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Using The "No News" NewsReader (nn) for Suns

Dave Halsema

Have you ever spent long hours watching unimportant articles scroll down your screen while reading news? If you like to read news but just hate the hassle of waiting to see articles that interest you, then nn is for you!

nn is based on the principle that "No news is good news." 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.

To Start:

To start up the No News News Reader, type nn at your command prompt. The program will start up and you will be placed into what is called selection mode. In this mode, the articles which seem 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, press the space bar, 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 level, respond to an article, decrypt an article, and so on.

First Time Users:

If you've never used a news reader before, nn will create a .newsrc file in your directory by prompting you with each newsgroup name. You must enter "y" or "n" depending on whether you might want to read that newsgroup or not. You will only have to do this the first time that you use nn. If you use another news reader besides nn, the existing .newsrc file will be used by nn

Let's take a simple look at how it works. After typing nn at the command prompt, you will be greeted with a screen that looks something like this:

Newsgroup: purdue.talk		Articles: 5 of 5/1

a	Bugs Bunny	11	Carrots are my veggie!
b	Elmer Fudd	19	>
c	Daffy Duck	24	>
d	Sylvester	23	>
e	Tweety Bird	24	Where to buy a bird cage?

  -- 20:36 -- SELECT -- help:? -----All-----

This is an example of what the selection mode screen might look like. It is split into four columns. The first column will be a letter or number that you can press to select the article for reading. The second column is the name of the person who posted the article. The third column is the number of lines that the article contains. The last column is the subject of the article. The first post, by Bugs Bunny, is an original article concerning carrots. The following three posts simply have ">" as the subject. This means that the posts are replies to Bugs Bunny's article. nn automatically sorts articles by subject and time so you won't have to worry about reading a reply before you've read the original.

Let's suppose you just want to read the article from Tweety. Type the letter e corresponding to Tweety's post and the line will be highlighted in reverse video. If you change your mind, you can type the letter e again to deselect the article. After selecting all the articles you wish to read, press the space bar to go into reading mode. Only the articles that were highlighted on the selection screen will be shown in reading mode. To scroll through the articles in reading mode, keep pressing the space bar. When you have gone through all the articles in a group you will be given a selection screen for the next newsgroup, and then the process repeats itself.

Getting Help

One of the great things about nn is the on-line help screens. There are two: one for selection mode and one for reading mode. Type ? in either mode for its respective help screen. You can quickly learn all the functions necessary to enjoy reading news from these sources alone. The best way to learn a new program is to start using it, so I strongly suggest you read the help screens to see what you can do within nn.

Useful Commands:

There are several commands that are used in conjunction with nn. The useful ones I will mention are: nncheck, nngoback, and nnpost. These commands should be executed before entering the New News News Reader.

nncheck: tells you how many unread articles you have in all your subscribed newsgroups.
nngoback: allows you to make previously read articles as unread. It takes two arguments. The first is an integer, and the second a newsgroup. So the command:
nngoback 5 purdue.general
would mark all the articles in purdue.general that have been posted within the past 5 days as unread.
nnpost: This will allow you to post an article without having to enter the regular nn news reader.

I hope you will take time to learn this news reader if you have not already done so. If you have any problems at all using nn, please feel free to e-mail me at "halsema@ecn.purdue.edu" for help.

To Quit:

To quit nn, type Q and you will be returned to your UNIX prompt. You can do this in either the selection mode or reading mode. If you ever want to quit nn before you finish reading all the articles you selected, type Q and nn will "remember" your selections so you can read them at a later date.

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Last modified: Wednesday, 22-Oct-97 16:35:27 EST

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