  The slrn FAQ
  John E. Davis <davis@space.mit.edu>
  Matthias Friedrich <matt@mafr.de>
  Thomas Schultz <tststs@gmx.de>
  Version 0.9.8.0

  Frequently asked questions about the slrn newsreader.
  ______________________________________________________________________

  Table of Contents



  1. General questions about slrn
     1.1 What is slrn?
     1.2 Where can I download slrn?
     1.3 Where is slrn's documentation?
     1.4 Are there any mailing lists and/or newsgroups about slrn?

  2. Configuration
     2.1 Is it possible to set my ``From'' header line for postings?
     2.2 How can I set my ``Message-ID'' header?
     2.3 How can I set the size of the article pager?
     2.4 What charset settings should I use under Windows?
     2.5 How can I use an external e-mail program for replies?
     2.6 The thread tree is not drawn properly. Why?
     2.7 Can I use the mouse with slrn?
     2.8 How can I rotate signatures in slrn?

  3. Usage
     3.1 What is a prefix argument?
     3.2 Treatment of read articles
        3.2.1 How can I never mark articles as read?
        3.2.2 How can I get slrn to show both read and unread articles?
        3.2.3 How can I retrieve read articles from the same thread?
        3.2.4 How can I retrieve other read articles?
        3.2.5 I want to see full threads as soon as they contain at least one unread article. Can slrn do this?
     3.3 Handling of binary postings
        3.3.1 How do I uudecode articles?
        3.3.2 What are the advantages of using uudeview?
        3.3.3 What about yEnc?
        3.3.4 Can I put multipart binary postings into one thread?
     3.4 How can I mark cross-posts as read in other groups as well?
     3.5 Why doesn't the `L' command work as advertised?
     3.6 How do I cross-post an article?
     3.7 How do I use the mouse in an XTerm to copy/paste?
     3.8 How can I sort the list of newsgroups?

  4. Scoring
     4.1 What is scoring?
     4.2 How can I killfile with Slrn?
     4.3 How do I set up slrn to read a score file?
     4.4 What is the format of an slrn score file?
     4.5 Where can I get a full description of slrn's regular expressions?
     4.6 How can I test whether my regular expressions do what I expect them to do?
     4.7 Is there an easy way to watch or kill threads / authors?
     4.8 Do I need to remove expired entries from my score file manually?
     4.9 How do I score on a specific subject, e.g., ``test'' messages?
     4.10 How do I score postings from a specific person?
     4.11 How do I score articles from a specific site?
     4.12 How do I score followups?
     4.13 Is it possible to score followups to my own postings?
     4.14 How do I kill cross posts from a specific group?
     4.15 How do I score all cross-posts?
     4.16 How do I make it so I read only posts from a specific person?
     4.17 How do I score articles that have no ``References'' line but whose ``Subject'' line starts with ``Re:''?
     4.18 How do I score subjects that contain only uppercase characters?
     4.19 How can I filter people without a realname?

  5. slrnpull
     5.1 What is slrnpull?
     5.2 Why can't I post when using slrnpull?
     5.3 How do I get a full list of newsgroups?

  6. I found a bug in slrn!!!
     6.1 slrn hangs infinitely when I press the delete key
     6.2 The bug I found is not listed here. What do I do now?
        6.2.1 Some additional notes for the advanced user

  7. About this document
     7.1 History


  ______________________________________________________________________

  1.  General questions about slrn

  1.1.  What is slrn?

  Slrn <http://slrn.sourceforge.net> (``slang read news'') is a Usenet
  newsreader that runs in text mode on various Unix and Unix-like
  operating systems (including Linux), Windows, OS/2, BeOS, MacOS X and
  VMS.

  It supports scoring rules to highlight, sort or kill articles to make
  reading news more efficient. Furthermore it is highly customizable,
  allows free key-bindings and can be extended using the slang macro
  language. Offline reading is possible using either slrnpull (shipped
  with slrn) or a local newsserver like leafnode or INN.



  1.2.  Where can I download slrn?


  The latest source distribution of slrn is available via HTTP from
  <http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/slrn/>. A list of mirrors as well
  as links to precompiled binaries can be found at
  <http://slrn.sourceforge.net/#sect_getslrn>.

  If you run Linux, your distribution probably contains a slrn package
  that might not offer the latest version, but is more or less ``ready
  to go''.

  Additional resources are available at slrn's official homepage
  <http://slrn.sourceforge.net>.



  1.3.  Where is slrn's documentation?


  The source distribution contains a lot of documentation; on Unix-like
  systems, it is likely to be installed somewhere in /usr/share/doc or
  /usr/doc.  It contains manpages (type man slrn at the command prompt),
  the Slrn Reference Manual (manual.txt) and several other useful
  resources like a sample slrnrc (configuration) file.

  If you are new to slrn, please make sure to read the file FIRST_STEPS.
  It should get you started.

  If you cannot find this documentation on your system, you can browse
  it online at http://slrn.sourceforge.net/docs/.



  1.4.  Are there any mailing lists and/or newsgroups about slrn?

  If you have general questions about slrn that are not covered by its
  documentation, please make use of the appropriate newsgroups or
  mailing list rather than writing to the maintainer directly:

  The appropriate newsgroup for questions about slrn is
  news.software.readers. There is also a German speaking equivalent
  (de.comm.software.newsreader).
  Slrn-user is a mailing list for discussion of the use, development and
  extension of slrn. You can subscribe to it through the web interface
  at <http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/slrn-user>.

