BBS is similar to pine in the sense that it is some sort of "screen-oriented" nntp client. For example, a "f" in the article level means a followup but it is an invalid command in the group level. In the rest of the mini-documentation below, the terms "group level", "folder level" and "article level" are used throughout this page.
In order not to cause any confusion here, I have decided to "draw" out the these groups as below.
Note:
If you are a beginner, click here to skip the
below.
Group level
Group Selection (news.comp.nus.edu.sg 40) h=help ->1 SoC.announce.acad Academic AAnnouncement 2 SoC.announce.official Official/ Important Announcement 3 SoC.acad Forum/ Feedback 4 SoC.acad.level1 Lvl 1000 modules discussion 5 SoC.acad.level2 Lvl 2000 modules discussion |
Folder level
SoC.rec.moods (81T(B) 469A 0K 0H ) h=help 65 9 16 my fren is very smart DICK STEEL 66 4 10 S17 level 6 male toilet The Seventh Son 67 7 3 partings folder Fingers 68 8 how do have good disclipine??? >Andrew naT 69 38 9 [$1M] Let's play... Iron Scorpion |
Article level
Thu, 26 Apr 2001 01:39:42 SoC.rec.moods Thread 76 of 81 Lines 10 Exam Over .... Finally!!! No responses SoNiC <[email protected]> at Anfield - You will never walk alone Newsgroups: SoC.rec.moods *phew* -- SoNiC //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// // "While the earth remains, SEEDTIME AND HARVEST, // // cold and heat, winter and summer, // // SHALL NOT CEASE." Genesis 8:22 // //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// |
Reading 'read' articles in bbs
For the benefit of doubt, to read an 'unread' articles, we should hit the "Enter" button to read it in the thread level. By default, tin will 'hide' those articles that you have read once you went to that article. Therefore the next time when you go into the thread level, you won't be able to see the article that you have read again.
To read the 'read' articles again, we have to press "r" at the folder level to toggle the 'read' articles again.
To enable ansi-color, please make sure your terminal supports ansi-color. In fact this applies to any other things in unix. Enabling of ansi-color can be done in the supplying arguments in the command line, configuring the tinrc and hitting the "&" button in the group level. The below shows the details for the various methods discuss here.
1. Command line method:
| lukmengs@sununx ~$ bbs -a |
This has the same effect of pressing of "&" in the group menu. Do read that third sub-section of this section for a clearer understanding.
2. Configuring the tinrc method:
In the group level, press "shift+M". This will bring you to the configuration menu of tin. Look for the word "Use ANSI color" in the menu as shown below.
ie:
| -> 40. Use ANSI color : ON |
Do take note that the number "40" here varies from host to host. Option 40 in sununx shows "Use ANSI color" doesn't mean that option 40 in decunx indicates the same thing. Once the configuration is saved, tin will enable color everytime when you type "bbs" in the command line.
3. Pressing "&"
This is the simplest method but do take note that this should be done in the group level. Note that this "&" actually toggles the enabling of color. This means that if you have already turn on the ansi-color by some other means, this action will do a toggling and will turn off the ansi-color instead.
If you have enabled the ansi-color in bbs, I bet you will like this feature. You may wonder what do I mean by inverse video here. It looks something like the below if both the ansi-color and the inverse video are enabled in bbs.
|
However, do take note that inverse video may be invisible if the telnet client itself doesn't support ansi-color. Examples of such telnet clients are telnet.exe from win98 and below and probably the X-windows.
To enable the inverse video, you can do a "shift+M" in the group level and look for the option "Use inverse video for page header".
ie:
| 5. Use inverse video for page headers : � � ON |
Turn the option on by hitting the "Enter" key. Please do note that the option number 5 varies from host to host. Option number 5 in sununx means configuring the inverse video but this may not be true on other host.
Alternatively, you can always do a toggling by pressing a "shift-I" in the group level if the inverse video is not turned on.
Personally, I will switch to this if my telnet client doesn't support ansi-color. Enabling off '->' in bbs can be done in the following way.
Configuring the tinrc
In the group level, press a "shift-M" and look for the "Draw -> instead of highlighted bar" option.
ie:
| 4. Draw -> instead of highlighted bar : � � ON |
Turn the option on by hitting the "Enter" key. Please do note that the option number 4 varies from host to host. Option number 4 in sununx means configuring the '->' but this may not be true on other host.
Alternatively, you can always do a toggling by pressing a "shift-I" in the group level if the '->' is not on.
Take note that the toggling of '->' will turn on the inverse video and the vice verse will turn on the '->'.
