# The &knode; manual

Stephan
Johach

    lucardus@onlinehome.de

Christian
Thurner
Developer and maintainer

    cthurner@freepage.de

Christian
Gebauer
Developer

    gebauer@bigfoot.com

Dirk
Mueller
Developer

    mueller@kde.org

Matthias Kalle
Dalheimer
Developer

    kalle@kde.org

Rainer
Endres
Documentation translator and maintainer of the English documentation

    endres@physos.com

Frerich
Raabe
Documentation translator

    frerichraabe@gmx.de

Oliver
Henning
Documentation translator

    oliver@henning.com

Martin
Piskernig
Documentation translator

    martin.piskernig@stuwo.at

Lauri
Watts
Reviewer

    vampyr@atconnex.net

2000
Stephan Johach
&FDLNotice;
2000-12-16
0.03.02

&knode; is an easy-to-use newsreader.

KDE
KNode
kdenetwork
newsreader

## Introduction

&knode; is an easy-to-use, convenient newsreader. It is intended to allow even newbies to use a newsreader under &kde;. &knode; also offers advanced features appealing to experienced users.

&knode; is an online-reader, but can also, in conjunction with a local news server, be used as an offline-reader.

If you have problems or questions about this program, please contact the mailing list for &kde; users (for subscription, see Homepage of the KDE mailing lists ) or one of the &kde; newsgroups:

- comp.windows.x.kde

If you found a bug or have suggestions regarding the functionality of &knode; please report them via the menu Help Report a bug....

Please make sure when asking questions in the above mentioned newsgroups and mailing lists to only ask questions that are not answered in this manual.

For those new to reading news and posting articles, I want to recommend the chapter A journey through Usenet. It is not so much about the program &knode; as how to move about in the Usenet with its help. In general, it is not sufficient to just master a news reader for writing news articles. Imagine a car driver who masters his car perfectly but does not know about the traffic rules or signs. Do you want to encounter such a driver when out in traffic? So please take your time to learn at least a little about the "traffic rules" of the Usenet. The other participants will thank you.

&knode; supports you in many cases with hints and warnings. If you do not simply ignore them, you will avoid many beginners' mistakes. But do not exclusively depend on them either.

## Working with &knode;

### The first start

You find &knode; in the K Menu under the entry Internet. The menu entry KNode launches the program.

If the entry for &knode; can not be found or if &knode; should not appear on the desktop after clicking on the menu entry, read Questions and Answers

The main window of &knode; should now be displayed on your desktop as shown. On first start, the settings dialog will be invoked.

Setting up &knode;
&knode; after first start

&knode; after first start

The windows shows the menu bar, the toolbar below and the status pane at the buttom. The area between the toolbar and the status pane is occupied by a three-part windows.

On the left there is a folder view.It currently contains only three entries.

- Outbox
- Drafts
- Sent

When &knode; is completely and correctly configured, the news servers and the subscribed news groups will appear there.

In the upper-right section, is the article view. It is currently empty and does not show any articles. Directly below the article view, the article window is located. There appears the body of the currently selected article. These windows are also blank at the moment, as there are no articles, of course. You should not be confused because before reading and publishing news, some things have to be configured first. This will be covered by the following section.

We are now beginning the setting up of &knode;. Most settings are not important for daily use, but you should know what settings are possible and what they are for. Some may miss a "Quickstart" chapter but those who prefer a quick start will just glance over the manual anyway. For others, especially those who have not any or much experience with a news reader, this chapter offers the chance to fully perform the configuration, although some things may become clear only later on.

#### Personal settings

Via Settings Preferences you will enter the preferences dialog of &knode;. The figure shows the dialog.

Dialog for entering the personal information
Entering the personal information

Entering the personal information

The dialog is divided into two parts: On the left, there is a treeview, in which the top entry Identity is already highlighted. On the right, you see the corresponding input dialog. These settings relate to your identity with which you navigate through the newsgroups.

If you have already configured your personal settings in the Control Center before the first start of &knode;, they will be adopted.

##### Name

In the field Name you enter your name, e.g. Joe Miller or Mary Gordon. This name will later appear in the newsgroups as sender and can be seen by anyone.

Filling out the field Name is mandatory.

In most newsgroups, it is considered polite and appropriate to appear with one's real name. Other newsgroups are less strict about this. But there are also cases when one would not want to appear with one's real name, e.g. in newsgroups where one would like to (and can) talk about very personal matters without being exposed. These groups mostly do tell you in their Charter that the anonymity of their members is explicitly approved.

For those special cases, &knode; offers settings that can be adjusted to each newsgroup individually. Further information can be found under Group local Identities.

##### Email address

The email adress you enter here will be used as sender in news articles, i.e. as actual address of the author, in conjunction with the real name (set in the field Name).

The field Email shows up when someone wants to reply to you by e-mail. The e-mail will be sent to the address entered here. Many newsreaders display the sender address together with the name in the Header of the article.

Filling out the field Emailis mandatory.

Note that the e-mail address will only be used for replies to you if the field Reply-to Address is not filled out. In this case, the field Email will be ignored for replies and the address given under Reply-to Address will be used.

##### Reply-to Address

Reply-to Address offers you the possibility to enter a different address than your sender e-mail address. If someone replies to you by e-mail, this address will be displayed as target address in the reply. An example for using Reply-to Address would be that you write the article at the office during the day but want to receive the answer in your home inbox, because your boss co-reads your mail.

Only enter an e-mail address in that field if it actually differs from the field Email.

Some news readers deliberately set this to an invalid e-mail address in order to prevent spam mails from being received. What could happen though is that a reader sends an e-mail to this invalid address which you will therefore never receive.

##### Organization

The input field Organization is optional and does not have to be filled out. You can enter e.g. the name of your company or your university institute, if you use &knode; there. If you leave this field blank, it will often be filled out later by your Internet provider.

##### Use a signature from file

If this option is selected, the file specified under Signature File will be used as Signature.

##### Signature File

The field Signature File determines the file, the content of which is appended to each of your articles. The field is only enabled if the option Use a signature from file is selected.

The signature file is a simple text file, which should not contain more than four lines. It can e.g. contain a reference to your homepage with the corresponding link, your postal address with your telephone number (which would then be of course visible to the whole world with every article) or just a cool quote. The signature is your brand, so to speak, which will mark all your articles. Therefore your signature should be designed sloppily or in the long run annoying to others. An old joke that one would have to read over and over again does not foster sympathy or the interes of the other newsgroup subscribers.

You can directly enter the file name of the signature file but it is more convenient to use the button Choose.... This opens a file open dialog and you can conveniently choose the signature file with the mouse. The button Edit File enables you, after choosing the file, to edit the signature.

It is not neccessary to include a separation line in the signature file as &knode; inserts it automatically.

##### Specify signature below

If this option is selected you can enter the text of the signature directly in the input field below.

Please make sure that in this case also your signature should not contain more than 4 lines. A separation line is not neccesary as &knode; inserts it automatically.

##### General notes

You can later adapt the identity individually for each of the subscribed groups via the Preferences dialog, e.g. you can specify an English signature for English groups and a German one for German groups. Apart from the language it is also possible to have context-sensitive signatures, e.g. your favorite recipe in a cooking group or the names of your twelve cats in a cat owner group.

You find more in the section Group local identities.

The next step in the configuration covers the news account.

#### Configuring the news account

Now we must tell &knode; about where we get the news from or where to send the articless to later on. In the tree view on the right, there is an entry Account. Click on that with the mouse. Then two sub entries will be opened out. We choose the entry News, because we first want to configure the news account. The list of accounts is empty yet.

Therefore we create a new account with Add. The following dialog appears:

The dialog New Account
The dialog New Account

The dialog New Account

##### Name

The field Name can be filled out as you like. The text you enter will later be visible in the folder view. You can e.g. enter the name of your Internet Provider. For our example we enter the name `My News Account`.

##### Server

The next field is labelled Server. Unlike the field Name, it is not unimportant what you enter here. The name of the news server is fixed and should be made public by your Internet Provider. If you do not know the name of the news server, you should get it now. Without this information you can not read any news.

For our example configuration we enter the name `news.server.de`. You will of course enter the real name of your news server.

If you deploy &knode; with a local news server, enter the name `localhost` here!

##### Port

Port, the next field, has already a default value. The Port designates, roughly speaking, a data channel, on which the server listens, whether someone wants to retrieve news. It defaults to the value 119, which is applicable in most cases. Therefore we do not change this default.

##### Hold connection for

The time value you enter here is effective if you have established a connection to the news server and if, for whatever reason, no data is received from or transmitted to the news server. After the specified time has expired, &knode; automatically disconnects. This, among other things, relieves the server of unneccessay connections which reduce its availibilty for other subscribers. It also makes sure that an automatically established Internet connection is not held unnecessarily although no data is being sent or received.

This settings mainly makes sense if one receives and reads news online. For local news servers it is of almost no importance. If this waiting time is set too low, there can be waiting periods if you read a longer article and do not do "anything" for some time. &knode; has cancelled the connection to the server by then after the period has expired and has to reestablish it.

If this waiting time is set too high, you perhaps waste online time when doing nothing.

##### Timeout

If &knode; connects to the news server, it waits no longer for an answer of the news server than the time that is set here. If this period is exceeded, you will get a corresponding error message, because the server does not respond and &knode; cancels the connection attempt.

Depending on the quality of your Internet account and the news server's current load. there can be waiting periods, so that &knode; cancels the connection. If this happens frequently, you should set this setting to a higher value.

##### Fetch group descriptions

If this setting is selected, &knode; additionally requests the available group descriptions. They will be displayed in the dialog Subscribe to Newsgroups.

There is not a group description for every group, so there is no error if no group description is shown when subscribing to a group later on.

##### Server requires authentication

The option Server requires authentication needs only to be selected if your news server requires a user name and a password when retrieving articles. If this is the case, you will find out from your Internet provider or the server's maintainer.

If you do not know exactly if this setting is necessary, forget about selecting it. If you encounter an error later on, you still can select it then. Otherwise select this option and enter your user name under User and the associated password under Password.

