...News Readers (1 of 4) -- nn Sample Session

  To try out nn, connect to your host system and, at the  command line ,
type
               nn news.announce.newusers

and hit enter.  After a few seconds, you should see something like this:

Newsgroup: news.announce.newusers                     Articles: 22 of 22/1 NEW

a Gene Spafford   776  Answers to Frequently Asked Questions
b Gene Spafford   362  A Primer on How to Work With the Usenet Community
c Gene Spafford   387  Emily Postnews Answers Your Questions on Netiquette
d Gene Spafford   101  Hints on writing style for Usenet
e Gene Spafford    74  Introduction to news.announce
f Gene Spafford   367  USENET Software: History and Sources
g Gene Spafford   353  What is Usenet?
h taylor          241  A Guide to Social Newsgroups and Mailing Lists
i Gene Spafford   585  Alternative Newsgroup Hierarchies, Part I
j Gene Spafford   455  >Alternative Newsgroup Hierarchies, Part II
k David C Lawrenc 151  How to Create a New Newsgroup
l Gene Spafford   106  How to Get Information about Networks
m Gene Spafford   888  List of Active Newsgroups
n Gene Spafford   504  List of Moderators
o Gene Spafford  1051  Publicly Accessible Mailing Lists, Part I
p Gene Spafford  1123  Publicly Accessible Mailing Lists, Part II
q Gene Spafford  1193  >Publicly Accessible Mailing Lists, Part III
r Jonathan Kamens 644  How to become a USENET site
s Jonathan Kamen 1344  List of Periodic Informational Postings, Part I

-- 15:52 -- SELECT -- help:? -----Top 85%-----
Explanatory postings for new users. (Moderated)

     Obviously, this is a good newsgroup to begin your exploration of
Usenet!  Here's what all this means:  The first letter on each line is
the letter you type to read that particular "article" (it makes sense
that a "newsgroup" would have "articles").  Next comes the name of the
person who wrote that article, followed by its length, in lines, and what
the article is about. At the bottom, you see the local time at your
access site, what you're doing right now (i.e., SELECTing articles),
which key to hit for some help (the ? key) and how many of the articles
in the newsgroup you can see on this screen. The "(moderated)" means the
newsgroup has a "moderator" who is the only one who can directly post
messages to it.  This is generally limited to groups such as this, which
contain articles of basic information or for digests, which are basically
online magazines (more on them in a bit).
      Say you're particularly interested in what "Emily Postnews" has to
say about proper etiquette on Usenet. Hit your c key (lower case!), and
the line will light up.  If you want to read something else, hit the key
that corresponds to it.  And if you want to see what's on the next page
of articles, hit return or your space bar.
     But you're impatient to get going, and you want to read that article
now.  The command for that in nn is a capital Z.  Hit it and you'll see
something like this:


Gene Spafford: Emily Postnews Answers Your Questions on NetiquetteSep 92 04:17
Original-author: brad@looking.on.ca (Brad Templeton)
Archive-name: emily-postnews/part1
Last-change: 30 Nov 91 by brad@looking.on.ca (Brad Templeton)


**NOTE: this is intended to be satirical.  If you do not recognize
  it as such, consult a doctor or professional comedian.  The
  recommendations in this article should recognized for what
  they are -- admonitions about what NOT to do.


                        "Dear Emily Postnews"

        Emily Postnews, foremost authority on proper net behaviour,
        gives her advice on how to act on the net.



Dear Miss Postnews: How long should my signature be? -- verbose@noisy

A: Dear Verbose: Please try and make your signature as long as you
-- 09:57 --.announce.newusers-- LAST --help:?--Top 4%--

     The first few lines are the message's header, similar to the header
you get in e-mail messages.  Then comes the beginning of the message. The
last line tells you the time again, the newsgroup name (or part of it,
anyway), the position in your message stack that this message occupies,
how to get help, and how much of the message is on screen.  If you want
to keep reading this message, just hit your space bar (not your enter
key!) for the next screen and so on until done. When done, you'll be
returned to the newsgroup menu.  For now hit Q (upper case this time),
which quits you out of nn and returns you to your host system's command
line.
     To get a look at another interesting newsgroup, type

                nn comp.risks

and hit enter.  This newsgroup is another moderated group, this time a
digest of all the funny and frightening ways computers and the people who
run and use them can go wrong.  Again, you read articles by selecting
their letters.  If you're in the middle of an article and decide you want
to go onto the next one, hit your n key.