  To keep track of slrn's development, simply subscribe to slrn-
  announce.  It is a low-traffic moderated list that informs you about
  new releases, important bugfixes or major changes to the website. The
  subscription address is
  <http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/slrn-announce>.  All
  announcements are also mailed to slrn-user, so there is no need to
  read both lists.


  2.  Configuration

  2.1.  Is it possible to set my ``From'' header line for postings?

  On (properly configured) Unix-like systems, slrn should be able to
  determine a valid 'From:' header line itself. However, you can also
  set one explicitly using the following variables in your slrnrc file:

  set realname "Your Real Name"
  set username "username"
  set hostname "your.host.name"



  This will cause slrn to generate a 'From:' header line of the form:

  From: Your Real Name <username@your.host.name>



  Note: It is possible that your system administrator disabled this
  feature to make sure everybody uses his or her correct name and
  address when posting. To find out whether this is the case, type slrn
  --version and look for strict_from in the feature list. If it is
  enabled (indicated by a plus sign), you cannot set your ``From''
  header line yourself.


  2.2.  How can I set my ``Message-ID'' header?


  First of all, slrn will only attempt to create the 'Message-ID' header
  line if it was not compiled with the --disable-gen-mid option (check
  gen_msgid in the output of slrn --version) and the generate_message_id
  config variable has not been set to 0.

  To create a valid Message-ID, slrn needs to know the fully qualified
  domain name (FQDN) of the host it is running on. In most cases, slrn
  can find it by querying the system. In case this does not work
  properly, you can alternatively set the domain (right-hand) part of
  your Message-IDs via the posting_host command. If you think you need
  this feature, please read the corresponding entry in the reference
  manual carefully.


  2.3.  How can I set the size of the article pager?


  Unless you ``zoom'' the article pager (using ``z''), slrn will split
  the screen and display some article headers at the top. By default, it
  gives about 75% of the lines to the article pager, but leaves at least
  four lines for the header overview. At runtime, you can change this
  using enlarge_article_window (bound to ``^'') and
  shrink_article_window (bound to ``CTRL-^'').

  There is no config variable you could use to make permanent changes to
  this; fortunately, it is very easy to set it using a simple slang
  macro. For example,

  define set_size_of_article_pager ()
  {
     set_article_window_size (int(SCREEN_HEIGHT*0.8));
  }
  !if (register_hook ("resize_screen_hook", "set_size_of_article_pager"))
    message ("Warning: Could not register set_size_of_article_pager" +
             " for resize_screen_hook");


  would give about 80% of the screen to the pager. If you want the
  header overview to have a fixed size, you can use an argument like
  SCREEN_HEIGHT-10 instead, which would make it 6 lines high (after the
  command, the article pager has SCREEN_HEIGHT-10 lines; 4 lines are
  used by status bars).


  2.4.  What charset settings should I use under Windows?

  As on any other operating system, this depends on the character set
  your terminal uses. When using slrn on Windows, two problems connected
  with character sets frequently appear:


  1. The terminal may not use the charset used in the Usenet postings
     you are trying to read. In this case, you depend on slrn to convert
     between the two character sets to display certain (8bit) characters
     correctly. You can enable this by setting the config variable
     charset to the appropriate value (all supported charsets are listed
     in the reference manual), for example:

     set charset "ibm850"



  2. Your editor may use a different charset than your terminal. This is
     often the case with GUI editors that have their own window, e.g.
     gvim. In this case, you may want slrn to convert charsets when
     displaying messages, but not when calling the editor on them, so
     you should put a line like this into your slrnrc file:

     set editor_uses_mime_charset 1


  Note that this only works correctly if your editor uses the charset
  declared for outgoing postings (in the variable mime_charset). Fortu-
  nately, this is usually the case with GUI editors on Windows.

  Note: slrn's recoding abilities are currently restricted and rather
  rudimentary. This will hopefully improve as soon as slang 2.0 is out
  and includes Unicode support.


  2.5.  How can I use an external e-mail program for replies?


  You can use the config variable mail_editor_command for this. The
  following example will use mutt as an external e-mail program for
  replies:


  set mail_editor_command "/usr/bin/mutt -H '%s'"
  set mail_editor_is_mua 1


  Setting mail_editor_is_mua to 1 tells slrn not to try and send any e-
  mail, because the external program used as the e-mail editor will han-
  dle this itself.


  2.6.  The thread tree is not drawn properly. Why?



  There are a couple of reasons for this. The most simple may be that
  the font that you are using does not support line drawing characters.
  Simply switching fonts to a dec-vt220 compatible font may solve the
  problem. This is usually the case with Windows telnet applications.

  If you see strings like ``mq>'' or ``tq>'' instead of a thread tree
  make sure that your terminal or terminal emulator supports vt100
  escape sequences. This is the case for most emulators like the Linux
  console, NetBSD's wscons, xterm, rxvt and others. Set the TERM
  environment variable to vt100 and start slrn to see if the thread is
  drawn correctly. If this isn't the case, you have to fix your
  termcap/terminfo file. For termcap based systems, the ``ac'', ``as''
  and ``ae'' capabilities have to be set correctly. On terminfo based
  systems, the ``acsc'', ``smacs'' and ``rmacs'' capabilities need
  adjustment.

  If you can't solve the problem that way because your terminal setup or
  your terminal emulator is severely broken, consider setting

  set simulate_graphic_chars 1


  in your slrnrc file. It restricts slrn to plain ASCII characters for
  drawing the tree.

