You can create a new message to be posted into a newsgroup in one of two ways. You can either use the Follow-Up button within the News Read screen or you can press the Create New Message button on the main News screen within ZIMACS.

Follow-Up

Clicking on the 'Follow-Up' button will ask you whether or not you wish to quote the original message. In many cases a simple Re: Subject of discussion is sufficient. However a lot of people prefer to include the original post in the message so that people can easily follow a thread if they haven't read the first few postings.

Tip: You can include part of the message by highlighting the text before clicking on Follow-up.

Tip: Including your comments at the top of the post ('top posting') is not considered good practice.

New Message

When you press the Create New Message icon the News Write screen will appear. If you have the title of the newsgroup you are posting to highlighted then the title of the group will be filled in for you. All that is required of you is to fill in the Subject line, write the body of the message and press the 'Send' button.

As with the Mail Write screen there are several icons on the toolbar.

Exit



This icon is used if you wish to cancel the creation of the message you are working on. Note that changes cannot be recovered.

Tip: If you are re-editing a news post, Exit will cancel the edit and leave the original message in the pending queue. To purge the message press 'Don't send ever' (see below).

Send



Once you have created your newsgroup message you need to send it. This places the message into the News waiting to be sent section of ZIMACS and will show up in the relevant box on the Main screen. The message can be retrieved for re-editing by double-clicking on the message title.

Tip: When re-editing an news item from the main screen, use the options screen to retain the original sender id if you have more than one mailbox. If the option is not checked then the news item will be sent with the currently selected mailbox.

 

Tip: Hold the shift key and click the icon to save the message as a draft.

Sign



If you created a signature block within the Mail section of the Configuration program you can use the 'Sign' button to pass it onto the end of the message you are creating.

Tip: You can use the options screen to sign news automatically.

Import File



If you have a text file that you wish to include with the message then you can import the file. Press the 'Import File' button. This brings the same dialog box up as used in the 'Attach File' procedure. This option can also be used to send an encoded file. Encoding is explained in a later section.

Save message



This allows you to save the message as a text file. When pressed a dialog box appears asking for a filename.

Tip: Use the Import option to retrieve the saved file if you wish to re-edit and send it.

Spell Check



Pressing this icon will Spell Check your document. See 'Spell Checking'.

Print message



Pressing this icon allows you to print out the message you are currently writing. When pressed the standard Windows printer dialog box appears. To print the message simply press the OK button. The printer will be the default Windows printer. This can be changed by using the File/Default Printer menu item.

 

 

Any item posted to a public newsgroup may be archived and available for others to retrieve via a search engine. Setting the X-No-archive option will prevent the post from being archived. The option can be set for all posts that you create by using the Options screen, or turned on and off for an individual message by pressing the icon.

Don't send ever



Deletes the message and removes the original from the pending queue.

Note: Icon only appears on a re-edit.

 

Tip: A pale yellow background colour for the newsgroup name indicates that the article was cross posted to a number of newsgroups. Place the mouse pointer over the field to view the complete list.

 

Tip: Ctrl+Tab will indent text.