as appropriate
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Bcc: <mailbcc> or <newsbcc> as appropriate
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Distribution: world (news postings only)
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Followup-To: The first group on the To list (news postings only)
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Message-ID: A unique ID based on the time posted, <nodename> and <domain>
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X-Mailer: cppnews revision number
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Date: The date posted. Cppnews takes notice of your TZ environment
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variable. U.K. users should set it to GMT0BST.
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Organization: <organisation>
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Lines: The number of newlines in the message.
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Other cppnews.ini variables
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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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Your text editor - <editor>
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This should be set to the command line to call your editor, with a "%s"
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sequence where the file name should be.
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There are some strange and wonderful editors out there. A few pitfalls to
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look out for ...
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Some editors are too big to fit in memory along with cppnews. You can
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change the amount of memory cppnews takes by adjusting the <maxarticlesize>
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variable. This can take values from 1 to 63, and is the number of kbytes
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that cppnews can use to hold article text in memory. Some editors are just
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too big even with <maxarticlesize> set quite small. I did consider
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swapping cppnews out of memory, but the delay in calling up the editor
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every time a message is posted would be unacceptable.
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Some editors won't edit an empty file ! The solution to this problem is to
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create a signature file, so that your blank message for posting is never
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empty.
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Some editors don't output straight ASCII text files. Most wordprocessor
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files contain control characters and information, and are unsuitable for
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posting to the net. Some wordprocessors have a special ASCII file save
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option, but a simple, small text editor is the best thing to use. There
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are so many free text editors available it would be pointless to write an
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internal editor for cppnews.
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Article quoting prefix - <quotemark>
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When you quote an existing message, the <quotemark> characters are added
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at the start of every line. Most people use "> " (note the space).
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Tab setting - <tabwidth>
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Tab characters in articles are expanded to tab stops every <tabwidth>
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characters.
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Word wrap width - <wordwrap>
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Long lines in articles are not usually wrapped by cppnews. If you set
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<wordwrap> to a non-zero value, lines will be wrapped at a word break near
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this column. This value can be changed using the cppnews Options/Wordwrap
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menu option.
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Posting logs - <newslog> and <maillog>
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If these variables are set to a mail folder name (up to 8 characters),
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all news and/or mail postings are copied to the folder.
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Notes
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~~~~~
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It may appear that because some of the file names used contain a user
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name, that cppnews may be used by a number of different people. This is
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currently NOT the case - the user name comes from cppnews.ini, which must
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be in the newsbase directory, and the program makes ALL mailboxes publicly
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available, no matter what the setting of "userid".
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I do intend to rectify this situation some time in the future. If you have
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a need for this (or any other) feature, feel free to mail the cppnews
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support mailbox - cppnews@trmphrst.demon.co.uk. I keep a list of all
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requests, with the number of (different users :-) requesting each one, and
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this helps me decide development priorities.
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