ACITS Pine - Answers

Using Pine as a news reader

Configuring Pine for reading news

  • In the main menu, choose the 'S' option for 'Setup', by typing in 'S' or moving the cursor to highlight the Setup menu choice and pressing return.
  • Type 'C', for config, and press return to get the Config setup menu.
  • In the setup menu, choose 'nntp-server' by moving the cursor to highlight this line and pressing return.
  • Type in 'A', for 'Add'.
  • In the dialog box that opens, type: newshost.cc.utexas.edu and press return.
  • Type 'E', to exit the Setup menu.
  • Type 'Q', to quit Pine. You must quit and restart Pine so that the new configuration can be initialized.

Subscribing to newsgroups

  • At the main menu, choose the 'L' option for 'Folder List', by typing in 'S', or moving the cursor to highlight the Folder List menu and pressing return.
  • Use the down arrow key to move to the menu under 'News Collection' and select the 'Expanded List' item. It will be empty, unless you've read News on this computer system before this.
  • To subscribe, type 'A' for 'Add'. You'll be prompted for a newsgroup name. If you know the name of a group you want to subscribe to, type it in and press return. If you don't know the name, you can get a list of ALL available newsgroups by typing ^T. If you want to search a news hierarchy (e.g. "rec.music" for all groups under that hierarchy), you can type that in and press return.
  • A list of newsgroups will appear. You can move through this list by using the arrow keys. When you find a group to subscribe to, type 'S'. You'll be asked if you really want to subscribe to this group. Press return to complete the subscription, or ^C to cancel the subscription. You can then view the list again, and subscribe to more groups if you choose.
  • To exit the subscription list, type 'E'.
At this point, you can use Pine to read and respond to newsgroups just like you read mail messages -- using the same commands for reading, replying, and so on. To move from one newsgroup to the next from within the newsgroup, press the TAB key. For a complete list of subscribed-to newsgroups, type 'L'. To return to the main Pine menu, type 'M'.

Pine : Introduction Steps Answers

27 August 97
ACITS at UT Austin
Comments to: remark@cc.utexas.edu