##### General notes

By now you have completed the setup of your news account. Via the button Subscribe you can perhaps directly get to the dialog for subscribing to news groups. But we still have more to do and ignore it for now. There are several ways that lead to the goal.

You confirm and save your settings by clicking on the button OK. As soon as you have done that, the account will appear in the list by the name that you have entered in Name before. And if you have a close look, you will see that the account is also appearing in the folder view.

In the chapter Managing multiple news accounts you will learn how to work with multiple news accounts. But first, we will stay with this one. In most cases, one account is sufficient.

Please note that some Internet providers only allow retrieving news if you are logged on via this provider.

We will now move on to configuring the e-mail account. In order to do that, click on the entry E-Mail in the tree view on the left.

#### Setting up the mail account

After selecting Mail in the tree view, the following Dialog Box appears on the right.

Dialog Box for setting up the mail-account
Dialog Box for setting up the mail-account

Dialog Box for setting up the mail-account

You will notice this Dialog Box to be very simmilar to the news account settings Dialog Box. But why do we need an e-mail account in a newsreader?

Sometimes you need to anwser to the author of an article directly, without posting to the newsgroup. For example, when you want to make a very personal comment or want to correct an error. Sometimes a dialog is more appropriate than a public remark.

Thats why &knode; provides the posssibility to reply by e-mail. If you want to use this feature, you must tell &knode; how to send e-mails. You just need to insert the mailserver. When you have already configured an e-mail account, i.e with KMail, you can reuse the settings used there.

##### Server

The name of your mailserver is not arbitrary. Your ISP, should provide you the informations, which mailserver to use. All you have to do here is to enter the mailserver in the Server field.

In our example we enter `mail.server.de`

You can send your mail by a local mailserver. When you use a local mailserver, use localhost in the Server field.

##### Port

Again, the Port field has a default value. In this case it Port 25. You should not need to change this, despite your ISP has a very exotic configuration nad tells you to do so. We do not change this for the example.

##### Hold connection for

This value is important, after you established a connection with your mailserver. If there is no data transfer, &knode; cancels the connection to your mailserver after this amount of time.

##### Timeout

When &knode; tries to connect to the mailserver, it waits this long for a reply by the the server. Is this time execceded, you get a error message.

Depending on the quality of your connnection and the actual load of your mailserver, you can get long reply times. If &knode; cancels the connection due to this, you should increase the timeout.

##### General remarks

Some ISP only allow you to send e-mail over their mailserver after you checked your mailbox on new mails. This reduces spamming.

For same reasons, some ISP only allow you to send mail by their mailservers, when you are onine with this ISP.

In the next step we look at the general settings for reading news.

#### General News Settings

Now click on Read news and then on the subentry General. The picture shows the dialog and the preferences you can configure there.

Dialog General Preferences
The dialog General Preferences

The dialog General Preferences

You don't need to change most of these settings, but we will discuss them step by step to give you an overview over the possibilities of &knode;.

##### Check for new articles automatically

If this box is checked, &knode; tries to request new articles from the server when selecting a newsgroup. These settings especially make sense when you use &knode; together with a local news server. Downloading the messages obviously only works when the server is reachable. For a server which is only reachable via an Internet connection, this setting rarely makes sense and should stay deactivated.

If your system isn't set up to establish an Internet connection if neccessary, you will get an error message each time you select a newsgroup.

If you want to keep control over when a connection to the server is established, the menu option Group Get new articles is appropriate.

##### max to fetch

This sets the restriction of the articles, which are requested from the server while downloading. The value configured here is for each Newsgroup seperately. Set this for instance to 300, so that only the 300 newest articles of the newsgroup are requested. Other articles are discarded!

Please notice: For newsgroups with relatively high traffic you might lose articles if this value is too low. This especially occurs when you've just subscribed to a newsgroup or download articles only occasionally and the traffic for this reason rises above the value specified here.

##### Mark article as read after

Articles you have opened in the article window are marked as read after the number of seconds specified here. If you set this value relatively high, you avoid that an articles you just glanced at is directly marked as read. On the other hand it can be annoying for relatively short articles for which you need less time to read than specified. If you browse in this case too fast through the articles they stay, although you've read them already, unread. Therefore, you should adjust this value to your personal preferences.

##### Show whole thread on expanding

This setting lets discussion be displayed completely (over multiple answer levels, that is). If this setting isn't checked, only the immediate answers to the current article are displayed.

##### Show signature

If this setting is activated, the signature of the sender is displayed in the article window, if it isn't, the signature is surpressed.

Please notice that &knode; can display the signature correctly only if it can be seperated correctly from the article content in the current article. There are newsreaders which do this seperation incorrectly. Two "-" with a following " " (space) are correct.

Many participants in the newsgroups give hints on their homepage or intentionally erroneous specified E-Mail adresses in the header in the signature. If you disable displaying the signature, you might loose those information. On the other hand you might save yourself from reading stupid texts.

##### Show attachments inline if possible

If this setting is marked, &knode; tries to display the contents of possible attachment directly in the window when opening an article. For instance, a picture would be displayed directly below the article text.

Additionally, you have the possibility to save the attachment or open it with the application you have associated with the MIME type of the attachment by using the context menu.

##### Open attachments on click

If this box is checked, attachments are opened with an external program with is configured for the MIME type. If there is no such association, a dialog for saving a file is opened and you can save the attachment in a separate file.

##### Show alternative contents as attachments

Articles which are sent as Multipart MIME contain the text of the message in multiple formats, for example as raw text and HTML. The newsreader decides which part of the article is displayed. This setting makes it possible that the other formats can be opened as if they were attachments with a mouse click.

If this setting is disable, alternative contents are not displayed.

##### Open links with

Here you can select which browser is used for displaying links you clicked on in a message. Currently, you can either select the Netscape Navigator or the default, Konqueror. The selected browser has to be installed, of course.

#### Customize displayed article headers

In this dialog, you can set how the single header lines are displayed in the article window.

The dialog "Customize displayed article headers"
The dialog "Customize displayed article headers"

The dialog "Customize displayed article headers"

This list shows all the header lines which are intended for display in the article window. The identifier at the left will be displayed, the name in < > stand for the name of the according header line how it is transmitted in the Usenet, i.e. for From the name From

Via Edit you can influence the shown identifier as well as the attributes of the shown identifier and the text. To make things clearer, we'll now simply select the entry Sender in the list and open the dialog for editing the header display by clicking on Edit.

The dialog Header Properties
The dialog Header Properties

The dialog Header Properties

##### Header

The selection box Header line shows the entry From. That is the name of the header line for the sender, as it's actually present in the article and evaluated by the newsreader. If you drop down the selection box, &knode; shows a range of other identifiers, which stand all for a certain header line in the article. For now, we'll leave the identifier From configured. We'll work with this list later, when we add a header line to the display.

##### Displayed Name

This field holds the name, which is later shown in the article window as a replacement for the actual identifier of the header line. For the header line From, it's the sender. If you leave this field blank, only the content of the header line appears in the article window. This is for example the default setting for the header line Subject. We won't change anything here either.

##### Name

Here you can influence the attributes of the shown name with the checkboxes. In our case, the attribute Bold is selected for the name Sender, i.e. the text will be shown in bold letters in the article window. Of course, you can combine different attributes, for example Bold and Underlined.

##### Value

The information given for Name is true for these checkboxes as well, but these attributes are associated to the content of the shown header line, in course case to the actual sender. You can later see the effects of these settings in the displayed articles. For example, select here the entry Italic, and the sender, i.e. "John Doe <johndoe@doubleguns.com>" appears in a italic font.

##### Add and remove header lines to the display

To explain the possibilities of this dialog to you, we're going to add a new header line to the display.

###### Show the newsreader used for a post in the article window

This pictures shows the dialog with the header line X-Newsreader.

The dialog Header Display
The dialog Header Display

The dialog Header Display

It would be nice if one could see which newsreader another subscriber uses in the article window. Well, that's pretty easy because there's actually a (optional) header line which contains that information.

Drop down the selection field Header line and select the entry X-Newsreader from the list.

In the field Shown name, enter `Newsreader`.

Now you can select any attribute for the display of the field and it's content. Next, acknowledge your input with the OK. The new header line appers now in the list and will later be shown in the article window.

Use the up and Down buttons to arrange the order of the headers in the article window.

The statement that the new header line will be shown in the article window is actually pretty optimistic, because the entry X-Newsreader isn't required for Usenet artciles. Therefore, not all articles will contain that header line. If the line doesn't exist, the according entry simply won't be shown.

#### Defining the appearance

With the dialog Appearance you are given the ability to set the colors, the character code and the font size of the texts in the article window. The picture shows the dialog.

Setting up the dialog Appearance
Setting up the dialog Appearance

Setting up the dialog Appearance

##### Show long group list

If this setting is activated, &knode; enlarges the folder view over the whole heigth of the main window. That way, the width of the article window is restricted to the area below the article view.

If this setting is deactivated, the article window can use the whole width of the main window.

##### Use custom colors

If you select this option, you can adjust the color settings of &knode; in the list field below. To change a color setting, do a double click with the left mouse button on the list entry to open the KDE color-selection dialog.

The color selection can only be configured after the checkbox has been checked - otherwise, a double click on the list entries won't do anything.

If the setting Use custom colors is selected, &knode; won't use colors which have been changed later globally for KDE but will only use the colors defined here instead.

##### Use custom fonts

If you select this setting, you can adjust the fonts which &knode; uses for the display in the list field below. To choose a font, do a double click with the left mouse button on the list entry to open the KDE font-selection dialog.

The font can only be configured after the checkbox has been checked - otherwise, a double click on the list entries won't do anything.

If the setting Use userdefined fonts is selected, &knode; won't use later changes to the global font settings for KDE but will use the fonts defined here instead.

#### Filter settings

This screenshot shows the filter settings.

The filter settings
The filter settings

The filter settings

This dialog shows two lists. The upper list, labeled Filters, shows all defined filters. When you use &knode; for the first time, you only see the predefined filters.

