Introduction

OIT/NBCS 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.

Automatic Selection

As you become more comfortable with nn, you will probably observe ongoing dialogues (original postings and their many follow-ups) in certain newsgroups on subjects that you would prefer not to see every time you enter the group. Conversely, there may be certain subjects in which you are keenly interested and always want to see. The nn K (kill) command allows you to automatically eliminate or select articles by subject, author, or by matching the subject or author fields to a text string. Selections made with the K command are recorded in a special file and will be in effect every time you invoke nn or until the particular selection has expired.

The K command can be used in either selection or reading mode. In reading mode nn uses the current article and newsgroup as the default, and therefore no options for selecting articles are given. In selection mode, one or several articles can be auto-selected or killed by selecting their article ID(s). The following steps describe how to use the K command in selection mode (the reading mode procedure is nearly identical):

1. To automatically kill or select one or a group of articles in selection mode, type K .
2. You will see the prompt:
   AUTO (k)ill or (s)elect (CR => Kill subject 30 days)

Select one of the three options shown in the prompt. Each option is described below:
• CR
  Press to accept the default and kill a subject for 30 days. If you select this option, you will be asked to enter the ID of the article you want to kill. Enter the article ID, and the transaction is complete. The selected article and its replies will not appear in your selection menu for 30 days.
• k
  Kill one or several articles by article ID or by matching the subject or author's name to a regular expression.
• s
  Auto-select articles (auto-selected articles will be automatically highlighted when you enter the group that contains them) by article ID or by matching the subject or author's name to a regular expression.
3. If you chose option k or s, you will be asked whether you want to make your selections based on the subject of the article or the author's name. Type s for subject or n for name.
4. You will then see a prompt similar to one of the following:
   SELECT Subject:(=/) or SELECT Name (=/) .

Press <RETURN> to select the subject or name by article ID. You will then be asked to enter the article ID. For example, if you wanted to kill all articles with the same subject or author as article b, type b.

To make your kill or auto-selections based on articles that match a text string, type a forward slash (/). You will be prompted to enter a string. This option is very useful for automatically killing or selecting articles on a broad subject (as long as the string is found in the subject or name field of the article). For example, to auto-select all articles about Microsoft Windows, you could enter windows.

5. You will then be asked if you want your kill or auto-selection command to affect the current newsgroup only or all newsgroups. Enter g for the current group or a for all groups.
6. After you have selected the group, you will be asked to enter the lifetime of the entry in days. Type p to make your selections permanent, or enter the desired number of days, or press <RETURN> to accept the default of 30 days. If you do not make the entry permanent, articles matching your selection criteria will no longer be automatically selected or killed after the specified period of time.
7. Finally, your selection criteria will be displayed on the status line and you will be asked to confirm the entry by pressing <RETURN>. If you killed articles, they will instantly disappear from your selection menu and will not appear again until the kill entry expires. Auto-selected articles will similarly be highlighted immediately and in subsequent sessions in nn until the auto-select entry expires.

All kill and auto-select information is stored in the files .nn/kill and .nn/KILL.COMP (compiled version of kill information). For more information on these files see the NBCS document, Customizing the nn Newsreader (UNX01401).

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 .