  A major drawback of the vt100 solution is, that vt100 terminals can't
  display colors. Since most terminal emulators support ANSI colors, you
  could start slrn with the ``-C'' command line switch or use the
  following configuration command to force the use of colors:


  set use_color 1



  But if you want to use colors with other programs as well, you need a
  real solution to this problem. Try the following:

  Find a $TERM setting that supports line drawing characters like the
  vt100 or vt220. Then create a new termcap entry based on that terminal
  with additional color capabilities and save it to ~/.termcap.  It
  might look like this:

  myterm:\
          :Co#8:NC#3:pa#64:\
          :AB=\E[4%dm:AF=\E[3%dm:op=\E[m:\
          :mb=\E[5m:md=\E[1m:me=\E[0m:mk=\E[8m:mr=\E[7m:\
          :cl=\E[H\E[J:vi=\E[?25l:ve=\E[?25h:\
          :tc=vt100:



  On some systems, you can then set $TERM to 'myterm' and the settings
  apply. On others, you need to do something like this:

  TERMCAP=$HOME/.termcap
  export TERMCAP
  eval `tset -s myterm`



  2.7.  Can I use the mouse with slrn?

  xterm (and some compatible terminal emulation programs) have a feature
  called ``mouse reporting'' that slrn can turn on to support using the
  mouse. To enable this whenever the terminal offers it, put

  set mouse 1


  into your slrnrc file. To force the mouse to be used, startup slrn
  using the -m command line option - of course, this will not have the
  desired effect if your terminal really does not have this feature ;-)

  If you want to know what exactly you can do with the mouse, please see
  the entry on the variable mouse in the reference manual.


  2.8.  How can I rotate signatures in slrn?

  There are different ways to do this - chose one:

  The easiest way is probably to call a sig rotation program in the
  post_editor_command in your slrnrc file. In the following example, the
  program fortune is called and its output gets written to ~/.signature.
  After that, the editor jed is called:

  set post_editor_command "fortune -s > ~/.signature; jed '%s' -g %d -tmp"



  If you want to chose the signature depending on the group you are
  posting to, you can set the config variable signature using a macro;
  in the following example, .signature.german gets selected for all
  newsgroups in de.* and .signature.english gets selected for any other
  group. Call this macro from post_hook and article_mode_hook to switch
  the signature automatically.


  define set_signature ()
  {
    variable signature_file = ".signature.english";
    if (0 == strncmp (current_newsgroup(), "de.", 3))
      signature_file = ".signature.german";
    set_string_variable ("signature", signature_file);
  }



  If you want more sophisticated per-group settings, I recommend the
  macro identity.sl from Emanuele Bassi's slrn page.
  <http://digilander.libero.it/ebassi/slrn.html#macros>

  Note: slrn itself does not have an option to execute a program and use
  its output as the signature. Such an option would require piping,
  which is not available on all platforms. If you're on a Unix-like
  system and still want to use pipes, you can make ~/.signature a named
  pipe and attach a daemon sig randomizer to it. Various programs that
  do this are available on the net - one example is the program autosig
  <http://www.irendi.com/~msharpe/>.


  3.  Usage

  3.1.  What is a prefix argument?


  Many key-bindings accept prefix arguments. A prefix argument is a
  number that is generated prior to a key sequence and is used as a way
  of controlling the behavior of that key sequence. It is generated by
  pressing the ``ESC'' key and then pressing the keys that correspond to
  the number. For example, to generate a prefix argument of 314, simply
  press the 4 keys: ``ESC 3 1 4''.

  Some functions use such arguments as repeat factors. That is, the
  function bound to the key sequence that they modify will be repeated
  the number of times specified by the prefix argument.

  Other functions may simply use it as a way of slightly modifying the
  behavior of the function. For example, if 1 is used as a prefix
  argument for the ``followup'' function, the original article's headers
  will be included in the followup message; if 2 is used, the article
  also does not get modified (i.e. slrn does not insert quoting
  characters and neither attaches nor strips signatures). Without a
  prefix argument, you get a ``regular'' followup without the original
  article's headers.


  3.2.  Treatment of read articles

  By default, slrn does not display articles that were previously marked
  as read. In most cases, this makes entering groups a lot faster,
  especially as slrn currently does not cache the headers locally and
  thus would have to download all the header information from the server
  again, each time you enter a group.

  At first, most people who are used to a newsreader that always shows
  all available messages are often disappointed by this. After some
  time, they might find that slrn's default way of doing things allows
  them to read their news efficiently, because it keeps their mind on
  articles they did not yet deal with.

  However, others still prefer to see everything and even if you don't,
  you still need to re-read an old article now and then. The following
  questions deal with these cases:


  3.2.1.  How can I never mark articles as read?

  There is an option for it - you just need to set
  auto_mark_article_as_read to 0 in your slrnrc file.

  In most cases, you will find that this is not what you really wanted
  to do, as it will make it difficult to find the ``new'' articles (i.e.
  the ones you did not yet read), so you might want to consider the
  answers to the following questions.


  3.2.2.  How can I get slrn to show both read and unread articles?

  If you want to see all articles in a group (read and unread ones),
  simply set a ``prefix argument'' before entering a newsgroup. Using
  the default bindings, you can do this by pressing ESC 1 RETURN in
  group mode. There are variations of this; the online help or the
  manual will tell you more about them.

  If you always want to enter groups that way, pressing three keys
  instead of one is annoying. You can avoid this using a special
  keybinding in your slrnrc file. Here is an example:



               setkey group "set_prefix_argument(4); () = select_group();" " "



  With this line, pressing SPACE in group mode will enter the selected
  group with four as the prefix argument.

