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			    S L R N - First Steps
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This document explains the first things you have to do after having
installed slrn. It doesn't matter how you installed slrn (from source or
using a binary package), the first steps remain the same on any Unix system.
If you installed slrn as a binary package, however, it is possible that your
distributor has already done some work for you.


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			   Checking the "rc" file
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The first thing we want to do is to customize slrn's configuration file. 

If you installed slrn from source, you'll find an example slrn.rc at
$INSTALL_PREFIX/share/doc/slrn/slrn.rc.

If you installed slrn from a binary package, have a look whether your
distributor has included a global slrn.rc and/or an example slrn.rc. If you
cannot find a file named "slrn.rc" or any other file which seems to be a
configuration file for slrn, you can get an example from
<http://slrn.sourceforge.net/docs/>.

If a global configuration file exists, it will also be read before your
personal one on each startup, so you might want to look at the default
settings it makes for you.

If you don't have a configuration file for slrn yet (check your home
directory), you may copy the example configuration file and edit it with
your favourite editor:

  cp /path/to/slrn.rc ~/.slrnrc
  vi ~/.slrnrc

For the exact syntax and descriptions of all variables, have a look at the
"slrn reference manual" which comes with slrn.

If your "From:" header cannot be generated from your local account, you
should at least set the following variables:

  set hostname "doe.com"    % sets the domain of your adress to "doe.com"
  set username "john"       % sets the localpart of your adress to "john"
  set realname "John Doe"   % sets your realname to "John Doe"

In this example, the resulting "From:" header is "John Doe <john@doe.com>"

The sample slrn.rc file is well documented; feel free to make more changes
to it if you like.

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			    Choosing a newsserver
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The second thing we want to do is to choose a newsserver to connect to. The
easiest way to tell slrn which server to use is to set the environment
variable "NNTPSERVER" to the hostname of your preferred newsserver. In most
cases, this is a server on a machine you have a permanent network connection
to (or even localhost, if you are running a local server like Leafnode).

To set it permanently, add one of the following lines to the configuration
file of your favourite shell:

  NNTPSERVER='server_name' && export NNTPSERVER     (for sh/ksh/bash/zsh)
  setenv NNTPSERVER 'server_name'                   (for csh/tcsh)

If you want to use more than one newsserver set the $NNTPSERVER to your
primary server and access the other server by starting slrn with "slrn -h
server.name".

Note: When using different servers, you need to specify separate newsrc
      files using the "server" configuration command.

If your newsserver requires authentication, you also need to use the
"nnrpaccess" command. "nnrpaccess" and "server" are described in detail in
the reference manual.


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			    Do the first connect.
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Run "slrn --create" at your shell prompt to start slrn and retrieve a list
of all active newsgroups from the server.  This can take some time if your
connection is slow; future startups (without that flag) are much faster.

When slrn switches to full screen mode, you can press 'q' to exit it again.


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		 Get the newsgroups descriptions (optional)
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Note: You only need to do this if you want to see the newsgroup descriptions
      in slrn. It works only if your newsserver has the group descriptions
      in its database.

Run "slrn -d" at your shell prompt and wait until slrn quits. This usually
results in a large download which takes even longer than the "--create" step
described before.


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			     Choosing an editor
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Slrn has no builtin editor. That way, you can use any editor you like. There
are two ways to tell slrn which editor it should use.

If you want to use the same editor for all applications on your system, just
set the enviroment variables "EDITOR" and/or "VISUAL" to your preferred
editor (if you haven't done this already). slrn will heed this.

If you want to use a special editor or just pass special arguments to it,
set the variable "editor_command" in your .slrnrc e.g.:

set editor_command "vim '+set tw=72' +%d '%s'"

starts vim with a textwidth of 72 chars and the cursor on the first line of
the messages body. For a more detailed discussion of this, see the entry
"editor_command" in the reference manual.


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			   Subscribe to newsgroups
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Start slrn from your shellprompt. Some groups which are useful for usenet /
slrn beginners should already be subscribed. You can now subscribe to any
group you are interested in:

Press the `L' (capital-L!) key to list all groups matching a specified
pattern, e.g. comp.*unix*; then, go through the list and use the `s' key to
subscribe.

Now, you can start reading your news. To see the online help, press `?'.


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			  Getting more information
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At first, you should have a look at the "README" file from the source
distribution. It gives an overview of all the documentation distributed with
slrn. If you cannot find this file, <http://slrn.sourceforge.net/docs/> is a
good point to start.

This document is written by Felix Schueller <fschueller@netcologne.de>.
