Usenet was developed to facilitate discussion groups (referred to as newsgroups) in which any user around the world can participate in a public forum. There are thousands of newsgroups with many diverse discussion matters and new ones are being created all the time.

ZIMACS allows you to subscribe to these newsgroups and to read and post messages into the newsgroups you have chosen. The process for choosing a newsgroup to receive is discussed in the Configuration section of this manual.

To participate in a newsgroup you must press the News button on the main toolbar of ZIMACS. This brings up a screen similar to the Mail section.



The News Screen



Tip: The relative size of the listboxes can be adjusted - place the mouse pointer in the blank area between the listboxes. Hold down the left mouse button and drag the boundary to the required position.

The News Groups box contains the list of newsgroups which are currently being collected or those groups which have been deselected but not yet expired. Beside the newsgroups title you will also see a number. This represents the number of messages within the newsgroup. If there is an asterisk (*) next to the newsgroup title then this means that there are unread messages within the group. To get a list of the subjects or threads within a newsgroup click on the title with the left mouse button. This brings up a listing within the 'Subjects' box.

Subjects



The 'Subjects' box is similar to the News Groups box however it displays the list of subjects within the newsgroup. Again there is a number next to the subject indicating how many articles are within that particular subject. Also a star will appear next to those subjects which have unread articles in them. To get a list of messages within the subject click on the subject title with the left mouse button - this brings up a listing within the 'Authors' box.

Authors



The 'Authors' box contains the list of messages within a subject. Unread message have a star next to them. To read the message double-click on the name of the author with the left mouse button. This brings up the News Read screen.

Marking as read/unread and deleting.

By default, all incoming news articles are marked as unread - i.e. they have an asterisk (*) next to their entry in the listbox. This simply means that you have not viewed the article. When you view the article, it will automatically be marked as read and the asterisk (*) will be removed. ZIMACS allows you to mark as read and as unread articles without having to view them first, this can be useful if you know what the article is about and don't want to read it, instead you can just flag it as read.

ZIMACS lets you mark all the articles in a newsgroup, all the articles in a thread, individual articles or a selection of individual articles as read or as unread.

  To mark an article as read, select the article and press 'R'.

  To mark an article as unread, select the article and press 'U'.

Like marking as read/unread, you can select individual authors or multiple messages to delete. To delete a message or a selection of messages press the 'DELETE' key. Note: Once you have deleted the message it cannot be recovered.

The Options Bar

The Options bar (shown below) has been replaced in 2.20 by Menu items at the top of the screen.

 

 

 

Mailbox

 

Click the Mailbox menu item to change from one mailbox to another. Select the new mailbox from the drop down:

 

You can use the drop down list box to select additional mailboxes. If you have not created any new mailboxes then the only selection available will be your default mailbox.

Note: Creating an extra mailbox within the Configuration program when you do not have one registered with Zetnet can cause problems with the database file and mail sent to an unregistered mailbox may be lost without trace. Please register it first then add it.

 

This is equivalent to the Create New Subject button in previous versions and will open a new post.

 

 

News can be searched by sender, message text etc. The search menu item is enabled when news post has been selected (highlighted).

 

 

Click the Reload menu item to reload news, this will refresh the display and remove any items flagged as .

 

 

The View menu item determines the order in which news is displayed.

 

Tip: Highlight an author or subject and press the 'k' key to add to the kill file.