With the buttons Add, Delete, Edit and Copy you can add new filters or delete filters no longer needed. We skip this feature for now, because it is not essential for the setup of &knode;

More detailed informations about filters you can find in Definig and using filters

The lower list, labeled Menu, shows the appereance of the menu View Filter, which you can reach over the menu bar. The order of the filters in the this menu can be configured in this list.

The button Up shifts the selected article one position up. Try it, select the second filter and press Up. This entry goes up on position.

The button Down does the opposite action. Select the article, you just shifted one up, and press Down until it reaches its old position.

With the two buttons Add Separator and Remove Separator you can group the filters optical. The separators are shown as ==== in the list. In the Menu they show up as some more appealing horizontal lines. Try to add a separator. Then you select the seperator and remove it by pressing Remove seperator wider.

Any changes you make here, you can see in View Filter after closing this dialog.

#### Settings for publishing articles

When you post articles with &knode; the settings in the following Dialog Box is used.

The Dialog Box Technical Settings
The Dialog Box Technical Settings

The Dialog Box Technical Settings

When you choose the wrong settings here, your articles can be unreadable or not sendable at all. So please be careful with these settings.

##### Charset

Here you can choose the charset used for encoding your articles. Normally this is iso 8859-1 in Western Europe and english speaking countries, but your charset may differ. The default is the charset used in your global KDE settings, so you should not have to change this.

When you want to post articles in newsgroups with other charsets (i.e. eastern-european or asian) you can set the needed charset here.

##### Encoding

Here you set the encoding of the characters for the message transfer. You can choose between 7-bit, 8-bit and quoted-printable.

When you choose 7-bit encoding, special characters are not correctly send. 7-bit is kind of restricted to the us-ascii charset.

When you choose 8-bit encoding, most special characters are transfered.

When you choose quoted-printable, 8-bit charcters are send as encoded 7-bit charcaters.

##### don't encode 8-bit characters in the header

This setting allows 8-bit characters in the header, if checked, i.e. in the subject. This is explicitly not allowed by the standard.

This setting is made for a special case, because in scandinavian newsgroups, standard encoded 8-bit characters in the headers are reasonably common.

You should normally never use this option, unless you know for certain this is normal in the newsgroup you are posting to.

##### generate Message-ID

When this is active, &knode; generates its own Message-IDs for all articles you post.

The Message-ID must be unique worldwide! There will be collisions between messages with the same Message-ID, otherwise. The newsserver will reject the second article, because it thinks, this article was already recieved.

A Message-ID consists of a valid FQDN (Full Qualified Domain Name). This means it looks similary to an e-mail adress with a indentification befor the @ and the domain.

The identification is generated by &knode; automatically, but you must provide a valid domain name in Hostname When you do not have your own domain, you should not activate this option. Let the newsserver generate a Message-ID for you.

###### Message-ID

An example for a valid domain would be: kde.org. A Message-ID gernerated with this domain will look like:

934lek9934@kde.org

An uniqe identification is only guarenteed, when you have your own domain. Even when you do not use &knode; for generating your Message-IDs there may be collisions, when you are using a local newsserver. For example leafnode generates a Message-ID which it derives from the local hostname.

##### Hostname

Here you enter the Hostname of your computer. This is used to generate the Message-ID. When you do not have your own domain, you should not activate this option. Let the newsserver generate a Message-ID for you. Using the example above this would be: `kde.org`

##### X-Headers

Here you can enter X-Headers, wich are not provided by &knode; For example: X-No-Archive: yes. This should prevent your articles to be archived by i.e. dejanews.

X-Headers are experimental headers, wich are not included in the standard for Internet-Messages. They are, for example, used for extended information transfer. To prevent collisions with later standard headers, they have a "X-" prefix.

##### don't add the "User-Agent" identification header

When this option is checked, &knode; does not include the according line in the Header before posting.

This header is used for identification of the newsreader the article was written in. Besides statistical reasons, this allows to identify non-standard newsreaders. You should not activate this option, &knode; has no need to hide.

#### The Composer settings

The Composer settings Dialog Box
The Composer settings Dialog Box

The Composer settings Dialog Box

##### word wrap at coloumn

Here you can set the value at which &knode; wraps the line.

It is recomended to use no more than 76 characters. Even when you are able to diable more. Many Usenet users will use a text-based newsreader which can not display more than 80 characters. It is difficult to read your articles in such a newsreader, if you increase this value. This reduces the probatility of your articles to be read at all.

##### append signature automatically

When you write a new article, or a folloeup, your signature is appended automatically, if you have configured one in Settings Preferences Identity .

##### Introduction Phrase:

When you write a followup, &knode; inserts an introdutionary phrase befor the quoted orginal Text. You can put an aribrary text here. You can use variables, which &knode; extracts from the original article, i.e. the name of the author or the date the article was written.

The following variable are available:

%NAME

  The name of the original author.

%DATE

  The date the original article was written.

%EMAIL

  The original authors e-mail adress.

%MSID

  The Message-ID of the original article.

Keep this short, because this introdutionary line appears in every followup. A too long introducionary line can be as repelling as a too long signature.

###### An example

On %DATE %NAME wrote in %MSID

Let us assume the original article was written by Konqui on Saturday the 17th of June at 17:42:32 - 0500. The article has the Message-ID <8igdg5.3vvijgt.3@lizard.physos.com>. &knode; will then insert the following introductionary line.

On Sat, 17 Jun 2000 17:42:32 +0200 Konqui wrote in <8igdg5.3vvijgt.3@lizard.physos.com>:

##### rewrap quoted text automatically

When this is checked, the quoted text is wraped at the correct border value. So, every new line is in the correct quoting level.

##### include the authors signature

When this is activated, not only the text of the original message, but also the signature of the author is quoted in a reply.

Quoting a signature is unnecessary and is often considered impolite.

##### Define external editor

You can define an external editor here, wich is opened by selecting Edit Start external editor in the Composer window.

When start external editor auotmatically is checked, the external editor is opened directly.

Notice the `%f` behind the name of the editor. This is a variable for the filename of the article you want to edit. Do not delete this. You will get an error message when opening the external editor.

When you have problems with starting your external Editor, the reason may be the editor starting in "the background". This is called forking. &knode; only notices the process started, is finished and thinks you have quit the editor. The editor gvim is an example for this. You can disable the forking of gvim by the commandline switch `-f`. It is recommended to refer to the documentation of the used editor for this.

When you want to use gvim in Specify Editor use the following input:

`gvim -f %f`

#### The article cleanup settings.

The dialog below, shows the settings for the article cleanup. These settings are used to keep the amount of articles on your local harddisk in a reasonable value. &knode; administrates the articles in memory, so there can be some decrease in speed, if you have to many articles lying around. Most of the time it makes no sense to keep articles for a very long time. Services like Dejanews and Altavista make archiving needless.

The cleanup settings
The cleanup settings

The cleanup settings

##### purge groups every

When this option is active, all subcribed groups are checked for old articles in the time intervall set here. The old articles are deleted, then.

You can force this check by selecting Group Expire now

##### keep read articles

Read articles are deleted by the next cleanup, if they are older than this value. &knode; uses the make date for this.

##### keep unread articles

Unread articles are deleted by the next cleanup, if they are older than this value. &knode; uses the make date for this.

##### preserve threads

This selection forces a thread, only to be deleted, if all articles contained, fulfill the delete conditions.

This prevents old articles in a long thread to vanish, before the dicussion is ended.

&knode; can not predict, if there is a reply, after the set conditions are fulfilled. You have to find your own settings for this. Some newgroups have days between replys, others only hours. Use your own judgement.

##### compact folders

After the time, set here, &knode; removes all deleted or moved articles finally from the folders.

### Working with newsgroups

After the configuration of &knode; we will now try to read your first news. To achieve this, you need to do some more steps of configuration, but you don't have to do this very often.

#### Fetching the group-list from the newsserver

If you want to read a newsgroup, you first have to subscribe to it. You click with your mouse on the entry of your newsserver in the folder-list. The right mouse button opens the context menu. Here you select the entry "Subscribe to Newsgroups". &knode;, at this moment, does not know which newsgroups are available from this server. &knode; asks you if it should fetch a list of available newsgroups. Confirm with yes. Now you see the following dialog.

The Dialog Box "Subscribe to Newsgroups"
The Dialog Box "Subscribe to Newsgroups"

The Dialog Box "Subscribe to Newsgroups"

After some time, &knode; has fetched the list of available newsgroups and shows them in the left window Groups on in a tree view. This tree view shows the newsgroup-hierarchy.

##### Groups on

This list shows all newsgroups on this server. If you check one of the checkboxes subscribed only or new only you get the corresponding selection.

##### Current changes

The windowCurrent changes shows all changes you made, since you opened the dialog.

The list subscribe to shows the newsgroups you have choosen to subscribe.

Below you see the list unsubscribe from. This list shows all newsgroups you have choosen to unsubscribe. You can not unsubscribe from groups you didn't first subscribe to.

##### subscribed only

If subscribed only is checked, the tree-view Groups on shows only the groups you are already subscribed to. This is very convenient, if you want to unsubscribe from some groups. You don't have to search the whole tree for these groups.

##### new only

If new only is checked, the tree-view Groups on shows only the groups, wich are new since you last fetched the group-list. For this to be functional, you first have to fetch a new group-list with New List

The button New Groups give the possibility to show show all new groups since a specific date.

##### Filter

The second and most likely used possibility to navigate in the tree is the input field Filter. &knode; filters the groups according to your input with every keystroke. If you are searching for a group around KDE, but you do not know the exact position in the hierarchy, just type `kde` in the Filter-field.

When you enter the `k`, you will already see the list changing. The second letter, `d`, give you a significantly reduced list of shown groups, and the final `e` reduces the list to the groups with kde in their name. In the US you will most likely end with just one group.

- comp.windows.x.kde

This incremental search gives you the possibility to search for newsgroups without knowing the exact path.

On a close look, you will see &knode; showing the groups without a tree if there are only a few groups left. This is not a bug, it is a feature.

##### New List

The button New List tells &knode; to fetch a new group list from the newsserver.

