What is an X-Face?

Am X-Face is displayed at the top of the article window. It is a simple 48 x 48 pixel-sized picture that is sent as a header by encoding the information in a suitable format.

How do I make and send an X-Face?

Once you have a suitable picture, you need to convert it. There are a few programs to do this, I use Winface.

Download the program and run it; open your picture, and you'll see a line of text appear in the window (it looks like random letters). Make sure you have 'Single Line' selected, and hit 'Copy'.

Now open Xnews, and go to the setup menu (Ctrl+F1). Under the 'Compose' tab, write (without the quotes) '*X-Face: ' (make sure you add the space). Then after the space paste in your X-face line (Ctrl+V) that you made in Winface.

Click OK, and that's it. When you post a new message, you'll now have a nice X-face attached to your post.

The '*X-Face' command adds the pic to every post you send - leave out the '*' if you want to only send the pic when you manually select it.

Why doesn't Xnews have a built-in spellchecker?

Because Luu sees no reason for it and has no wish to add it.

But you can add your own in several ways. First, if you already have an editor you are familiar with which has a spellchecker, then you could use it to compose news articles (see here for details on how to configure Xnews to use an external editor).

Alternatively, there are many external spellcheckers which will spellcheck the editor window simply; here are a few suggestions.

All-Purpose Spell Checker (APSC) is a simple freeware spellchecker which will check the contents of any window you specify - it has been tested with Xnews and works very well. This programme is no longer being supported by its author, so don't expect updates, but it works well with standard (US and UK) English and French dictionaries, and you can add your own.

A heavier-duty spellchecker is MicroSpell, which in addition to integrating well with most editors, can also be set up to launch with a hot-key, and can check the clipboard. MicroSpell is not freeware, but is shareware. Currently it offers a "set-your-own-price" deal.

There are many other spellcheckers - search on any freeware site - as well as many editors with embedded spellcheckers which may be used externally. Try a few, and you may no longer feel the lack of a spellchecker in Xnews is a problem.

Thanks to R.A.G. Seely for providing the details for this section

What information is shown in the 'Status Boxes'? (bottom left of Xnews window)

(a) In the left window xx/yy zz is shown.

This means there are xx unread message out of a total of yy messages (where yy is the total after any filtering applied).

zz is the total number of threads.

(b) In the right window xx/yy=zz B/s is shown.

xx is the bytes downloaded for the current article, yy is the time (in seconds) to get the article.

zz Bytes per second is the download rate for the current article.

What do all the different icons* mean?

	Reply Notify, i.e. a reply to your own post
	Article with a score of 9999+
	Indicates the selected article is being downloaded
	Killed article
	Article not found on server
	Read article marked for keeping
	Unread article marked as keep
	Multi-part binary with all parts available
	Incomplete (i.e. parts missing) multi-part binary
	Read article
	Regular article
	(Only with storage on) Stored article; new articles (since last refresh) will have lines as above
	Article stored in cache, i.e. in current session

*Thanks to DC for providing the icon graphics :-)

How do I make Xnews recognise 'unusual' quote characters?

The following string can be entered in the 'Treat lines matching this regex as quoted text' box on the 'Misc' setup tab to improve Xnews's recognition of quoted material:

^\s?([!|#>%]|\w{1,5}\s?>|[+]\s|:(?![()dpb\\-]))\s?

What is 'CatchUp'?

'CatchUp' marks all the articles in the current group as read, and closes the group. This is the command that you should use when you've finished reading all the articles that interest you, and you wish to move on to the next newsgroup; that way, only new posts will be downloaded next time you open that group.

It is useful to re-map the 'CatchUp' button to 'CatchUp and Kill X-Post', since this will make sure that any cross-posted articles you've already read are not shown in any subsequent group you open.

Some articles won't disappear even after I've done a 'Catch-Up'. How do I get rid of them?

This normally happens because the article has been 'Marked as Keep' by accident. 'Mark as Keep' is used to stop articles you are interested in from disappearing after you catch-up a group, so you can easily view them later on. By default, the keystoke to 'Mark as Keep' is Shift+[ (can be accidently done when 'Marking as Read', '['). This also marks the article with a score of 8888 (unless this is changed by the user).

To remove the score and unkeep the article, press Shift+].

I've downloaded over 2Gb of files, but now Xnews won't let me open them! What's happened?

This is a limitation of Windows (2Gb file limit), not Xnews. There are a couple of methods to get back the data you've got in the mailbox:

Download a free program called UUDWin. Run it using your *.mbx as the 'input file'. It will decode all the binaries to the directory you choose. This is only really suitable to get binaries; a text editor can be used to find any text files.

Alternatively: close Xnews, and rename the offending *.mbx file (use your imagination!). Then use a file-splitting tool (try looking here) to split the *.mbx file into two files (with the first part less than 2Gb), and re-name the larger section back to binaries.mbx (or whatever it was to begin with). Delete binaries.hdr, start Xnews and re-open the binaries.mbx folder. The data should now be available, so you can safe it elsewhere. The remaining data can be recovered by doing exactly the same thing, except after splitting, rename and re-open the smaller section you have created.

How do I open http links that are present in an article?

Double-click on the link to open it; this will open the link in your default web-browser. You cannot set Xnews to open links using a different browser (i.e. Netscape, if your default is Internet Explorer); however, if the 'different' browser is already open, Xnews will open the page using that program.

Can http links be coloured/underlined?

Not at the moment.

How do I open links that have wrapped (i.e. the link is on one or more line)?

Right-click the link and select 'Edit URL'. This 're-assembles' the URL - clicking 'OK' then opens the link in your browser.

Can I change the default colours that are used for scored articles?

Not at the moment.

Can I hide all the quoted text so that it is easier to read badly-written bottom-quoted articles?

This can be done using the "Show Quoted Text" function, which toggles the display of all text that begins with quote characters. You can map a key to this function by selecting the keyboard mapping dialog (Alt+k) and assigning a key to "Show Quoted Text".

How should I download binary files?

Queue the binary you wish to download by pressing space, or 'Article->Queue'. A number will appear in the 'Q' (Queued) column in the article list to indicate how many article you have queued. Once you have selected all the binaries you wish to download, they should be decoded (not just saved) - 'F4' by default or 'Article->Decode'. This will ensure that multipart-binaries are re-assembled correctly.

Where do I get the latest (beta) version of Xnews?

Goto http://xnews.newsguy.com/test/; all the changes to the program for each successive beta are listed in change.txt, and the latest beta is available as test.zip.

How do I install the latest Xnews beta?

You must have Xnews already installed from the 'full', gold version of the program, since test.zip only contains the Xnews executable. To install the new beta, simply extract the contents of test.zip (xnews.exe) to the folder you have Xnews installed in, overwriting the existing xnews.exe; all your settings, preferences etc. will be maintained, since these are stored in the various *.ini files.