Performing a shell command in bbs
This means that you can still performing other tasks like reading of mails, spying others, etc without exiting or suspending the bbs. The below example will illustrated performing a reading of mail through pine while you are still inside the bbs.
The magic key is "!" followed by typing "pine" and hitting the "Enter" key. It is as simple as that. =)
ie: Type "!pine"
Searching an article in a group in bbs
Searching articles is always a headache for me especially when I was just a newbie in unix. Even up til now, I still need to refer to the online help provided by tin. =p Articles can be searched by the author's name, the text pattern in the subject header and the message-id.
1. Searching article by author's name
This is relatively easy because this option is already shown when you are inside the folder level. Just press an "a" and supply the author's name and tin will do the search for you.
ie: Press "a"--> lukmengs.
To repeatedly search forward, press "a" and hit the "Enter" button.
To repeatedly search backward, press "shift-A" and hit the "Enter"
button.
2. Searching article by the text pattern in the subject header
Do take note of the word "subject header" on the above. If you try to supply the author's name and use this method to search, you are likely to get a search not found message unless there is someone had already posted an subject that contains the author's name that you are searching.To do a search text pattern forwards, do a "/" followed by the text pattern you want.
ie:
Type "/1102" in the group level where "1102" is the text-pattern you
want to search for.
To do the search forwards repeatly, do a "/" followed by hitting the "Enter" button.
To do a search text pattern backwards, it is exactly the same as above except that you replace "/" with a "?".
ie:
Type "?1102" in the group level where "1102" is the text-pattern you
want to search for.
Searching article by message-ID
Message-ID is the unique between every single articles in the whole newsgroup. Therefore if you happen to know the message-ID of the article, you are bound to get the article you want if that message-ID really exists in the newsgroup.
To do that, you need to go to the article level, press "shift-L", supply the message and hit the "Enter" key. It is as simple as that. =)
Marking articles as unread in bbs
Do a "z" to unread an articles in the article or folder level. Note that "shift-Z" in the group level will do an unread for the folder that your cursor is.
Subscribing and unsubscribing folders in bbs
To subscribe a new folder, go to the group level, press "y" to yank in new
folder and press "s" to subscribe them.
To unsubscribe a folder, go to the group level, go to the folder you
want to unsubscribe and press "u".
If you have alot of bogus folders, you can go to the configuration of
tin by pressing "shift-M" at the group level and look for the option
"Remove bogus groups from newsrc".
ie:
| -> 105. Remove bogus groups from newsrc � : � Always Remove |
Turn the option on by hitting the "Enter" key. Please do note that the option number 105 varies from host to host. Option number 105 in sununx means removing bogus groups but this may not be true on other host.
Getting newest articles in bbs
Press "shift-Y" in the group-level to get the newest articles.
Alternatively, press "shift-M" in the group level and look for the option "Interval in secs to reread active". Adjust it to about 20 will do.
ie:
| Interval in secs to reread active � � : � � 20 |
Press "Ctrl-L" at any level to redraw a screen. Please take note that redrawing a screen is different from getting newest articles in bbs. (Getting newest article document is just on top of this section) It is meant to get rid of the characters formed by any extra buffers.
In the folder level, press "w" to post an article. Please take note that you should save your article when posting. If not, an empty article will be posted. Do not worry about having lots of saved articles in your home directory because by default, posted articles are to be deleted unless you have changed the tinrc or there is any crashes occur when you are writing an article halfway.
Adding a signature in your posting in bbs
By default, tin will look up for a file named ".Sig" in your home directory if you have it and will make this file as a signature whenever you have posted or followed up an article.
To add a signature in your posting, just pico a file named ".Sig" in your home directory, type whatever you want to and then do a save.
ie:
| lukmengs@sununx ~$ pico ~/.Sig |
Type "Yours Sincerely" and make a save.
Having random signatures in your posting in bbs
Occassionally when you look at other's signatures, you might realise that their signatures appear randomly. You may wonder where are all these signatures are being stored and how are they being picked up by tin.
To store the random signatures, you need to create a folder and specify it in the tinrc first. For example, I created a folder named "random" and I have put all my random signatures there. Next, I pressed "shift-M" in the group level and look up for the option named "Create signature from path/command".
ie:
| Create signature from path/command � : � /home/stu99/lukmengs/random |
"/home/stu99/lukmengs/random" is the location of where I put my random signatures in this example.
Go to the articles you want to follow-up and press a "f" will do. Please take note to save your articles when doing so. Otherwise nothing you type earlier on will be saved and posted. To post a follow-up without quoting, press a "F".