The newsgroup-hierarchy is in a constant flux. All the time there are groups introduced, renamed or moved. Some groups just disappear, they are no longer available and get deleted. To reflect this, &knode; gives you the possibility to refresh the the group list. This is, normally, only needed to see if your server now provides a group which was not there before.

If you simply want to make sure to see every new group, it is more effective to use New Groups. Fetching the complete list is much more time consuming, but you make sure the deleted groups vanish from the grouplist.

Unfortunately there is no guarantee that your newsserver is providing all available newsgroups. Many newsserver refuse groups publishing binary attachments. Other groups are only available from special servers. &knode; provides you the possibility to use more than one news-server, if you want to acces alternative servers providing these groups. You can read more about this in .

##### New Groups

This button opens a dialog wich allows you to configure the list of new groups. You can choose between showing all groups since the last refresh or all groups since a given date. With the date option, &knode; provides a more flexible posibility to check for new groups. You can even check for new groups before the last refresh of the grouplist.

##### Working with the dialog

We now want to subscribe to the KDE-group. Mark the the box on the left of the name. You can now see the group in the list subscribe to. Another posibility is to use the arrows between the two windows.

If you picked the wrong newsgroup by mistake, you can undo your selection by unchecking the checkbox next to the groups name in the Groups on window. Again you can use the arrow. You probably noticed the arrow changing his direction.

If you want to unsubscribe from a newsgroup it is as easy as to subscribe to it. You just uncheck the box next to its name. The groups you unsubscribed from are shown in the list unsubscribe from. Again the arrow is another way for doing things. For correcting your actions you can use the arrow again. This works as long as the dialog is not closed by clicking OK.

As a KDE and &knode; user you will probably want to subscribe to the group. So make sure you checked the box and press OK. This group now appears in the tree-view under the server entry it was choosen from. In our example this is My News Account. If you can not see the group, click on the cross next to the server entry or on the server entry itself. The list of subscribed newsgroups should appear.

Click on the newsgroup. Now you see on the right in the article view an empty folder. &knode; has to fetch the articles for the new newsgroup. When you have in Settings Preferences Reading news General, the check box checking for new article automatically checked, &knode; trys to fetch the articles from the server, when the newsgroup is first selected. If this is unchecked, you have to use Account Get new articles

When you are using leafnode as an server, there will be a single article in the group. leafnode generates an article in every new subcribed group. This indicates leafnode will consider this group the next time it fetches articles. You can ignore an error message saying the article can not be found. If you select this article you tell leafnode you are really interested in this group.

You get the real articles, when your local newsserver fetches them from the Internet and provides them to you. Details about this you can find in the documentation of your local newsserver.

When everything worked, the articles of the subscribed newsgroup appear in the upper right window, the article view.

#### Fetching and reading Articles

&knode; always shows three views (folder view, article view and article window). You can change height and width of these views with the mouse. If you click in a window it gets the focus. This is important, if you want to use &knode; with the keyboard. The Tab key changes the focus between the views. The currently active view is indicated by a small colored bar over the coloum headers.

This picture shows &knode; with the subscribed KDE-newsgroup.

The three views of &knode;
The three views of &knode;

The three views of &knode;

##### The folder view

The folder views contains not only the accounts you configured - in our example this is My News Account - but also three other folders. When you already subscribed to some newsgroups ther will be cross next to the accounts name. Clicking on the cross or the name of the account opens the tree.

Using the right mouse button you get a context menu for the selected item (folders or newsgroups). If you select a newsgroup and choose Properties, you can, among other things, specify your identity for this particular group. You can find more about this in

When you select a newsgroup with your mouse, a list of articles of this group appears in the upper right window. If there are no articles in the upper left window, there are two posibilities. There are no articles for this newsgroup on the newsserver or the newsserver did not fetch them yet. Select Account Get new articles . If there are still no articles appearing, you have some problems with your settings or there really are no articles for this group. Try another group. If there are no articles for this group, you most likely have to work through the first chapters, about the configuration of &knode;, again. The chapter Frequently Asked Questions may help you, too.

If you are using a local newsserver, the articles only appear if the newsserver already got them from the internet. When you are using leafnode this is done by the the program fetchnews.

###### The newsgroup folders

The newsgroup folders appear with the name the are given by the hierarchy on the newsserver. In our exapmle this is comp.windows.x.kde. You can change the name shown in this view. In the context menu (right mouse button on the newsgroups name) choose Properties then you can change the name in the inputfield Nickname:. A good name for comp.windows.x.kde would be for eample The KDE-Newsgroup.

If you leave the input field empty, the hierarchical name is shown.

Besides the name of newsgroups the folder view shows much more informations by the appearance. When there are new articles in a group or folder, the name is shown bold. The columns Total and Unread tell you how many articles are in the according group or folder and how many are marked as unread.

###### The folder Sent

Selecting this folder shows you the articles you succesfully sent, including your e-mail replies. You can delete the messages in this folder, but this has no influence on the messages already sent.

If your are using a local newsserver, an article appearing in the folder Sent only indicates the local newsserver receiving the article. It is possible this article never appears in any newsgroup, because the local newsserver was not able to send it for some reason. If you notice some article not appearing in the according newsgroup, first make sure it was sent by the local newsserver.

If you are using leafnode articles, leafnode was unable to send, are found in `/var/spool/failed.postings`, normally.

###### The folder Outbox

The folder Outbox contains all articles, wich are supposed to be sent later or which could not be sent because of an error. If you want to sent an article later, choose File Send Later in the editor. The article is then filed in the Outbox folder. It is possible to edit, delete, or send these articles later.

If an article was not sent because of an error, it is stored in this folder. You are not losing these articles!

###### The folder Drafts

This folder is used for storing drafts of your articles. For example if you want to do some further work on them, but you have no time for it right now. For storing an article in this folder choose File Save as Draft in the editor.

You can edit, delete and send the articles in this folder.

##### The article view

The article view gives you a list of all articles in the selected newsgroup or folder. You can change the appearence of this view with the menu entry View. The uppermost row of the view contains the coloumn headers.

Subject

  The Subject coloumn shows the subjects of an articles, which, most of the time give you a clue about the content ot this article. The subject is chosen by the article author. You can find more about this in How to post and reply to news.

From

  The column From shows the author or her e-mail adress, if the author did not give a name. You can configure your settings in Settings Preferences Identity When you publish an article &knode; will show these settings in the From coloumn.

Score

  The column Score shows the scoring of an article as a number. The default is 50. Articles which are important to you can be scored up, articles you want to ignore, can be scored down. The range is zero to one hundred. Read more about this in chapter Scoring, Watching and Ignoring

Date (Time)

  The Date (Time) column shows the date and time when the article was written.

###### The symbols and highlighting used

This is a shot explanation of the different symbols for labeling articles.

- Already read articles are labeled with this symbol.

- Articles labeled with this symbol are read and the body was fetched from the server.

- Articles labeled with this symbol are unread and the body has not yet been fetched.

- Articles labled with this symbol are unread but the body has already been already fetched.

- Articles labeled with this symbol are part of a thread with new and unread articles in it.

- Articles labled with this symbol are parts of a guarded thread. This corresponds to a score of 100.

Besides different symbols, &knode; is using the following highlighting:

The article subject is printed bold.

  The article is new in this group. It was fetched during the last connection with the server.

The article subject is printed in grey.

  There are no unread follow-up articles.

###### Navigation in the article view.

You can navigate in articles, display an article and open or close threads with your mouse or keyboard.

When you select an article with your mouse, its entry in the the article view gets colored. At the same time the header and body of this article appear in in the article window. If you want to read an other article, you can use the mouse for selecting it or you can use the cursor keys. When you use the coursor keys, you can move the dashed frame to the article you want and then press Enter for marking and diplaying the article.

There are many key commands, wich allow a comfortable navigation in a news group and for switching between newsgroups. Here the most common key commandos of the standard key configuration are listed. You can configure this key bindings in Settings Configure Key bindings

Open and close threads T

  The replies on an article are either shown or hiddden by multiply pressing this key. Another possibility for opening threads is using the right arrow key

Browsing articles Space

  This key gives you a convenient possibility for browsing through the article view. By pressing this key the article in the article window is scrolled. When you reach the end of the article by repeatedly pressing Space, it takes you to the next article. When you have read all articles in one newsgroup, Space takes you to the first article of the next newsgroup. By repeatedly pressing Space you can browse through all subscribed newsgroups like this.

Next unread article Alt Space

  This key binding jumps to the next unread article. The sequence follows the order of articles in the article view. A thread is opend if needed to do so.

Next unread thread Ctrl Space

  This command jumps to the next thread containing unread articles. The first unread article is selected and shown. The sequence follows the order of articles in the article view.

Next article N

  This command jumps to the next article. The sequence follows the order of articles in the article view. Replies in closed threads are ignored.

Previous article B

  This command jumps to the previous article in the group. The sequence follows the order of articles in the article view. Replies in closed threads are ignored.

Next group +

  This command jumps to the next newsgroup. The sequence follows the order of articles in the article view.

Previous group -

  This command jumps to the previous newsgroup. The sequence follows the order of articles in the article view.

###### Sorting and filtering of articles

Some newsgroups are very crowded and contain lots of articles. Perhaps only some of them are interesting to you. One possibility to keep track is sorting your articles with certain criterias.

Sorting your articles and the choice of sorting criterias is done with the column titles in the article view. Clicking on a cloumn title makes it the current sorting criteria. Another click on the same coloumn title changes the order of sorting.

The current sorting criteria is indicated with an arrow next to the titel. This gives you an easy sign, wich column is used for sorting, too. You have to make the coloumn wide enough, so that you can actually see the arrow. You can change the coloumn width by moving the mouse pointer on the small area between two column titles. The pointer changes it's appeareance in two horizontal arrows. Click and hold left mouse button allows you now to change the width of the column left to the mouse pointer.

&knode; gives you the posibility to reduce the flood of articles. You can show only the articles fitting in your specific criterias. &knode; uses filters for this task. In this paragraphs we are just dealing with the predefined filters. For defining and using your own filters, please refer to the chapter

Normally you will read most articles only once, and then never again. &knode; labels the articles which are unread, but when there are more articles in a news group than can be shown by the article view, you often have to search for unread articles. It would be much easier to see only the new fetched and unread articles. &knode; gives you this feature by the predefined filters.

