| ||
|
|
|
|
||
That's a good question. Part of the difference is technical; whereas every person to which an email is sent receives a different copy, a usenet post is stored only one time on every news server, and anyone with access to a news server that carries that newsgroup can download and read it. For more information, read the What is Usenet? FAQ which is periodically posted to news.announce.newusers.
Pine is an email client. Tin is a dedicated newsreader. This means that in some ways, Tin manages newsgroups better. For example, it marks cross-postings read in all groups when they have already been viewed or marked read in one; it also threads discussions by subject. On the other hand, sorting messages by subject in Pine does approximately the same thing.
Multiple posting is when you send the same post individually to multiple newsgroups (or to the same group more than once, which is even more annoying). Cross-posting is when all groups are listed together in the subject line. With cross-posting, only one copy is stored on the server, and Tin conveniently marks cross-posts read in other groups.
In Pine: Hit L to go to the "Folder List" and move down to the bottom section, "News-Collection." Now hit A for "Add," type either all or part of the name of the newsgroup you want, and hit enter. Pine will search the list of groups for ones matching the string you entered; select the group you want and hit enter, then once again. You can also hit Ctrl-T to search the whole list of available groups.
In Tin: In the main screen, hit Shift-S and enter the name of the newsgroup you want. Hit enter. You can also hit y to yank in all available groups and then select the ones you want to subscribe to. (The yanking process will take a while; be patient.) Arrow down to the group you want and hit s to subscribe (u to unsubscribe). Note: Commands in Tin are case-sensitive.
For more information, type see tin at the prompt or look at this Tin help page.
In Tin, you can either "hot" or "kill" an author, subject, and/or message-id. While reading the message you want to filter, hit Ctrl-A to auto-select the message (posts that match the filter criteria will be marked with '*') or Ctrl-K to kill it (these posts will not be displayed). You will then be confronted with a page of options.
| Kill text pattern: | If there's a generic pattern to the subject/author/etc. you want to filter, type it here, for example "XXX" to get rid of many sex spams. |
| Apply pattern to: | Press space to toggle your options here until you see one you like. Press return to take you to Select Lines. |
| Alternatively, you could press return without typing anything on the first line, and it would take you to Kill Subject. | |
| Kill Subject: Kill From: Kill Msg-Id: |
Press space to toggle whether or not to kill on these criteria. |
| Kill Lines: (</>num): | (I honestly don't know what this option does.) |
| Kill time in days: | Number of days the terms are good for; the default if you just press return is 'unlimited'. |
| Kill pattern scope: | Default is the newsgroup you are viewing when you enter the killfile menu. |
Or just press Ctrl-K and mess around until you get something that works. You can quit the killfiling process without changing anything by pressing Esc.
Contributed by Whitney Fraser.
You, personally, can not actually "delete" a post. A distinction must be made here and it is based on where you are reading your newsgroups from.
Reading news from within Tin: Whenever you read someone's post it will automatically be marked as "Read" and by default it will not appear again the next time you are within that newsgroup. However, these "Read" posts are readily available by hitting r.
Reading news from within Pine: Whenever you read a post, it will no longer be marked as N (New). However to make it disappear from your list, you would need to hit D to "Delete it". At this point, if you hit X, you can "eXclude" deleted posts from your list so that they will go away. Also, if you quit Pine and then re-enter that newsgroup you will no longer see your deleted posts.
However, similar to as within Tin, the post will not really be deleted. Deleted posts are readily accessible by hitting & to "unXclude" them.
Note: The news server is set up to completely get rid of posts that are older than a certain amount of time. This is apparent in both Tin and Pine.
Contributed by T. Milewski.
In Tin, be reading the post you want to cancel/delete and hit Shift-D. This will send a cancel-post. However, some news servers do not honor cancel requests, and the later you send the cancel, the more people will have seen your post. Thus, cancelling is of very limited utility.
Copyright © 2002 Mount Holyoke College. This page created and maintained by Laura Melton. Last modified on February 11, 2002. |