  However, you might find it sufficient to make use of the following
  ways to display specific articles that were previously marked as read:


  3.2.3.  How can I retrieve read articles from the same thread?

  If you want to read the ``parent'' of the article you are currently
  reading (e.g. because the author did not quote enough material to
  understand his message), ESC p will attempt to find it, using the
  ``References'' header line.

  It is also possible to find all ``children'' of a given article using
  ESC Ctrl-P (note that this does not work with all servers) and, using
  a recursive combination of both, to reconstruct the entire thread
  tree. This is done by pressing either ESC 1 ESC p or ESC 2 ESC p - the
  second alternative can be much faster, but the first is more likely to
  find all articles even if some articles contain incomplete
  ``References''.


  3.2.4.  How can I retrieve other read articles?

  You can locate any article if it is available on your server and you
  know its Message-Id. Pressing ESC l will produce the necessary prompt.


  3.2.5.  I want to see full threads as soon as they contain at least
  one unread article. Can slrn  do this?

  This is currently not implemented, although it should be possible to
  achieve such an effect using a macro.

  For many, this behaviour would be a useful compromise between the two
  extremes of seeing all messages and seeing unread ones only, so this
  feature might be added in a future version of slrn.


  3.3.  Handling of binary postings

  slrn is primarily designed as a newsreader (i.e. for reading and
  processing text messages); it is not a dedicated agent for downloading
  and decoding binary postings from Usenet. However, there is some basic
  functionality for decoding binary postings and there are some ways to
  make handling them a bit more convenient:



  3.3.1.  How do I uudecode articles?


  Fortunately, the easiest way is also the most efficient. Basically
  this involves using the `#' key to numerically tag articles that you
  want to decode and then the `:' key to start the decode process. The
  only restriction is that multi-part uuencoded articles must be tagged
  in their proper order (see the next question if you think this is too
  much trouble). There is no need to uudecode one article at a time.
  Simply mark everything that you would like to decode and then press
  `:'. Here is an actual example taken from
  alt.binaries.pictures.fractals:



               -    9:[Mike In Indy]    Kaboom! - kaboom.gif (0/1)
               - 3078:[Mike In Indy]    Kaboom! - kaboom.gif (1/1)
               -   23:[Gumbycat    ]    lucifer.gif  (0/7)
               -  433:[Gumbycat    ]    lucifer.gif -  for Halloween  (5/7)
               -  433:[Gumbycat    ]    lucifer.gif  -  for Halloween (3/7)
               -  433:[Gumbycat    ]    lucifer.gif  -  for Halloween (4/7)
               -  433:[Gumbycat    ]    lucifer.gif  -  for Halloween (6/7)
               -  244:[Gumbycat    ]    lucifer.gif  -  for Halloween (7/7)
               -  434:[Gumbycat    ]    lucifer.gif  - for Halloween (1/7)
               -  433:[Gumbycat    ]    lucifer.gif - for Halloween (2/7)
               -   16:[Paul Carlson]    My Halloween Fractal - devil.gif (0/1)
               - 4310:[Paul Carlson]    My Halloween Fractal - devil.gif (1/1)



  As you can see, 3 files have been posted: kaboom.gif, lucifer.gif, and
  devil.gif (At the time of this writing, it is Halloween weekend).
  Both kaboom.gif and devel.gif are single part files whereas
  lucifer.gif is a seven part series. Since lucifer.gif is displayed out
  of order, care must be exercised when tagging it (slrn will sort
  threads by subject and in this case the poster used an inconsistent
  subject format--- usually, sorting will result in the correct
  ordering). Assuming that we wish to decode these three gif images, the
  `#' key will be used to tag them. The result of using the `#' key is
  shown below:



               -     9:[Mike In Indy]    Kaboom! - kaboom.gif (0/1)
               1- 3078:[Mike In Indy]    Kaboom! - kaboom.gif (1/1)
               -    23:[Gumbycat    ]    lucifer.gif  (0/7)
               6-  433:[Gumbycat    ]    lucifer.gif -  for Halloween  (5/7)
               4-  433:[Gumbycat    ]    lucifer.gif  -  for Halloween (3/7)
               5-  433:[Gumbycat    ]    lucifer.gif  -  for Halloween (4/7)
               7-  433:[Gumbycat    ]    lucifer.gif  -  for Halloween (6/7)
               8-  244:[Gumbycat    ]    lucifer.gif  -  for Halloween (7/7)
               2-  434:[Gumbycat    ]    lucifer.gif  - for Halloween (1/7)
               3-  433:[Gumbycat    ]    lucifer.gif - for Halloween (2/7)
               -    16:[Paul Carlson]    My Halloween Fractal - devil.gif (0/1)
               9- 4310:[Paul Carlson]    My Halloween Fractal - devil.gif (1/1)



  Now 9 headers have been numerically tagged. To decode these, simply
  press the `:' key. slrn will prompt for a filename to save the
  articles to and after saving, it will prompt to go ahead and decode.
  The decoded files will be placed in the directory specified by the
  `decode_directory' variable that one can set in the slrnrc file.  The
  end result is that after tagging with the `#' key, one presses `:' and
  hits return twice. To un-tag articles, press `ESC #'.