In the status line at the bottom border of your main window behind the word Filter the actually active filter is shown. If you do not change the filter configuration, this is the filter all. This means all articles of a newsgroup are shown. all is one of the predefined filters. There are eight of them, wich are described in more detail here.

all

  This filter is the default setting. It shows all articles in a newsgroup. You can choose this filter by selecting View Filter all

unread

  This filter shows only unread articles. You can choose this filter by selecting View Filter unread

new

  This filter shows only articles fetched during the last connection. You can choose this filter by selecting View Filter new

watched

  This shows only threads chosen as watched threads by you. For example, because you are participating in this thread or you are particular interested in the anwsers. You can choose this filter by selecting View Filter watched

  This filter only shows something, if you selected one or more threads to watch. You can achieve by selecting Article Thread Watch . Next to the subject appears a symbol, showing a pair of eyes.

threads with unread

  This filter shows only thread containing unread articles. You can choose this filter by selecting View Filter threads with unread

Threads with new

  This filter shows only threads with new fetched articles. You can choose this filter by selecting View Filter threads with new

Own articles

  This filter shows only articles you published. You can choose this filter by selecting View Filter own articles

threads with own articles

  This filter shows only threads containing articles you published. This filter shows only articles you published. You can choose this filter by selecting View Filter own articles

For everyday use the unread filter is propably the most useful. It shows all unread articles, including the old ones. The other filters are very special and seldom used. In the end it is a matter of taste which filter to select.

##### The article window

The article window shows the currently selected article. You can scroll in it like in a normal text editor window. The difference is, you can not change the article. The article window ist for read only.

The window itself is divided in three areas. They are explained in more detail now.

###### The header

This part shows the header lines or a part of the header. You will recognize some informations here from the article view. For example the subject and the adress or name where the article originated. When you click on the From:-adress, &knode; opens an editor window. The e-mail adress of the author and the subject of the refering article are already filled in for you. This enables you to reply to the author directly from her article.

The appeareance and content of the shown header shown by default can be configured by choosing Settings Preferences Reading News Headers You can find a more detailed view on this in

By selecting View Show all headers you force &knode; to show the whole header as it is produced by the newsreader and newsservers. Normally you do not need this view, becaus it needs a lot of space in the article window.

The last lines of the header contain, if necessary, some references to other articles, shown as numbers in the range from 1 to n. These References are articles refering to the current article. The article labled with 1 is the oldest article. This means it is the first one refering to the current article. The article with the highest number is the one the current article is refering to.

When you click on a reference, the according article is loaded and shown in the article view. It can occure, &knode; is telling you, the refered article is no longer reachable. This always happens when an article is older and the article management of &knode; or your newsserver decided to delete it from the newsgroup. How to get such an article, please refer to the Frequently Asked Questions.

###### The body of the article

The body of the article follows straight after the header. This is the actual message, the author published in the newsgroup. Be aware of an article possibly containing quotes from other articles, which are not always recognizable as quotes. This depends on the newseditor and the habits of the author.

&knode; provides some highlightings, wich are used in the article window. At the moment these are:

- /italic/
- *bold*
- _underlined_

Do not use the highlighting too often. With increasing use of it, the impact decreases.

Most of the time a quote is indicated by a prefixed > on every line. There are other possible signs. If you can not directly recognize a quote, the author did not obey the rules of proper quoting.

Furthermore it is usual to start an anwser with a introductionary line.

Something like:

On 12/25/2000 Santa Claus wrote:

Normally you do not have to bother with these introductionary lines. &knode; does this automaticaly, when you reply to an article. How to configure this line, you can read in chapter

In Settings Preferences Reading News Appearance you can choose how the articles are shown. In particular &knode; provides the smat coloring of different reply levels. You can read more about this in th chapter .

&knode; provides smart colouring of quotes, but at the moment, only quotes starting with > are coloured.

When the body of an article contains links to internet adresses, you can invoke an internet browser, starting with this adress, by clicking on the link. Details about configuring this feature you can find in .

###### The signature

Below the main text of an article, you find the signature of the author. Provided you did not turn this behaviour off in Settings Preferences Reading News General The signature is divided from the text by thin, horizontal line.

###### Attachments and multipart-mime messages

If an article contains attachment, they are shown below the signature in a table.

The multipart-mime format allows to send the body of an article in more than one format. For example in plain-text or HTML. It depends on the newsreader which format to provide for reading the article.

&knode; allows showing the different formats by selecting Settings Preferences Reading News General show alternative contents as attachments . When this option is checked, all alternative formats are sown as attachments and can be opend and viewed like them.

When this option is unchecked, you do not see the different text formats and &knode; decides which one is best to be shown.

#### Writing and replying to articles

Before you start writing article or replying to other Usenet users, be sure you understand the habits in the current newsgroup. Again, reading would be a good idea.

For testing the Settings of &knode; please resist sending an article to a random newsgroup. It is not very friendly to bother people with test articles. What if you are subscribed to a newsgroup and half of its articles are only containing the word test? This is like somebody calling you just for testing her phone.

This is the reason for the special groups having test in their name. An example is: alt.test. In these groups you can test everything you want, without bothering somebody. Some groups even send you error messages back.

You can find a selection of test groups in Test Groups

Subscribe to one of the test groups now. Some newsservers have their own test groups, which are probably less crowded.

Remember, you have to download the articles of the new subscribed group. Perhaps there are many articles in these groups, so it will take some time to fetch them the first time. The only important articles are yours and the anwsers by the check handler. If you want to reduce the amount of fetched articles during the test. you can configure this in Settings Preferences Reading News General max to fetch If you reduce this dramatically, you should not wait too long for fetching the new articles after sending your test article. You article can be a vicitim of your limitations. A tolerably fast newsserver, should provide your article right after you sent it. Feel free to send another article, if can not see you initial one. This is what the test groups are for.

When you are using a local newsserver, the configuration of max to fetch in &knode; is useless. You should consult the documentation of you newsserver instead.

If you did not encounter any errors, unsubscribe from the testgroups and set max to fetch back to normal (1000).

##### Publishing articles

You have seen a big part of &knode; now. You used &knode; passively so far, so lets get to some action. We will publish a test article now. Select the new subscribed test group in the folder view. With Article Post new article or the key P, the Editor is called.

You can use the &knode;-Editor like a normal Texteditor. There are some additional features for writing news articles.

When you look at the editor window, you see two input lines. One for the subject, which is empty at the moment, and another for the newsgroups this article is going to be posted to.

Enter the text `This is a test` in the subject field.

When you post an article, use a descriptive subject. Articles without a descriptive subject are often ignored. Avoid subjects like Help, it doesn't work !!!!! This subject gives no information about the content of your article.

The Groups: field already contains the test newsgroup you selected befor. Do not change this.

The features provided by the Check Box and Combo Box below the input fields mentioned above, are not used in this test. Please refer to The Editor for further information.

For simplicity reasons we only use a simple sentence. Type:

`This is the body of my test article. @ $ %`

Enter an empty line, followed by.

`Did it work?`

This may look funny to you, but it does what it is supposed to do, testing your configuration. Just write it.

Your article should look like the screenshot below now.

Your first article
Your first article

Your first article

If you are using &knode; with a local newsserver, choose File Send Now in the Editor. If you do not have a connection to a newsserver at this point, you may want to send the article later. You can achieve this by using File Later . &knode;, then, stores this article in the folder Outbox. You can start sending the articles in the Outbox manually, by selecting File Send pending messages .

After sending the article you will notice &knode; stored a copy in the folder Sent.

Depending on how fast your article is published in the according newsgroup, you can check the result after some time. Mostly it is sufficient to check for new messages immediately after sending the article. Be patient it may take the article some hours before reaching the newsgroup. If the article does not arrive after some hours, most likely, something went wrong. Try again. If it is still not working, have a look at the Frequently Asked Questions

Even when you are using a local newsserver, you have to check for new articles. The local newsserver just sends the article, it does not store it in the local newsgroup. So you have to synchronise with an external newsserver, if you want to see if your test article arrived.

When the article shows up in the newsgroup, you were successful. Check the From: line and the readability of the articles body. If everything is ok, you succesfully used &knode; to send your first article.

##### Post Reply

After succesfully publishing an article, we will now anwser to your own article. You want to anwser the question you asked, don't you?

Select your article in the article view and press the right mouse button. You see a context menu, where you choose Post reply.

&knode; opens the Editor again, but this time there is already a subject filled in for you. The subject line reads:

Re: This is a test

Re: is a shortcut for the latin In re, which means something in the lines of "relating to". You should not change the subject and above all the Re: . Most newsreaders sort threads by the subject.

If you want to change the subject for some reason, put the new subject in front of the old and replace the Re: with a parenthesized (Was: ... ). In our example this would look like

A new subject! (Was: This is a test)

With this kind of subject you show the other readers, there is a branch in the original discussion. This happens, when a new topic occurs in the original discussion or the original subject changed for some reason.

If you anwser to an article with such a subject, delete the parenthesized part of the subject. The first part with a prefixed Re: remains.

Re: A new subject!

Let us have look at the Editor now. The contents of the article, we want to reply to has already been copied to the Editor by &knode; To indicate the text is a quote, every line is prefixed with a >.

In front of the quoted text, &knode; has put a introduction line. The content of this line refers to the original author. You can change the standard text of this line in Settings Preferences Posting News Composer Introduction Phrase: .

The original article contains the question: Did it work? We want to anwser this question now.

Place the cursor below the quoted question and write in the next line:

`Yes it worked, congratulations!`

We are not finished now. It is considered polite to begin with greeting like Hello in the first line. If you call the atuthor by his name or not, depends on your habits. Watch the newsgroup to get used to the habits there.

Next we delete all not mandatory parts of the quoted article. In our case, we delete all parts, except the question.

With such a short text this is unnecessary, but this just an example. If you have to read a message 100 lines long, again, just to find a "I agree" at the end, you will understand. Aside from this, articles get smaller and use less space on the server.

In the end we say good bye.

