Creating a New News Server

When you start up MT-NewsWatcher for the first time, it prompts you to enter the address of a news server, which will become your default news server. There are a number of ways that servers can get created. Normally, you manually create servers using the News Servers dialog. However, MT-NewsWatcher will automatically create servers for you in the following two situations:

1. You open a User Group List that was previously associated with a news server.

2. You clicked on a news URL which specifies a server that you don't already have, for example news.usenetmonster.com

The news servers dialog is used to create, edit and delete servers. It looks like this:



To create a news server manually, follow these steps:

	1. Open the News Servers dialog, using the News Servers item on the Special menu. You will see this dialog:
	2. Click the 'New...' button. A simple dialog comes up prompting you to enter a name for the server to be created. This name is simply a label that is used to identify the server to you, and does not have to be the server address.
	Server names must be unique; if you have typed a name that matches the name of an existing server, the OK button will be disabled. You must choose a different name.
	When you have entered a name, click the OK button. The server is created with some default values.
	3. Enter the address of the server in the box in the Server Options panel. This must be a valid internet address, like "news.mycompany.com". A raw IP address is also acceptable.

Now you can create a new User Group List, using New User Group List on the File menu. In the new user group window, click the disclosure triangle (or type Command-H) to reveal the server selection popup, and choose the server you wish to associate with this window from the popup menu. Then find the groups you wish to subscribe to in the Full Groups window, and drag them over to the new User Group List. When you are done, save the User Group List using Save on the File menu.

The Default Server

One news server is the default server. This server is used when no server is specified for a certain command. For example, if you click on a news URL like news:comp.sys.mac.comm, MT-NewsWatcher will open the group comp.sys.mac.comm on your default server.

The default server is normally the one you entered when you ran MT-NewsWatcher for the first time. If you want to change the default to a different server, you can. In the News Servers dialog, simply click in the box for the server you want to make the default:



If you delete the default server, MT-NewsWatcher will set the default server to the first one in the list.

News Server Settings

This section describes in detail what the various news server configuration options do. The settings are contained in three panels; you can switch between them using the tabs.

Server options

This panel contains a number of options that control how MT-NewsWatcher communicates with the news server.

Authentication

Some servers require that you log in with a user name and password before you can use them; this is called authentication. They may also allow you to read news, but not post unless you log in. The options in this panel are used to control these options.



To find out whether your news server requires authentication, contact your news server administrator or ISP.

Username

This is the username you enter when logging into the server. It might be the same as the username you enter for your email address, or to log into other services.

Password

This is the password you use when logging into the server. When you type in this field, bullets (•) show up on screen, but MT-NewsWatcher stores the actual letters that you typed.
You can leave this field blank. If you do, a password dialog will appear when you need to enter it.

Save password

If this option is checked, then your password is stored in MT-NewsWatcher's preferences, in a simple encoded format. This is not very secure, but is enough to prevent some idly browsing your disk from seeing a plain text password.

Private groups

Some servers restrict certain newsgroups to people who have logged in with their user name and password. These groups are only visible to the news client after logging in. When this option is turned on, MT-NewsWatcher will re-fetch the full groups list after you change your username or password, so that such private groups show up.

Authenticate when requested, always

As mentioned above, some servers require authentication before you can read any news, or before you can post. If you select the 'Always' option, MT-NewsWatcher will send your username and password (prompting you to enter these if necessary) every time you connect to the server. If you select 'When requested', MT-NewsWatcher only sends this information when you try to post an article.

Other options



Quote string

This quote string is used when you reply to articles on this server. It is the string that is prepended to each line of quoted text in your reply. This string is specified on a per-server basis, because some servers are configured to check for a certain amount of quoted text when you post a reply, and reject articles with too much quoted text in relation to new text. You can work around this by specifying here a different quote string (though this is not recommended).

Check for new groups

MT-NewsWatcher can check for new groups on the server when it first connects. This can slow the connection down slightly, so you can choose to check for new groups less frequently using this popup. Checking for new groups once per week is probably optimal.

Fetch group descriptions

Group descriptions are one-line summaries of what each group is for. Because there are so many groups, this can be a lot of data, so might make downloading the full groups list take a long time. If you turn on fetching group descriptions, you should see them in the full groups window (make it wider). Some servers don't carry descriptions for some or any groups.

