Introduction

New Brunswick Computing Services supports the nn news reader, a powerful, menu-driven interface to Netnews. With nn, you can read individual articles in newsgroups, respond through electronic mail to authors of articles, remail articles to other users, and post your own articles for local or more widespread distribution. In addition, special nn configuration files allow you to customize the nn environment to suit your own needs and interests.

Understanding and Changing Article Attributes

Every article in nn has an associated article attribute. Article attributes give the status of an article, indicating whether it has been read, seen, selected, etc. Many commands in nn have the affect of marking articles as read, even when you have not actually read them, by changing the article attributes.

When an article is marked as read, a read attribute (designated by a period in column 2 of the selection mode screen) is assigned to the article. Article attributes are normally represented by a single character immediately to the right of the article ID or by displaying the line in reverse video.

Why worry about article attributes? Knowing what they mean and how to change them allows you to better control the articles that you do and don't see during and between sessions in nn. The following is a list of the more common article attributes and their meanings.

Attribute	Meaning	Description
(none)	Unread	A blank space following the article ID indicates that the article is unread. Typically when you enter a newsgroup for the first time all articles are marked with this attribute.
.	Read	A period following the article ID is a permanent attribute that indicates the article has been read. You will not see these articles the next time you invoke nn.
,	Seen	A comma following the article ID is a temporary attribute that only appears while currently in the newsgroup. The seen attribute signifies that the article has been presented to you in a selection mode menu, but has not been read. Seen articles are marked as read when you leave the newsgroup.
(highlight) or *	Selected	A menu line displayed in reverse video indicates that the article has been selected. If your terminal is unable to display text in reverse video, the article will be marked with * instead. Once selected and marked, an article remains so until read, even if you leave the newsgroup without reading it or quit nn.
=	Leave-next	An equals sign after the article ID indicates that the article has been marked for later treatment with the leave-next (L) reading mode command. An article marked with this attribute will continue to appear in its associated newsgroup until it has been selected and read, the article expires (with 30 megabytes of Netnews arriving every day, systems "expire'' old articles: delete them after a period of time), or you manually change its attribute.
+	Leave	A plus sign after the article ID indicates that the article has been marked for later treatment with the leave (l) reading mode command. An article marked with this attribute will be presented to you for selection again once you have read all other selected articles in the newsgroup. If such articles are not selected and/or read before leaving the group, the leave attribute will automatically be converted to the permanent attribute leave-next (=).

Changing Article Attributes with the Junk Articles (J) Command

You may occasionally want to change the attribute of an article. For example, after reading an article, you may want it to continue to appear in your reader. The junk-articles (J) commandavailable only in selection modeallows you to change or assign specific attributes to any or all articles in a given newsgroup. With the J command, articles can be marked as:

• read (.)
• unread (a blank)
• selected (highlighted or *)
• killed (article disappears from menu), or
• left for later treatment (=)

Depending on the attribute you want to assign, you may have to press J up to five times to cycle through the options. Each time you type J, a submenu appears, describing the particular operation.

• Pressing J once allows articles to be marked as read.
  Mark read S)een U)nmarked A)ll *+)selected a-z . [LN]
• Pressing J twice allows articles to be marked as unread.
  Unmark S)een R)ead a-z [*+LAN.J]
• Pressing J three times allows articles to be selected.<
  Select L)eft-over, N(leave-next) [USRa-z.J]
• Pressing J four times allows articles to be killed. Killed articles will disappear from the selection menu page.
  Kill R)ead S)een [LANU*+a-z.J]
• Pressing J five times allows articles to be marked with the leave-next attribute.
  Leave a-z .,/ * + U)nmarked [LANRSJ]
• Pressing J six or more times cycles you through the above five options again.

For each submenu, the left-hand side of the prompt shows the particular attribute that you can now assign to the articles: Mark, Unmark, Select, Kill, Leave. On the right are the commands for selecting the articles to which that attribute should be assigned. The most often desired commands are presented first (sometimes with a little explanatory text, e.g., U)nmarked), with the other possible commands in square brackets at the end of the submenu prompt. The commands have the following meanings:

Option	Meaning
J	Display the next submenu in the J command cycle. This command will advance one at a time through the five J submenus.
L	Change the attribute on all articles currently marked with the leave (+) attribute.
N	Change the attribute on all articles currently marked with the leave-next (=) attribute.
R	Change the attribute on all articles currently marked with the read (.) attribute.
S	Change the attribute on all articles currently marked with the seen (,) attribute.
U	Change the attribute on all unread articles.
A	Change the attribute on all articles, regardless of their current attributes.
*	Change the attribute on all selected articles on the current menu page.
+	Change the attribute on all selected articles on all menu pages of the current newsgroup.
a through z	Select the article whose attribute you want to change by typing its article ID. This option will not accept a range of articles using a hyphen. Rather each article ID must be entered one at a time. To return to selection mode, press the space bar, <SPACE>.

For More Information

Questions on nn should be directed to the OIT/NBCS Help Desk (732-445-HELP). You can also send electronic mail to the address help on any OIT system (e.g., help@eden.rutgers.edu or help@rci.rutgers.edu) or post a message to the newsgroup ru.comp.qa.news.