Follow-up with followup quotes in bbs
The default followup quotes in bbs looks like the below:
| Phoenix Hawk <[email protected]> wrote: |
"Phoenix Hawk <[email protected]>" is the author of the article that I followed in this example.
Now I want to make it sound more interesting like the below:
|
While Lifeless Bodoh was reading the bbs,
Phoenix Hawk <[email protected]> wrote: |
What I should is to configure the tinrc by pressing "shift-M" in the group level and lookup for the option "Quote line when following up" and change it to the below and save the configuration.
ie:
| Quote line when following up � � : � � While Lifeless Bodoh was reading bbs,\n %F wrote: |
You can also do a change in quote marks by looking for the option "Characters used as quote-marks" and changed it like the above.
Posting chinese characters in bbs
I regret to say that I do not know of any telnet clients that can help me to type chinese characters. However if you have a linux-setup, you can always use the cx-term to view chinese characters.
What I did in windows environment is to use the nj-communicator to view and to use notepad to edit chinese characters. =p BUT posting of chinese characters can still fail if MIME encoding in the news message is set to 7 bit. (By default, it is set to 7 bit if I'm not wrong.) To post Chinese characters, you need to set it to 8 bit or quote-printable.
ie: press "shift-M" in the group level and lookup for the option and changed it to the below:
| MIME encoding in news messages � � : � � 8bit |
Cross-posting in this context means that you want your article to apear in more than one folder. Take note that there can only be 1 followup folder for this article. For example, I want to post an article in SoC.rec.moods, SoC.entertainment and SoC.others, I specify SoC.others as the followup folder here.
In order for you to cross-post more easily, you can press "shift-M" in the group level and go to the "Show empty Followup-To in editor" and turn it on. After doing so, fill in the folders you want to cross-post in the Newsgroup field. Do take note that the maximum numbers of cross-posting is 3.
ie:
|
From: Lifeless Bodoh <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: to Phoenich Newsgroups: SoC.test,SoC.rec.moods Followup-To: SoC.test References: <9c6eg8$d7h$1@SoC> <9c6g2p$dh7$2@SoC> Organization:
|
Sometimes when we see an interesting article, we might want to do a reposting of it to other folder so that the audience in the other folder can read it. The below is an example of a joke in humour folder being reposted to the moods folder.
|
Lifeless Bodoh <[email protected]>
Newsgroups: SoC.rec.moods bwahahahhahahahahhah =D [ This is a repost of the following article: ] [ From: Useless <[email protected]> ] [ Subject: Instructions for Microsoft's TV Dinner ] [ Newsgroups: SoC.rec.humour ] [ Message-ID: <9c4grc$c54$2@SoC> ] |
To achieve this, go to the article that you wish to repost, press a "x"-->"a"-->"e", type whatever you want, save and lastly post.
Posting postponed articles in bbs
There are a number of ways that I know of to post postponed articles in bbs. You can post them through command lines or with the help of tin.
1. Posting postponed articles by command lines
In the command lines, type "bbs -o". Tin will post your postponed articles and exit bbs for you.
2. Posting postponed articles by Ctrl-O
In the group level, press "Ctrl-V" to unblock the system followed by the "Ctrl-O". The tin will prompt you to confirm the posting and just press a "y" to confirm it will do.
3. Posting postponed articles by Shift-O
In the group level, press "Shift-O" and again, tin will prompt you to confirm the posting.
To mail an article to the author instead of following up, press "r" at the article level. To mail an article to others, press "m" and supply the email address.
Deleting your own articles in bbs
You can only delete your own articles in bbs. Go to your own articles in the article level, press "shift-d"-->"d" and a "d" to delete it.
To remove bogus folders, refer to #sub for details.
Changing your nick and organisation in bbs
Actually, this has little to do with tin. This has more relevant to the Unix environment itself. To change the nick or organisation or both, you need to have a file named ".profile" in your home directory.
The below is an example of how organisation and nick to be set in the ".profile".
|
export NAME='James Bond'
export ORGANIZATION='007' |
The above means that your variables NAME and ORGANIZATION will be changed to James Bond and 007 respectively. However, do take note that this will not affect your name in pine.
Do take extra care with the spacing and the case here.
For those who prefer Vi/Vim, Emacs, .... to be your editor when posting an article, you can do the below:
| export EDITOR=vim |
The above means that the default EDITOR that any other program will export will be Vim. Note that the "vim" can be replace with any other editors available on the unix host that you are using. =)
For newbies, PLEASE use the below instead.
| export EDITOR=pico |
After doing so, do a ". ~/.profile" so as to activate the .profile.