Use accurate (but slow) article counts

It's common when you subscribe to high-traffic groups, like binary groups, to see group article counts that are shows as ">99999." However, when opening the group, you might find that MT-NW only fetches 30,000 articles. This is because the number of unread articles in the group is normally an estimate based on the first and last numbered articles that are present for that group, and article expiry and cancellation can lead to 'holes' in the list of articles present.

This feature that addresses these problems. Checking this checkbox will activate accurate counts for this news server. When this is on, MT-NW will fetch from the server the list of articles present for each group (which can cause checking for new articles to be slow, but does not slow down other features). It uses that list to calculate exact counts of unread articles, and, when you open the group specifying how many articles to fetch, to fetch exactly the number you specify.

The Personalities Dialog

To review your existing personalities, or to create a new one, bring up the "Personalities" dialog using the second item in the Special menu. You'll see the following dialog:



On the left of this dialog, you see a list of existing personalities, and under it, buttons for creating, renaming and deleting them. On the right side of the dialog, there are three tabbed panes of controls for editing personality information.

Personal Details Settings

On the first tab group are fields for entering basic personality information -- name, organization, email address, and SMTP server. This is the minimum amount of information that you need to supply.

Real Name

Enter your real name here. As a courtesy to other, you are encouraged to use your real name. Because of restrictions on the format of internet mail addresses, some characters, like <, > and " are not allowed in this field.

Organization

This field can be left blank. If so, then many news servers are configured to add an Organization header to messages that you send, as a means of promoting the services of the ISP or server vendor. This is often not what you want, in which case enter something like "(none)" here.

Email address

The email address must be of the form "user@host.domain"; the @ sign and a fully qualified domain name after the @ are required. Internet standards require that you supply a valid email address. Many people choose not to do this, because of fears that they will receive unsolicited commercial email (aka spam). The recommended way of "spam-blocking" your email address is to use a top-level domain of ".invalid". So if your email address was "foo@bar.com" you would enter "foo@bar.com.invalid".

When another MT-NewsWatcher user attempts to send email to someone who's address contains ".invalid", it will detect this, and warn them that they need to edit the recipient's email address.

Outgoing mail (SMTP) server

This is the mail server that is used to send mail (which usually has a different address to the POP server you use to receive mail). Your ISP or system administrator can tell you what address to enter here. You should enter an internet address (e.g. "smtp.bar.com") and NOT an email address.

Headers & Misc.



This tab group contains a miscellany of items related to sending and receiving messages, including a button that opens an additional dialog for your signature and extra headers. Mail-Copies-To

The popup menu at the top controls whether a "Mail-Copies-To" header is added to your messages. This header is used to indicate whether you like to receive email copies of the replies to your newsgroup postings. The following options are possible. Note that not all news software pays attention to the Mail-Copies-To header, so people replying to your postings may not always comply with your wishes.

Mail-Copies-To settings

Setting	Message header	Meaning
Don't include header		No header is added to messages
Never	Mail-Copies-To: nobody	Indicates that you do not want to receive email replies to your news postings
Always	Mail-Copies-To: poster	Indicates that you'd like people replying to your posts to also email you a copy of their reply. Their reply will be sent to the email address in the "Reply-To" header, or if none exists, the "From" header (which is the usual case).

Signature & Headers

The next item in the dialog is the "Signature & Headers" button. Click this to bring up a new dialog box in which you can enter your signature, and other mail and news headers.

Copy Self

The next checkbox entitled "Copy Self" controls whether you want to BCC (blind carbon copy) yourself on articles that you post and mail. If checked, whenever you send a message, you will also receive a copy of that message at the email address specified for the personality you are using to send. Note that, for this to work, you must be using a valid email address in that personality.

Internet Config



The options panel contains settings that specify whether this Personality gets information from Internet Config or not.

To turn a Personality into an IC personality, check the 'Get personality settings from Internet Config' checkbox. This will replace the current personality settings with those obtained from IC. Now, whenever MT-NewsWatcher wants to get some information from this Personality, it will go directly to Internet Config for the answer.