Amiga Computing - Commodore Is Awesome

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easy to deal with. For a start, you have to
actually get it. To do this you should type
'nntptransfer in your open shell window
when you are online. You will get one of
two responses for this, either that Demon's
newsserver is too busy and you should try
again later, or that you are connected to it.
By default you will only download news
for the demon newsgroups dealing with the
Amiga_ If you want to get stuff other than
this, you will need to edit your
ArniTCP:usreibinewsgroups file to include
the groups you wish to subscnbe to. If you
don't know what any of the groups are
called, you will need to download the
ACTIVE list from Demon's ftp server. This
contains all the newsgroups available
through Demon.
If you want to subscribe to a whole hierarchy
of news, for instance the
comp.sys.amiga hierarchy, you can put an
asterisk as a wildcard as follows;
colvsys.amiga I cowlys.tligi.
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This will subscribe to the newsgroups
comp.sysamiga and any subordinate ones
such as comp.sys_amiga.graphies.
comp.sys.amiga,hardware, a n d
comp.sys.amiga.marketplace, etc. without
you having to type them all in by hand.
Once you have edited this file to your satisfaction
and run nntptransfer successfully,
it is time for you to start reading the news
you have downloaded. To do this you
should run the Tin script in your bin directory.
This should open a console window
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A typical example of
Tin trawling through
Just one of tile endOess
supply of now& groups
just gagging for
subscribers
MAY 1995
which will probably ask you if you want to
subscribe to something (the name of the
first newsgroup you entered in your newsgroups
file). Hit the 'V key for each question
to subscribe to those newsgroups.
You should then get a window with a list
of the newsgroups you have subscnbed to,
with numbers by their left-hand side. These
numbers represent the number of articles in
each group. To enter a group and start
reading you use the cursor keys to move up
and down. and the right arrow key to enter.
Then you will be at article level, so use the
up and down cursor keys to move through
the articles you have to read, and the return
key to read one. If there is more text than
will fit in the window, use the down cursor
key to get to the next bit, and keep using It
because that will move you to the next article
in the thread once you have finished
with the current one
TWO-SIDED STORY
A thread is a bit like a conversation in a
newsgroup. One person starts it off, then
another replies and so on. Moving through
the thread ensures you get both sides of
the story. You can come out of a thread by
hitting the left arrow key. It you have subscribed
to a binaries newsgroup you
are going to want to join together several
articles. save them as one piece and
uudecode them.
Tin can do this easily. If you have four
articles that are numbered I0/31, [2/31
and [3/31in the subject line (or title), you
can ignore the one that says10/31— that's
just a description of the rest of the articles.
For the others, make sure the cursor is on
the [1/3] article and hit the key for 'tag'.
This will move the cursor down a line and
put a little number 1 next to the title of the
[1/3]article.
It the [2/3] article is next you can hit thel
key • again and proceed onto the [3/3] article.
If not, position the cursor on the [2/3] article
and hit it. Once you have all three with the
numbers 1, 2 and 3 respectively by their
titles, you can hit the 's' key for 'save'. You
Will then be asked what you want to save,
so you should press the shift key down and
hit the 't' key again for lagged articles.
You will then be asked for a filename for
the files. If they are a split uuencoded file
you can just type 'temp' as a filename, as
the individual files are unimportant. If the
files themselves are important you can give
them a descriptive name and Tin will automatically
append a .1, .2, etc. And if these
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Everybody's getting in on the act. "Browsing
the Beeb. It's not natural I tell you...'
articles are uuencoded. Tin will let you
uudecode them by choosing 'u' from the
next set of options.
If you have chosen to uudecode the files_
Tin will eventually ask you if you want to
delete post-processed files, to which you
will be able to happily answer yes. The files
you have saved will appear in your
Amitcp:usr/usernamernews directory.
If you have read an article you want to
reply to, you have two choices. You can
choose to reply by e-mail to the author (by
hitting •r' on the keyboard while reading the
article), or you can follow up to the newsgroup
(by hitting 'ft while reading the article).
This will bring up your text editor containing
all the text that was in the article
(which can, and should in some cases. be
deleted so you don't waste space) to which
you can reply_
Once you have finished typing, you
should save and exit, and Tin will check
your article and let you either go back and
edit it, forget it altogether or post it. When
you have finished reading your news, you
can quit Tin by repeatedly hitting the left
arrow key until the Tin window disappears.
You might also, at this juncture, want to
run Trimnews in your bin directory. Eve put
Trimnews into my tin script so that it asks
me whether or not I want to trim my news
articles every time I leave Tin, as follows:
ksk 'On you mint to Trim Veils now iy0 1 )?' I t
warn trisnevs else tndii
Put these lines in before the end of the
script, but after the line that starts tin.exe.
There is so much more to discuss but l'
running out of space here. so you'll have to
explore mailing lists, batch tip, ping, finger.
telnet and much more by yourselves. Have
fun and don't get too frustrated.
Finally. I'm just going to take a welldeserved
opportunity to plug my little cont
bution to making AmiTCP easier to use. It's
called ArniTCPHelper and gives you a button-based
interface for connecting to th
Internet and using ftp and mail, etc. It at •
gives you menu items to let you edit th
venous config files I have mentioned in
course of this article.
I would also like to thank all those peep
out there in net land who have helped me to
the point where I could write this article. I'm
not going to name them here (I don't wa
to inflate their egos too much), but the
know who they are, and they'll be the on
helping you Out too.
AC
Where. when and how, it's all
LIP there in one form or another