  3.3.2.  What are the advantages of using uudeview?

  slrn can be linked against the uudeview library; in this case, it will
  use the library functions to decode uuencoded articles. Unlike slrn's
  internal routines, uudeview is usually able to decode multipart
  messages even if you did not tag them in the correct order. Another
  advantage of (current versions of) uudeview is that it supports yEnc
  (see next question for details). A disadvantage is that it needs a lot
  more memory for decoding than slrn.

  I got reports that uudeview decoded files for which slrn's code failed
  (and vice versa), so if you run into problems with a particular binary
  posting, it might be worth trying both - to allow this, there is the
  config variable use_uudeview which can be set to zero in case you have
  uudeview support compiled in, but want to use the builtin code
  nonetheless.

  To link against uudeview, you need to have the library installed on
  your system; one way to get it is its homepage at
  <http://www.fpx.de/fp/Software/UUDeview/>. You also need to pass
  --with-uudeview to the configure script when building slrn (on Unix-
  like systems). If you did not compile your copy of slrn yourself, you
  can still find out whether it has uudeview support by looking for a
  `+' sign in front of ``uudeview'' in the output of slrn --version.


  3.3.3.  What about yEnc?

  yEnc <http://www.yenc.org/> is a way to encode binaries that makes use
  of 8bit characters, thus creating less overhead than the traditional
  uuencode and base64 methods. For this reason, it becomes increasingly
  popular in certain binary groups. slrn does not have builtin support
  for yEnc: One reason for this is that I do not need this feature
  myself and so far, no patches for it have been contributed; besides,
  yEnc is still under development and still has some drawbacks which I'd
  like to see solved first. However, there already are two ways to
  decode such messages:

  Prior to 0.9.7.4, slrn would corrupt some yEnc-encoded postings (by
  removing backspace-letter combinations traditionally used for
  formatting text messages). As this code has now been removed, you can
  pipe yEnc-encoded messages to external decoding programs from slrn; if
  you want to decode them from within slrn, you can link against a
  current version of uudeview, which now also supports yEnc (see
  previous question for details on this). However, uudeview sometimes
  generates ``no data found'' error messages when dealing with yEnc-
  encoded postings (even if it does decode them correctly); if you want
  to avoid them, you need at least version 0.9.8.0 of slrn, which simply
  ignores them.


  3.3.4.  Can I put multipart binary postings into one thread?

  That option has been added in slrn 0.9.7.1. To use it, you need to
  define a macro that can compare two subjects and tell slrn whether or
  not they should be put into the same thread. An implementation of such
  a macro that should work for most cases and can serve as a starting
  point for your own experiments can be found in macros/multipart.sl in
  the source distribution.



  3.4.  How can I mark cross-posts as read in other groups as well?


  For slrn to mark an article as read in more than one group, it needs
  information about what groups the article was cross-posted to. This
  information is provided by the Xref header. Not all servers provide
  this header so this feature will not work with those servers.

  Now suppose that your server provides the Xref header as one of the
  headers of the article and at the same time, provides support for the
  NOV database (via the XOVER NNTP command). In this case, unless the
  server has been configured to provide the Xref header as part of the
  NOV database, slrn will not be able to get the header without
  accessing the article. Unfortunately, Xref is optional under NOV so
  many systems do not automatically provide it even though it is one of
  the recommended headers.

  To summarize, make sure that your server provides the Xref header AND
  if it supports NOV, make sure that the Xref header is part of the NOV
  database.



  3.5.  Why doesn't the `L' command work as advertised?


  Capital ``L'' lists all un-subscribed groups that slrn knows about.
  Slrn gets this information through one of three sources. It tries the
  following in order and stops when one is successful:


  1. From the server via the active file. It only does this if the line
     ``set read_active 1'' is in your slrnrc file. By default, slrn does
     not read the active file.

  2. By querying the server using the LIST ACTIVE NNTP command with a
     wildmat argument. Please note that not all servers support this
     kind of query.

  3. From the groups listed in your newsrc file. In that case, the ``L''
     command will only list unsubscribed groups that are present in this
     file.

  The last one always succeeds with results that may be less than
  desirable. If you have a fast network connection to your server,
  simply put


          set read_active 1



  in your slrnrc file. If you do not want slrn to read the active file
  because your connection is slow, see whether or not your server
  supports LIST ACTIVE with a wildmat argument. As a last resort, try to
  keep a full list of newsgroups in your newsrc file.



  3.6.  How do I cross-post an article?


  There are two ways:

  1. When slrn prompts for a newsgroup, simply specify a comma-separated
     list of newsgroups. Do not use spaces!
  2. Edit the ``Newsgroups'' header line when editing the message.
     Again, the list of newsgroups must be comma separated with no
     whitespace.  Also make sure that you do not wrap this line.



  3.7.  How do I use the mouse in an XTerm to copy/paste?

  If mouse reporting is turned on (via the -m command line switch or the
  mouse config variable), you need to hold down the shift key to mark
  text for copy/paste.


  3.8.  How can I sort the list of newsgroups?

  Depending on what exactly you want to do, there are different
  possibilities: First of all, you can use the interactive move_group
  command (by default bound to m) to move a single newsgroup to a
  different position. Before doing this, I recommend you display all
  subscribed groups (using toggle_hidden, usually bound to l, if
  necessary) so you won't be surprised by the result.

