...News Readers (2 of 4) -- nngrep: Finding interesting groups

...News Readers (2 of 4) -- nngrep: Finding interesting groups


     Now it's time to look for some newsgroups that might be of
particular interest to you.  Unix host systems that have nn use a program
called nngrep (ever get the feeling Unix was not entirely written in
English?) that lets you scan newsgroups.  Exit nn and at your host
system's  command line , type

                nngrep word

where word is the subject you're interested in.  If you use a Macintosh
computer, you might try

                nngrep mac

     You'll get something that looks like this:

               alt.music.machines.of.loving.grace
               alt.religion.emacs
               comp.binaries.mac
               comp.emacs
               comp.lang.forth.mac
               comp.os.mach
               comp.sources.mac
               comp.sys.mac.announce
               comp.sys.mac.apps
               comp.sys.mac.comm
               comp.sys.mac.databases
               comp.sys.mac.digest
               comp.sys.mac.games
               comp.sys.mac.hardware
               comp.sys.mac.hypercard
               comp.sys.mac.misc
               comp.sys.mac.programmer
               comp.sys.mac.system
               comp.sys.mac.wanted
               gnu.emacs.announce
               gnu.emacs.bug
               gnu.emacs.gnews
               gnu.emacs.gnus
               gnu.emacs.help
               gnu.emacs.lisp.manual
               gnu.emacs.sources
               gnu.emacs.vm.bug
               gnu.emacs.vm.info
               gnu.emacs.vms

     Note that some of these obviously have something to do with
Macintoshes while some obviously do not; nngrep is not a perfect system.
If you want to get a list of ALL the newsgroups available on your host
system, type

                nngrep -a |more

or
                nngrep -a |pg

and hit enter (which one to use depends on the Unix used on your host
system; if one doesn't do anything, try the other). You don't
absolutely need the |more or |pg, but if you don't include it, the list
will keep scrolling, rather than pausing every 24 lines.  If you are in
nn, hitting a capital Y will bring up a similar list.