This screenshot shows our answer before sending it.

Your answer on your article
Your answer on your article

Your answer on your article

Sending the reply is equivalent to sending the original article.

##### Mail Reply

The Mail Reply follows the same lines as posting a reply in a newsgroup. The Mail Reply is sent directly to the author and does not apear in any newsgroup. This is the only difference.

Sometimes it is better to use an emailed reply instead of posting a reply to newsgroup. Primarily, when you want to correct an error or misconduct by the author, without hurting his feelings by doing this publicly on the newsgroup.

For answering with an e-mail, you select your article, again, open the context menu with the right mouse button, and choose Mail Reply. &knode; opens the Composer with the quoted article.

Subject and body are identical with posting an article, but the Groups: field is replaced by a To: field. Here appears the authors e-mail adress. In our example this should be your own e-mail adress, if &knode; is set up correctly.

For e-mails apply the same rules for quoting and politness apply as for posting an article in a newsgroup.

After finishing your Reply, you can send it.

The screenshot shows the reply we distributed by email.

A Mail Reply
A Mail Reply

A Mail Reply

The Mail Reply only works, when you used the right settings in Settings Preferences Accounts Mail .

Depending on the configuration of your computer, you will find the reply in your mailbox. Perhaps you have to connect to your ISP first and fetch your new mails.

### The advanced &knode; features

#### Defining and using Filter

You alrady read about using Filters in the chapter explaining the configuration of &knode;. We were talking about the build-in filters provided by &knode; there. You can configure the built-in filters like all the others. The screenshot shows the Dialog Box for confguring the Filters.

The dialog New Filter
The dialog New Filter

The dialog New Filter

First we will create a new filter. There will be the case, that you want to find your own articles among all the others. Or you do not want to see the articles of a particular person at all. Both cases can be solved by a simple filter on the Sender. Here are some examples:

##### Do not show the articles by a particular person

1. Settings Preferences Reading News Filters

2. Select Add

3. Insert `Do not show idiot` in the Text Box Name

4. For making the filter appear in the menu, check show in menu.

5. Check the Check Box From.

6. Chose does NOT contain from the Drop Down Box.

7. Insert the name of the moron you want to ignore in the now active Text Box for example `Idiot`.

8. Confirm the filter settings with OK

The filter now shows all articles, except the ones containing Idiot in the From: line.

You can combine the settings of the tab for Subject + From line with the settings on the other tabs. For example:

##### Show only discussion with unread follow-ups on own articles.

1. Settings Preferences Reading News Filter

2. Select the predefined filter "threads with own articles"

3. Select Copy

4. Insert `My threads with unread` in the Name field.

5. Select the tab Status

6. Select has unread followups

7. Select true in the Drop Down Box next to it.

8. Confirm the filter settings with OK

   This filter shows all threads your are participating in, wich have unread messages. Also, you saw the possibility, to use already existing filters as a base for new ones. This makes life easier for complex filters.

##### Show all articles, no older than 3 days, containing KNode in the subject.

1. Settings Preferences Reading News Filter

2. Select Add

3. Insert `Last KNode threads` in the Name field.

4. If you want this filter to appear in the menu, check the check box show in menu.

5. In the Drop Down Box apply on select single articles

6. Select the Check Box Subject.

7. Select does contain in the Drop Down Box.

8. Insert `knode` in the now active Text Box.

9. Change to Tab Additional

10. Select the Check Box Alter

11. Place the following settings 0 < days <= 3

12. Confirm with OK

    This filter, now, shows all articles, no older than 3 days, containing knode in the subject.

#### The Composer

The &knode;-composer provides many features, especially for posting and replying to articles.

##### Publish articles in multiple newsgroups

By selecting the Button Browse you can choose additional newsgroups, you want to publish your article in.

It is undesirable to post articles in multiple newsgroups, most of the time. Please think about it twice. If you are not sure, where to post your article, ask in one of the possible groups. Sombody will tell you were to post.

##### Redirect Followups

The main use of this feature is the case, when a thread has gone off topic for the newsgroup it is posted in. For example a thread in a kde newsgroup about how to redirect a followup in &knode; which leads to a dicussion about graphical and text based newsreaders.

Another reason for using Followup-To: is a possible crossposting in multiple newsgroups. You should take care that the replys will be posted in one single newsgroup.

You can activate this by checking the Check Box Followups - To:. When this is checked, you can enter the according newsgroup in the Text Box next to it. If there are multiple newsgroups in the Groups: field, they are shown in the Drop Down List.

When you enter `poster` here, instead of a newsgroup, the replies go directly to the author, not to the newsgroup.

##### Working with an external Editor

Using Edit Start External Editor you can start an editor of your choice, for editing the reply. So you can use your prefered Editor for writing articles and e-mails.

##### Spelling

By selecting Edit Spelling , you can check the article in the composer on spelling errors.

##### Sending attachments

By selecting Attachments Attach File you open the File Selection Dialog Box. Here you can choose the file you want to attach.

Most of the time, &knode; determines the correct MIME type for the attachment. If &knode; errs, you can correct the MIME type manually.

Please, only change the MIME type, if you know what you are doing. A wrong MIME type can make your attachment unreadable.

This screenshot shows the Composer with 2 attachments. A text file and a PNG-picture.

Sending attachments
Sending attachments

Sending attachments

In most newsgroups, attachments are prohibited. Do not send unsolicited attachments. If you are asked to send them, look who is asking for. Mostly, this person wants you to send them by e-mail.

The newsserver probably rejects article with attachments for most groups anyway.

#### Searching for articles

Sooner or later, you will start searching for one specific article. The &knode; search feature is an easy way to do so.

You can reach the search function by selecting Article Search or the F4 key. The screenshot below shows the Search Dialog Box.

The Search Dialog Box
The Search Dialog Box

The Search Dialog Box

The Search Dialog Box has three tabs, which allow several search criteria. The first tab contains the settings for the criterias Subject and From. The second tab contains the Settings for the Status of an article. Additional contains the criteria, wich do not belong to the first or second tab.

You propably already noticed the similarities between the Filter Dialog Box and the Search Dialog Box. The usage is the same and should not be too complicated, if you already defined your own filters.

&knode; always searches in the currently active newsgroup. A search in all newsgroups is not possible at the moment. After the Search finished, the articles found appear in the article view. When you close the Search Dialog Box, When you close the Search Dialog Box with Close the search results are deleted, and the old view of the newsgroup appears again.

##### Start Search

With this button you start the Search with the search criteria you defined. All articles in the selcted newsgroup, fullfilling this criterias, appear in the article view.

##### New Search

This button resets all search criteria.

#### Supersede and cancel articles

This chapter deals with superseding and canceling articles. You will not use this two features very often, but they belong to the comfort features of a newsreader.

Both functions need a newsserver beeing able to handle them. And you should remeber that there is no guarantee, that no one has already read your article, before it is superseded or canceled.

So first think, then post.

##### Cancel

Canceling an article means deleting it from the newsgroup.

Why should you want to cancel an article? Well, perhaps you falmed somebody in a rage and now you want to get this article out of the newsgroup, because you regret what you wrote. A personal insult, read by everybody, looks not too good, especially when you regret it. So there is only one thing, cancel the article.

Select the article you want to cancel and choose Cancel in the context menu. When you are sure it is the right article, confirm &knode;s question with Yes. Now you are asked if you want to send the Cancel message now or later. For this example we decide to send it Later. You will notice the new message in the folder Outbox.

Now we want to look at the so called cancel message. In the subject you will find something like:

cancel of <n177m8.1m.ln@konqui.org>

This strange letters between the brackets are the Message-ID of the article, you want to cancel. This message tells the newsserver to delete your article. When you look at complete header of this message by selecting View Show all headers you will notice a line with the name control and the content cancel <xxxxx@ddddd.dd> This line tells the server, this message is a control message. In our case, this message cancels your article.

You can still delete the control message from the Outbox.

Keep in mind, an article can only be identified by his Message-ID. You need this Message-ID if you want to cancel an article. Normaly your article gets this Message-ID when it arrives at the newsserver. Thats why you can only cancel an article, when it is already published. The articles in the folder Sent have no Message-ID, so you can not cancel them from there.

There is one exception. If you have configured &knode; to generate a Message-ID, you can cancel you articles in folder Sent , too.

&knode; allows only to cancel your own articles. It refuses to cancel articles from other authors.

##### Supersede

Supersede overwrites your article with a new version. One reason for doing this could be:

You have written a long article and already posted it. Now you find an error in this article. You can cancel this article and post a new, corrected, article. Or you can use Supersede.

Select this article in the article view. In the context menu, select Supersede.&knode; will ask you, if you really want to overwrite this article. Confirm with Yes and the Composer appears.

In the Composer you can now make the wanted corrections and changes. You can publish this article in the same way as you post every other article. When the newsserver recives this article, it reads some special lines in the header which tell the newsserver to supersede the older article. Select File Send Later for now, because we want to look at the articles header in the Outbox.

Activate View Show all headers , because we want to see all the header, the newsserver recives. You will notice a line like:

Supersedes: <oggcm8.4n5.ln@konqi.org>

This is the instruction for the newsserver for superseding the article with the Message-ID <oggcm8.4n5.ln@konqi.org> with the new article.

Besides this Supersede is used for periodical posted articles, i.e. FAQs. The new article supersedes the old one and the newsgoups do not end up with lots of different versions.

Again, using this function is only possible, if the article already has a Message-ID. Normally articles get their by the newsserver. This means, you can only supersede articles, which are already published.

you can configure &knode; to generate this message, then you can supersede your articles in the Outbox, too.

&knode; allows only to supersede your own articles.

#### Score, watch, ignore

Score, watch and ignore are only different names for the same feature.

By scoring a thread, you determine its importance. &knode; allows scores between 0 and 100. A normal article will get a score of 50 if you do not change this. So threads with a score below 50 are less important and threads with a score above 50 are more important than the average.

The score is an attribute of the thread and the articles in this thread. So you can use the score for filtering and searching articles. For example, you can define a filter, which shows only articles with a score > 50.