  However, if you want to sort all groups alphabetically, you don't have
  to do this manually. slrn comes with a simple macro that does the job
  for you (gsort.sl) and you can find a more sophisticated one on the
  macro page of J.B. Nicholson-Owens. <http://forestfield.org/slrn/>

  On Unix-like systems, you can also use the sort command to sort your
  newsrc file (do this while slrn is not running). For example, if you
  use .jnewsrc as your newsrc file:

  sort .jnewsrc > .jnewsrc-sorted
  mv .jnewsrc-sorted .jnewsrc


  Note: Simply doing sort -o .jnewsrc .jnewsrc may or may not work
  depending on your version of sort.


  4.  Scoring

  4.1.  What is scoring?


  Scoring is a method to give articles a score based on user defined
  rules. The idea behind this is to give articles with a high score a
  higher priority while articles with a low score (less than zero) are
  marked as read.

  When entering a group, all articles are given a score of ``0''. Then
  the list of scoring rules, the ``score file'', is applied to each
  article.  The score file might give articles from ``John Doe'' a
  higher score, while articles with the word ``Gnus'' in their subjects
  get a negative score.

  In the end, threads with high-score articles appear at the top of your
  screen and can be read before other, possibly less interesting,
  articles.



  4.2.  How can I killfile with Slrn?


  Slrn has no killfile. The same effect can be achieved with its score
  file, however. Assigning a particularly low score will do the trick:
  [news.software.readers]
          Score: =-9999   % I'm not interested in articles on gnus
          Subject: gnus



  In this example, all postings in news.software.readers that have the
  substring ``gnus'' in their subjects are assigned a negative score.
  The equal sign before the score value tells slrn to assign the score
  -9999 and to skip all other tests for the affected article; otherwise,
  the score would be added to the score value of all previous matching
  rules and subsequent rules could increase the score again.

  If the score of an article is equal to or less than kill_score (which
  happens to be -9999 if you didn't change it), the article does not
  even get displayed, so the above scoring rule effectively killfiles
  all articles that have ``gnus'' in their subject line.


  4.3.  How do I set up slrn to read a score file?


  In order for slrn to read a score file, it must know the name of the
  score file.  This is specified by putting the appropriate line in your
  slrnrc file.  For example, if the name of the score file is ``Score''
  and it is located in the News subdirectory, then add the line:

  set scorefile "News/Score"


  to your slrnrc file.



  4.4.  What is the format of an slrn score file?

  The format of slrn's score files is described in the file score.txt
  which is part of the documentation that comes with the source package.
  That file also contains some examples.


  4.5.  Where can I get a full description of slrn's regular expres-
  sions?


  slrn makes use of the regexp engine built into the slang programmer's
  library.  Thus, a full description of the regexp syntax that can be
  used in slrn's scorefiles can be found in the documentation of slang.
  In version 1.4.4, this is chapter 18 of the file slang.txt (also
  available online
  <http://space.mit.edu/~davis/slang/doc/html/slang-18.html>). Please
  note that in slrn, the default is \C (case insensitive), not \c.


  4.6.  How can I test whether my regular expressions do what I expect
  them to do?

  The grep-like utility rgrep that comes with the editor jed uses the
  same regexp engine as slrn, so you can use it. Alternatively, Matthias
  Friedrich wrote a small program that can be used to make such tests.
  He posted the source to de.comm.software.newsreader (Message-ID is
  <slrn9u07di.93n.matt@endeavour.mafr.de>); you can get the article from
  google groups
  <http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=slrn9u07di.93n.matt@endeavour.mafr.de&output=gplain>.


  4.7.  Is there an easy way to watch or kill threads / authors?

  Editing the scorefile and adding entries manually can become quite
  time consuming if you want to score on threads or authors regularly.
  The interactive command create_score (default binding is 'K' in
  article mode) makes it easy to create a new scorefile entry based on
  the currently selected article.

  If you want to watch or kill subthreads via a single keystroke, you
  may like the ``one-key scoring macro'' that's available from the macro
  section <http://slrn.sourceforge.net/macros/> of slrn's homepage.


  4.8.  Do I need to remove expired entries from my score file manually?

  Using the Expires: keyword, you can specify that a certain scoring
  rule should only be valid until a given date. After that, slrn ignores
  it and will warn you on startup, but does not remove the entry from
  the score file. If you often use this keyword, expired entries will
  clutter up your scorefile and make it difficult to read.

  Fortunately, Felix Schueller wrote a perl script called cleanscore
  that can remove expired entries from your score file automatically for
  you. On Unix-like systems, it can even be called as a cron job, so you
  don't need to worry about expired entries at all. cleanscore is
  included in the contrib directory of slrn's source distribution and
  has its own web page <http://slrn.sourceforge.net/cleanscore/>.


  4.9.  How do I score on a specific subject, e.g., ``test'' messages?


  The most simple version is

  Score: -9999
  Subject: test



  This matches all subjects which contain the substring ``test'' case
  insensitively. The above matches ``test'', ``TEST'',
  ``teSt'',``Kerneltest'', ``protesting'', etc.

  In order to limit this to all subjects containing the word ``test''
  rather than the substring use this:


  Score: -9999
  Subject: \<test\>



  The following will score postings which subject is exactly ``test'':


  Score: -9999
  Subject: ^test$



  Finally, a score entry that filters all test-postings to non-test
  groups:



  [~*.test]
          Score: -9999
          Subject: ^test$



  4.10.  How do I score postings from a specific person?


  The following rule


  Score: -9999
  From: name@who\.knows\.where



  assigns a score of -9999 to the person with the mail address
  ``name@who.knows.where''.



  4.11.  How do I score articles from a specific site?



  Score: -9999
  From: @who\.knows\.where



  will give a score of -9999 to a From line that contains
  ``@who.knows.where''. An alternative would be to score on the Message-
  ID header field.



