Set up individual archives for each use group.

Open xnews.ini, and in the [Misc] section add

Archive=*

Now whenever you select "Archive", the article will be stored in an archive named after the newsgroup is came from (these archives will be automatically created the first time you store an article. You can transfer articles between archives using the "Transfer" menu on the main Xnews toolbar.

Changing the way Xnews threads individual groups.

Open groups.ini, and add an entry for the group you want this setting to apply to (e.g. [news.software.readers]). Then below that add the following:

OnLoaded=acvThreaded-

Note: OnLoaded means that these settings will be applied every time you refresh headers (assuming there's at least one new one). To only apply them when you first open a group, use OnOpen instead of OnLoaded.

Making Xnews display unread articles only.

If you have storage turned on, or have Load Read Articles checked, you may wish to only see unread articles when you open a group. To do this, open xnews.ini, and in the [misc] section add

OnLoaded=acvShowUnread+

Note: You can combine these filter settings so that more than one is applied at the same time, e.g. to show only unread articles with no threading add this:

OnLoaded=acvShowUnread+,acvThreaded-

Making Xnews show only articles which have a positive score.

Under the appropriate group name in groups.ini, add the following:

OnLoaded=acvShowGt0Score

Setting a different sort order in individual groups.

You can override the default sorting options (set in xnews.ini) by adding a setting under the appropriate group name in groups.ini. For instance, to sort by date and show the newest articles first, add the following

SortOn=Date
SortOrder=-1

Make text in the article view be displayed with broken quoting fixed by default.

Open xnews.ini, and in the [Display] section add

FixWrapOpt=1

This will automatically fix quoting that has been broken by people using Outlook Express.

Make text in the article view be displayed with word-wrap turned on by default.

Open xnews.ini, and in the [Display] section add

ViewerWordWrap=1

This will make the text automatically wrap so that articles written in newsreaders that don't have a proper line-wrap display properly.

Warning: using this setting in binary groups will prevent you from being able to scroll horizontally if the picture is wider than your line-break width. To prevent this from happening, open groups.ini and in the [binaries] section add the following:

OnOpen=acvWordWrap-

Set "X-No-Archive=Yes" on a per group basis.

(This only applies to versions of Xnews after L5 - previously it was available as a header option) Open groups.ini, and under the appropriate group name add the following:

CustomHeadersCount=1
CustomHeader1=*X-No-Archive: yes

Note: if you feel the need to use X-No-Archive for all groups (do you really need to?), open the setup menu (Ctrl+F1), select the Compose tab and add the following to the Custom Headers section:

*X-No-Archive: Yes

Autosave the newsrc file at regular intervals.

Open xnews.ini, and in the [misc] section add

AutoSaveInterval=10

This will autosave your newsrc file every 10 minutes (which will ensure that you don't lose any information on which articles are read or unread - useful if reading a very large newsgroup).

Make broken sigdashes (--) be recognised as proper signature dividers (-- )

Open xnews.ini, and in the [misc] section add

SigDashRegex=^\-\-\s?$

Select different news-servers to search for old articles

Open xnews.ini, and in the [misc] section add

AltServers=servername1|servername2

You can add as many alternative servers as you want, separating each name with a "|"
Note: the server name should be the name Xnews uses for the server (e.g. cis-dfn), not the nntp address (e.g. news.cis.dfn.de).

Add a "Replt-To:" address to your headers.

Open xnews.ini, and in the [compose] section add

SetReplyToInPost=1

Use my own FQDN (domain name) in your message-ID.

Open xnews.ini, and in the [compose] section add

fqdn=yourdomain.com

(Useful if you use Hamster)

Give each server a different icon.

Open servers.ini, and under the server name you want to add the icon to, add the following

Icon=c:\path\to\icon.ico

Note: you can get *.ico files from other programs by using a program such as (a href="http://www.cdiware.com">Icon Snatcher (freeware), which will extract icons from any file that contains them.

Use different signatures on different groups/servers.

Create a sig file for each signature you need (e.g. publicsig.txt, privatesig.txt). To set the signature for an individual server, open servers.ini, and under the appropriate server name add the following

SigFile=c:\path\to\publicsig.txt

To set the signature for an individual group, open groups.ini and under the appropriate group name add the following

SigFile=c:\path\to\publicsig.txt

Note: Settings in groups.ini override those in servers.ini, and these override those in the xnews.ini file.