The function Watch only sets the score of all article in a thread to 100. So they get the highest possible score and &knode; labels them with a special icon.

The function Ignore does the opossite. Ignore scores all articles with 0 and does not show this articles anymore.

In this version &knode; only allows the scoring of threads.

#### Group identities

With &knode; you can use a different identity with every newsgroup you are subscribed to. This involves name, e-mail, reply-to adress and signature.

It is easy to set group identities. For setting up a group identity, select the according newsgroup. In the context menu, select Settings. The second tab is identical with the global identity settings. Confirm your settings with OK and your articles in this group are always posted with this identity.

When you unsubscribe from a group, you lose the identity settings for this group. If you resubscribe to this group, you have to repeat the settings. For new newsgroups, the global identity is used.

#### Managing multiple news accounts

&knode; can handle a unlimited number of news server accounts in addition to your main news server. Most users don't need this feature, but it can be very handy to if your main newsserver doesn't provide all groups you want to read. Typical cases are support groups for commercial software that are hosted on a special server or binary newsgroups.

In order to add an new account, you have to open the preferences dialog via Settings Preferences Accounts News The button New creates a new account, you then have to enter the same data as for your first account, typically a name for the account, the host name and user name / password combination if the server requires authentication. When this is done the new server will appear both in the configuration dialog and in the group view. You can now subscribe to newsgroups.

You can delete the currently selected account by pressing the Delete button.

## Command reference

The following keybinding assume, you did not change the default settings.

### The main &knode; window

#### The menu File

Ctrl S File Save

  Saves the selected article in a file.

Ctrl P File Print

  Prints the selected article.

File Send pending messages

  The messages in the folder Outbox are send.

File Stop Network

  Disconnects the current connection to a newsserver.

Ctrl Q File Quit

  Quits &knode;.

#### The Edit menu

Ctrl c Edit Copy

  Copy the selected text in the clipboard.

Edit Select All

  Selects the whole article.

#### The View menu

View Show Threads

  When this is activated, &knode; shows discussions as a tree view in the article view.

View Expand all threads

  When this is activated, &knode; shows the complete threads. This is only funtional when Show threads is active.

View Collapse all threads

  When this is activated, &knode; shows no threads. This is only funtional when Show threads is active.

T View Toggle Subthread

  Toggles between showing and collapsing the selected thread.

View Filter

  Allows you to choose a filter for the article view.

View Sort

  Allows you to sort the article view.

F5 View Refresh list

  Refeshes the article view

View Show all headers

  When this setting is activated, &knode; shows the complete article header in the article window.

#### The Go menu

N Go Next article

  Jumps to next article in the article view.

B Go Previous article

  Jumps to previous article in the article view.

Alt Space Go Next unread article

  Jumps to the next unread article and to the first unread article of the next newsgroup if nessecarry.

Ctrl Space Go Next unread thread

  Jumps to the next unread thread and to the next unread thread in the next newsgroup, if nessecary.

+ Go Next group

  Jumps to the next news group in the folder view

- Go Previous group

  Jumps to the previous news group in the folder view

#### The Account menu

Account Get new articles

  Connects with the active account and fetches the new messages.

Account Subscribe to Newsgroups

  Opens the Dialog Box for subscribing to newsgroups for the active account.

Account Properties

  Opens the properties dialog for the active account.

Account Delete

  Deletes the active account and all subscribed newsgroups within.

#### The Group menu

Group Mark all as unread

  Sets the status of all aticles in the active newsgroup to "unread".

Group Properties

  Opens the dialog for the group properties.

Group Unsubscribe

  Unsubscribes from the active newsgroup

Group Compact Folder

  removes all deleted or moved articles physically out of the active folder.

Group Empty Folder

  Deletes all articles from the active folder.

#### The menu Article

P Article Post to newsgroup

  Opens the Composer with the settings for writing new articles of the active newsgroup.

R Article Follow up to newsgroup

  Opens the Composer for writing a followup with the content of the active article.

A Article Reply by E-Mail

  Opens the Composer for writing an e-mail to the author of the active article.

F Article Forward by E-Mail

  Opens the Composer for forwarding the active article as e-mail.

D Article Mark Mark as read

  Set the status of the active article to read

U Article Mark Mark as unread

  Set the status of the active article to unread

Ctrl D Article Thread Mark thread as read

  Set the status of the active thread to read

Ctrl U Article Thread Mark thread as unread

  Set the status of the active thread to unread

S Article Thread Score ...

  Opens the dialog for scoring the active thread.

W Article Thread Watch

  Set the status of the active thread to watched

I Article Thread Ignore

  Set the status of the active thread to ignored

Article Cancel

  Generate a message which deletes the active Article in Usenet. You can only use this with your own articles.

Article Supersede

  Opens the Composer with the content of the active article. When this article is posted, it overwrites the original article. You can only use this with your own articles.

O Article Open in own window

  The active article is opend in a new window.

E Article Edit

  Opens the Composer, for editing the active article. You can only use this in the folders Outbox and Drafts.

Delete Article Delete

  Deletes the active article. You can only use this in the folders Outbox and Drafts.

Article Send now

  Sends the active article. You can only use this in the folders Outbox and Drafts.

Article Send Later

  Puts the active article in the folder Outbox. You can only use this in the folder Drafts.

F4 Article Search

  Opens the Search Dialog Box for searching in the active group.

#### The Settings menu

Settings Show Toolbar

  This option toggles if the toolbar is shown or not.

Settings Show Statusbar

  This option toggles if the statusbar is shown or not.

Settings Configure Key Bindings

  Opens a dialog for configuring the key bindings.

Settings Configure Toolbars

  Opens a dialog for configuring the toolbars.

Settings Configure KNode

  Opens a dialog for configuring &knode;.

#### The Help menu

F1 Help Contents

  Opens the &knode; online-help. The document you are reading right now.

Shift F1 Help What's this?

  Opens the quick help.

Help Report Bug

  Opens the Bug Report Dialog.

Help About KNode

  Opens the dialog with information about &knode;.

Help About KDE

  Opens a dialog with information about the KDE-Project and the current KDE version you use.

### The composor menus.

#### The File menu

Ctrl Return File Send Now

  Send the current article immediately.

File Send Later

  Store the current article in the Outbox to be sent later.

File Save as Draft

  Save the current article in the Drafts folder, so you can finish editing it another time.

File Delete

  Delete the current article, closing the editor.

Ctrl W File Close

  Close the editor window

#### The Edit Menu

Ctrl Z Edit Undo

  Undo the last edit.

Ctrl Shift Z Edit Redo

  Redo the last action undone with the Undo menu entry.

Ctrl X Edit Cut

  Cut the currently selected text to the clipboard, deleting it from the editor window.

Ctrl C Edit Copy

  Copy the selected text to the clipboard, without removing it from the editor window.

Ctrl V Edit Paste

  Paste the current contents of the clipboard to the editor window.

Ctrl A Edit Select All

  Select all the text in the editor window.

Ctrl F Edit Find

  Open the Find dialog.

F3 Edit Find Next

  Repeat the last search.

Ctrl R Edit Replace...

  Open the replace dialog.

Edit Start External Editor

  Start the external editor (if one is configured), with the current contents of the editor window.

Ctrl Z Edit Spelling...

  Opens a dialog box to check your spelling.

#### The Attach Menu

Attach Append Signature

  Insert your signature at the end of the article you are editing.

Attach Insert File

  Insert the contents of a file into the editor window.

Attach Attach File

  Insert a file as an attachment.

#### The Settings Menu

Settings Show Toolbar

  Toggles on and off the toolbar.

Settings Configure Keybindings...

  Open a dialog box where you can configure the keyboard shortcuts.

Settings Configure Toolbars...

  Open a dialog box where you can configure the toolbar icons.

Settings Configure KNode

  Open the &knode; Preferences dialog.

#### The Help menu

F1 Help Contents

  Opens the &knode; online-help. The document you are reading right now.

Shift F1 Help What's this?

  Opens the quick help.

Help Report Bug

  Opens the Bug Report Dialog.

Help About KNode

  Opens the dialog with information about &knode;.

Help About KDE

  Opens a dialog with information about the &kde; Project and the current &kde; version you use.

## Questions and Answers

I have installed KDE2, but &knode; does not exist in the K Menu.

Does the Entry Internet exist? If not, maybe you didn't install the kdenetwork package because your distribution possibly doesn't do this for you. If the entry is there, but you don't have an item KNode in it, you should try to open a Konsole and run &knode; from there. Type

    % knode &

If an error message appears that tells you that &knode; could not be started or found, please check whether the file `knode` exists in `$KDEDIR/bin` and its permissions are correctly set.

When I start &knode;, a message appears in the task bar but suddenly disappears without &knode; being started.

Try to start &knode; from the konsole (see previous question) and keep attention for the messages displayed there. If those don't look obvious to you, mark them with your mouse and copy it to the clipboard. Turn to a &kde; mailing list or use another news reader to ask for help in a &kde; news group.

I need an important article, but &knode; doesn't have it any more. Where do I find this article?

You can find some extensive usenet archives at www.deja.com/usenet/ or AltaVista. They even contain several years old articles.

How do I open and read several articles at the same time?

Open the article with Open in own window.

My articles don't appear in the news group.

When you publish an article it may last some time until your news server has it. Wait several hours before you send the Article again.

I want to keep some article. How do I archive it?

Choose the article in the article view. File Save opens a file dialog. You can save the article to a file now.

Some set headers don't appear for several articles in the article window. Am I doing something wrong?

This is not unusual because many headers are optional and often not contained in articles. In this case &knode; doesn't show those header lines.

Sometimes I see an article which refers to other articles but &knode; does not show any references Why's that?

This happens when somebody posted an article in another news group and checked the option Followup To. This article is sent to your news group but the referring article is absent. In many cases the poster tells the reason for his choice to set a followup.

When I want to answer an article, an error message appears telling me that the external editor could not be started; but the editor is correctly set.

Have a look whether you entered the place-holder for a filename after the editor command. If not, enter it. If you &eg; want to use kedit enter

``kedit` %f`

If the %f is absent, your editor can not be run.