  4.12.  How do I score followups?


  We're assuming that a followup contains a subject starting with
  ``Re:'' and/or has a references header.  To assign a score of -9999 to
  such an article use:


  Score:: -9999
  Subject: ^Re:
  References: .



  Note the use of the double colon following the score keyword. This
  indicates that the score is an OR type expression. This means that the
  above score will pick out articles with subjects that begin with `Re:'
  OR have a references line (OR both).

  To score articles that have both a subject starting with ``Re:'' and a
  ``References'' header, use the single colon form:


  Score: -9999
  Subject: ^Re:
  References: .

  Single colon forms are AND expressions.


  4.13.  Is it possible to score followups to my own postings?

  Scoring followups to your own postings is quite easy if slrn generates
  the Message-IDs of your articles (see the question on ``generating
  Message-IDs'' for details). In this case, all you have to do is
  looking for username@your.hosts.fqdn in the `References:' header line.
  Of course, you need to replace username and your.hosts.fqdn with the
  strings that are correct for your setup - if in doubt, look at the
  Message-ID of one of your own articles to find out.


  Score: 1000
  References: username@your\.hosts\.fqdn>



  Note that this will catch articles that reference one of your articles
  directly or indirectly (e.g. a followup to a followup to your
  posting). If you only want to score direct followups, make sure to
  check the last ID in the `References:' header only (note the trailing
  dollar sign):


  Score: 1000
  References: username@your\.hosts\.fqdn>$



  4.14.  How do I kill cross posts from a specific group?


  You have two choices: either use the ``Xref'' header or the
  ``Newsgroups'' header. If possible, you should avoid the
  ``Newsgroups'' header in your score files, as it is usually not
  included in the NOV (news overview) data, so retrieving it requires
  extra server communication that may slow down scoring (and thus
  entering groups) significantly. So if your server provides ``Xref''
  headers, use them.

  Assume that you want to score any article that was cross-posted to an
  ``astrology'' newsgroup. Then use one of the following forms:


  Score: -9999
  Xref: astrology

  Score: -9999
  Newsgroups: astrology



  To say it again, the latter version is usually much slower.



  4.15.  How do I score all cross-posts?


  Like the previous answer you have two choices: to use the ``Xref''
  header (preferred) or the ``Newsgroups'' header. The first choice uses
  the fact that a cross-posted article will have two colons in the
  ``Xref'' header field. So, use a score of the form:
  Score: -9999
  Xref: :.*:



  If you do not have the option of using the ``Xref'' header, use:


  Score: -9999
  Newsgroups: ,



  However, you may want to tolerate cross-posts if a Followup-To header
  is set. The following rule scores articles that are cross-posted into
  many groups (e.g. more than 2) and have no Followup-To header (note
  that this rule is ``expensive'', as usually neither Newsgroups nor
  Followup-To are included in the NOV data).


  Score: -9999
          Newsgroups: ,.*,
          ~Followup-To: .



  4.16.  How do I make it so I read only  posts from a specific person?


  The answer is simple: kill posts by everyone else. Assume that you
  want to read only posts by someone whose From line contains:
  ``someone@i.like''.  Then use a score of the form:


  Score: -9999
  ~From: someone@i\.like



  Note the use of the NOT indicator (~).



  4.17.  How do I score articles that have no ``References'' line but
  whose ``Subject'' line starts with ``Re:''?


  Define a score based on the ``References'' header and the ``Subject''
  headers, e.g.,


  Score: -9999
  ~References: .
  Subject: ^Re:



  Here the ``References'' line simply says that the article must not
  have a ``References'' header. The subject header uses a regular
  expression that says ``Re:'' must occur at the beginning of the
  subject. This will match the strings "Re:", "re:", "rE:", and "RE:".
  To match only "Re:", use the regular expression



  Subject: ^\cRe:



  Here, ``\c'' turns on case-sensitivity.  To turn it off (which is the
  default), use ``\C''.



  4.18.  How do I score subjects that contain only uppercase characters?


  Use something like:


  Score: -9999
  ~Subject: \c[a-z]



  This will assign a score of -9999 to any article whose subject header
  does not contain a lowercase character. If you also want to kill
  followups to such articles use:


  Score: -9999
  Subject: ^Re: \c[^a-z]*$
  ~Subject: ^Re: *



  The last one says that the article will be killed if the subject
  satisfies the two conditions:


  1. It begins with "Re: " and the rest of the line does not contain a
     lowercase character.

  2. It does not begin with "Re: ", followed by blanks only.

  The last constraint is necessary to avoid killing articles that are
  followups to articles with an empty subject line.  Of course, one
  might want to kill such articles as well.


  4.19.  How can I filter people without a realname?


  Some people dislike posters who don't post under their full real name.
  Of course, slrn has no way of knowing whether a given name is a real
  name or not; however, a name that does not contain a space is most
  probably not a full real name, so a commonly used rule is to check for
  the 'From:' header to contain at least two spaces (one inside the name
  and one between the name and the address), separated by non-blank
  characters:


  [*]
  Score: -9999
  ~From: [ ]+[^ ]+[ ]+



  5.  slrnpull

  5.1.  What is slrnpull?

  slrnpull is a program that pulls a small newsfeed from an NNTP server
  and saves it to a local spool. slrn can subsequently read from this
  spool without needing to contact the server, so you can use both
  programs together to read your news offline (e.g. because you pay for
  your Internet connection by the second).

  Since version 0.9.8.0, slrnpull optionally allows you to pull only the
  article headers first, mark those you are interested in for download
  inside of slrn and get only the marked article bodies later. This can
  reduce download cost and disk space for groups in which you only want
  to read a small percentage of all articles. If you are interested in
  this functionality, please read slrnpull/README.offline.


  5.2.  Why can't I post when using slrnpull?


  In order to post an article via slrnpull, slrn needs to place the
  article in slrnpull's out.going directory. Two things are necessary
  for this to happen:

  First of all, slrn must know that you are using the slrnpull out.going
  directory for posts. Make sure the line


  set use_slrnpull 1



  is in your slrnrc file. This indicates to slrn that the news spool is
  an slrnpull news spool.

  The second point is, you must have write permission to the out.going
  directory in order for slrn to place your article in that directory.
  The permissions may be changed via the Unix command:


  chmod ugo+rwxt out.going



  Do not put this in your slrnrc file!



  5.3.  How do I get a full list of newsgroups?


  You will have to go online for that.  Run slrn as follows:


  slrn --nntp -h YOUR.NEWS.SERVER -a -f groups.dat --create



  This will start slrn and download the groups and put them in the file
  groups.dat.  Before actually doing this, modify your slrnrc file to
  make sure write_newsrc_flags has its default setting


  set write_newsrc_flags 0

  so that all groups will be written out to groups.dat.



  6.  I found a bug in slrn!!!

  First, please check whether the bug you discovered is already
  discussed here:


  6.1.  slrn hangs infinitely when I press the delete key

  This is a known bug; however, it's not a problem in slrn, so I cannot
  fix it. slrn uses a library called slang for its screen input/output
  and some Linux distributions (including RedHat) patch that library to
  get Unicode support. Unfortunately, the patch they use makes slang
  unstable.

  To get rid of this program, you can get the vanilla slang sources from
  the public FTP space <ftp://space.mit.edu/pub/davis/slang> of its
  author, John E. Davis and compile them yourself.

  However, simply deinstalling the slang package that came with your
  distribution and replacing it with your own version might break
  dependencies in your system's package management - even if you build
  your own RPM package: Some packages explicitly depend on the patched
  version!

  For this reason, you may have to install the unpatched version in a
  different directory than the patched one that came with your distro,
  e.g. in /usr/local/. To make sure slrn uses the right one, point the
  configure script to it using --with-slang-library=/path/to/lib and
  --with-slang-includes=/path/to/includes. Additionally, you either need
  to specify --enable-hardcode-libs or point the environment variable
  LD_LIBRARY_PATH to the library path when running slrn.

  If you experience such a problem, please also report it as a bug to
  your distributor, so we will hopefully see no more broken slang
  packages in the future. For RedHat, I got a report that it already got
  fixed in version 8.

  Also, slang 2.0 will officially include Unicode support, so by the
  time it is out and slrn supports it, these kinds of problems will
  hopefully be gone for good.


  6.2.  The bug I found is not listed here. What do I do now?

  The bug might already be fixed, so please consider upgrading to the
  latest release of slrn or at least check whether the problem is listed
  in the current changes file
  <http://slrn.sourceforge.net/docs/changes.html>. If I already wrote a
  patch for it, it is available at
  <http://slrn.sourceforge.net/patches/>, so you should look at that
  page, too. If you find that the bug is still unreported, send me a bug
  report (tststs@gmx.de).

  Please give a detailed description of what you did, how you expected
  slrn to behave and what slrn did instead; also include the exact error
  messages (in case you got any) and information I might need to
  reproduce the bug or that might make it easier to find it, such as


  o  Which actions make the bug appear

  o  The output of ``slrn --version''

  o  If a certain article caused the problem, the Message-ID of that
     article (or even the article itself, if it is not too long)

  o  Details of your configuration that might be relevant, like config
     files (after deleting personal data like passwords)


  6.2.1.  Some additional notes for the advanced user

  If you have an idea what piece of code is causing the bug and how to
  fix it, comments on this (or even a patch) are of course welcome, too.

  If you think the problem might be on the server side, the command line
  switch --debug can be used to log the dialog with the server to a
  file. Note that the resulting file may become quite large and may
  contain your password!  Keep this in mind when attaching it to bug
  reports: Delete personal data, shorten it to the significant portion
  (if you have some basic knowledge about NNTP) or use bzip2 and ask
  before sending large session transcripts.

  If slrn crashes (i.e. gets terminated because of a segmentation
  fault), it may also be helpful if you can provide a stack backtrace.
  If you're willing to do this, try the following steps to get one
  (assuming you use a Unix-like environment and have script and gdb
  installed):

  At the command line, type:

  script
  gdb slrn



  Then, at the prompt of gdb, type:

  run [command line arguments here]
  [do whatever leads to the crash here]
  bt
  quit



  Finally, type exit to leave the shell opened by script. This should
  have lead to a file called typescript; please include the portion of
  it that starts with (gdb) bt in your bug report.


  7.  About this document

  The latest version of this FAQ is available at slrn's homepage
  <http://slrn.sourceforge.net/manual/>.


  7.1.  History


     2003-08-25: Revision 1.1
        Minor corrections before the release of 0.9.8.0.

     2003-08-19: Revision 1.0
        The first version of this FAQ documents slrn 0.9.8.0. It merges
        the three files FAQ, SCORE_FAQ and slrnpull/FAQ written by John
        E. Davis. Matthias Friedrich and Thomas Schultz updated the
        existing entries and wrote some new ones.