## A journey in the World of Newsgroups

This chapter is supposed to glance over the World of Newsgroups and their inhabitants. Someone who never dared to go there will encounter some strange customs, wich may give you a feeling of being a lonely alien without backup. But stay calm, it is not like this. The Usenet is a meeting place for all kinds of normal and not-so-normal folks. It is here where they are distributing a lot of information but also gossip and other stuff.

References to more detailed and qualified essays on the Usenet can be found at More Resources

### What are ...

#### ... online-readers?

An online-reader connects to a newsserver and gives you acces to its content. &knode; is an online-reader. You are reading your News and publishing your own articles, while the online-reader stays connected.

#### ... offline-readers?

An offline-reader connects to the Server and fetches only the headers of new articles. Then the connection is closed and you can offline mark the articles, you are really interested in. When you connent the next time, the offline-reader fetches the articles you marked and sends the articles you have written offline.

There is no connection while you are reading or writing articles.

#### ... newsgroups?

You can look at newsgroups as public bulletin boards and forums, where evereybody is allowed to participate. Articles you have published in a newsgroup can be read by everybody subscribed to this newsgroup. And normally everybody is allowed to publish her articles in a newsgroup.

#### ... news?

News are articles published in a newsgroup.

#### ... threads?

A thread describes a discussion of one topic in a newsgroup.

### Online Manners

There are lot of different people meeting and talking in newsgroups. It is seen as some kind of courtesy to obey some rules of manner, Some basics are listed here.

1. Before you ask questions be sure you read the newsgroups FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) and didn't find the anwser.

2. If you take part in a discussion, be aware the fact, everybody can read the anwser. Say nothing you wouldn't say to the others when you were facing them. Avoid insults.

3. Try to avoid crosspostings. Do not ask a question in more than one newsgroup when you don't know which is the right one. Ask in one newsgroup. If it is wrong, you are told which is right one.

4. Formulate your articles accurately. Nobody likes to read an article with lots of typos, even with content worth a Pulitzer. Think of your articles as letters. Your letter speaks for you, it represents you. Somebody reading your article will draw conclusions about you from it, wrong or right.

5. Remember, nobody sees your grin when you are writing an ironical sentence. It may be funny for you, but it can be very serious for the one reading it. It is very difficult to include emotions in an article.

6. The most important rule: Use your common sense when you are anwsering or publishing an article.

### The Usenet language

You won't be surprised about English beeing the main language on the Usenet. There are special trees with German (de.*), French (fr.*) and many other languages. If you are unable to determine the main language of a newsgroup, the only possibility is careful listenening or a possible explanation in the description of the group in the grouplist.

In addition over the time the Usenet developed his own language, but happily it is easy to learn.

#### RTFM and other typos

When you read news, after some time you will read some strange combinations of letters. For example you can get a reply like:

RTFM

Nothing else. Strange but absolutely intended. To solve the riddle: Those, most of the time, are shortcuts, acronyms. It is easier to drop some letters, than writing the same sentence over and over again.

But what is the meaning of RTFM? The writer demands you, to read the manual, documentation or FAQ before asking questions in the newsgroup. Clearer: (R)ead (T)he (F)ucking (M)anual. BTW an advice you should adopt.

Wait, what is BTW now? Another often seen acronym which means (B)y (T)he (W)ay. It is easy when you know it. Now, for you not to be continously speculating over acronyms there is table at he end of this section, containing the most often used aconyms. ;-)

#### Smile!

Again such a strange thing. What is this ;-) meant to be? Turn your head so the left side of your Screen is on top. Got it? You spot the smile with a wink? This is a so called emoticon. Emoticons are an often used possibility to express mimic. One thing missing in conversation on the Usenet. (But there is a susbstitute, remember? ;-)

It is very diffcult to express emotions in emails or news. Your joking comment can be very serious for the recipient and can lead to unmeant reactions or conflicts (flames). So use emoticons to express your intention.

There are a lots of emoticons, which express a great variety of emotions. You will see, the interpretation is easy if you turn your head and think of a face.

#### PLONK!

This PLONK! looks like some comic-sound, doesn't it? And that is exactly what it is used for. The one who reads it knows he was just added to the killfile of a newsreader. Normally this means the recipient of the PLONK! ticked off the sender. The PLONK! plays back the sound of the recipients name hitting the ground in the killfile. The sender turned his back to the recipient.

#### Often used acronyms

When you are reading your news with &knode;, you will really soon see some strange combinations of letters in the articles. For a novice user it is difficult to guess the meaning of all the acronyms used. That's why we provide you a list of the most often used acronyms. This table is in no means complete. ;-) It is based on a list originally provided by Martin Imlau.

##### Acronyms on Usenet

Acronym | Meaning
--- | ---
<g> | (user) grins
AAMOF | As a matter of fact
ACK | Acknowledge
AFAIK | As far as I know
AFAIR | As far as I remember
AWGTHTGTTA | Are we going to have to go through this again?
ASAP | As soon as possible
BFN | Bye for now
BYKT | But you knew that
CMIIW | Correct me if I'm wrong
CU | See you
CU2 | See you too
CYL | See you later
EOD | End of discussion
ESOSL | Endless snorts of stupid laughter
FYI | For your information
GOK | God only knows
HAND | Have a nice day
HTH | Hope that helps
HSIK | How should I know?
IAE | In any event
IANAL | I am not a lawyer
IIRC | If I remember correctly
IMCO | In my considered opinion
IMHO | In my humble opinion
IMNSHO | In my not so humble opinion
INPO | In no particular order
IOW | In other words
LMAO | Laughing my ass off
LOL | Laughing out loud
NAK | Not acknowledged
NBD | No big deal
NFW | No fucking way
ROTFL | Rolling on the floor, laughing
RTFM | Read the fucking manual
SCNR | Sorry, could not resist
TIA | Thanks in advance

## Further Information

In this paragraph we will offer you some more information resources which could be useful to you. Many of the below listed articles (for which URLs are given) are posted to news groups regularly. Some of those groups are also listed here.

### Informative Newsgroups

- news.answers
- news.newusers.questions

For beginners it is especially recommended to read these articles at least partially. Informed users have strong advantages in news groups. There are some more specialized news groups where FAQs and introducing articles are posted frequently.

### Test Groups

The following groups were created especially for testing, i.e. after successfully configuring &knode; you should post some articles to those groups to test your settings.

Some groups support automatic replys thru email to enable you to test whether your entered identity is correct and mail-replys actually arrive in your mailbox.

In addition, some scripts are offered which check your articles for errorous settings and generate a followup with useful hints.

- misc.test
- alt.test
- alt.test.ignore

### Informative technical articles

If you are interested in further technical information in connection to news, you should not miss the following URLS.

- A very useful Message-ID FAQ
- Many links regarding news readers and related issues.
- RFCs, drafts and documents for the technical interested

## Credits and License

&knode;

Program Copyright 1999,2000 Christian Thurner cthurner@freepage.de

Developers:

- Christian Thurner cthurner@freepage.de

- Christian Gebauer gebauer@bigfoot.com

- Dirk Mueller mueller@kde.org

- Matthias Kalle Dalheimer kalle@kde.org

Documentation Copyright 2000 Stephan Johach lucardus@onlinehome.de

Thanks go to the &knode; developers who answered all my stupid questions with patience. Then Thomas Diehl and Matthias Kiefer who always were competent contacts regards to translation. Not to forget Michael McBride, always there to help me out with documentation-related and general stuff, and everybody else in the &kde; Team who contributed to the creation of this document.

Documentation Translators:

German to English:

- Rainer Endres endres@physos.com

  Maintainer

- Frerich Raabe frerichraabe@gmx.de

- Oliver Henning Oliver.Henning@gmx.net

- Martin Piskernig martin.piskernig@stuwo.at

Reviewer:

- Lauri Watts vampyr@atconnex.net

- Mike Mcbride mmcbride@ematic.com

&underFDL; &underGPL;

## Installation

### Where do I get &knode; ?

&knode; is part of KDE Project. You will find the current version of &knode; in the package kdenetwork at ftp://ftp.kde.org/pub/kde/, the ftp-Server of the KDE Project or at the Homepage of &knode;.

### Requirements

If you want to successfully install &knode;, you need a KDE 2.x.

If, in addition, you want to use &knode; as an offline newsreader, you need a local news server, e.g. leafnode.

If you want to compile and install &knode;, you must make sure that the following programs are present:

- g++2.8/egcs 1.0.3 (or compatible)

- GNU make

- autoconf 2.1

- automake 1.4

- QT 2.2

- KDE 2.x

### Compile and install

&knode; is part of the package kdenetwork of KDE 2.x and is installed together with it. so in general, there is no need for a user to compile the sources of &knode;. If you nonetheless intend to or if you only have the sources available, compilation and installation is done, as is custom on Linux, by typing:

    % ./configure
    % make
    % su
    % make install

&knode; uses autoconf and automake, so there should be no problems during compilation. But if so, please contact the already mentioned mailing list or the KDE newsgroups.

### Configuration

If you use &knode; together with with a local news server, you must make sure that this server is correctly set up and started. For further details, please consult the documentation of your local news server.

The availability of the local news server can easily be verified with the program telnet. Open a console and type:

    % telnet localhost nntp

Followed by that, the news server should respond with:

    %

    Trying 127.0.0.1...
    Connected to localhost.
    Escape character is '^]'.
    200 Leafnode NNTP Daemon, version 1.9.16 running at konqi.org

You quit the telnet session with:

    % quit

If that should not work, there is either no local news server set up or the server was not started. In this case, please consult the documentation of your local news server.

Further, you need of course a (dial-in) connection to a news server on the Internet. From there, &knode; or the local news server retrieves the articles. Your Internet provider should be able to give you information about which news servers you can use. You need this information in any case.

You will learn more about setting up &knode; in the chapter Working with &knode;

## Notes about updating an older version of &knode;

This section contains notes about what to take care of when installing a newer version of &knode; with an older version already installed.

### Update from version 0.1.x

Since version 0.2 the format of the configuration files and the saved articles has changed. An update is not readily possible. Unfortunately, your old configuration files can not be imported.

&documentation.index;