Subject: How to tell when articles are read in News?

From: David Worrell <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 10 Mar 1995 09:03:57 -0600 (CST)

A friend of mine asked me this question, and I can't figure it out either.
I would think this would be simple...

The question:
By the way, Pine is great.  Is there any way you can mark what you've
read in a newsgroup with Pine?  I like the interface much more than
nn, but it doesn't remember what messages I've read, and I can't figure
out how to make it work.

If you know this, please email.

Thanks,

- David

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From: Terry Gray <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 14 Mar 1995 21:45:00 -0800 (PST)

If you select the "news-approximates-new-status" feature, Pine will use
the last message you mark as deleted as the "high water mark" for what 
you've seen, and show everything after than with an "N".

-teg

---

From: Mike Brudenell <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 15 Mar 1995 09:49:06 +0000 (GMT)

Unless I missed a message I think Terry missed out one important thing...

To tell Pine you have seen (finished with) a news article use the "D" 
command to "delete" it, just as you would an ordinary e-mail message.

Because news articles are actually held on a read-only server this 
doesn't *really* delete the article, but simply excludes it from the 
index shown to you.  (It also gets noted in your ".newsrc" file for 
future use by Pine and other news readers.)  You can see the entire list 
of available messages again by using the "Unexclude" command (&).

If you have the "news-approximates-new-status" option set in the Setup 
Configuration screen then Pine endeavours to add "extra value" be deciding 
whether undeleted messages have been seen or not (the latter being 
flagged as "New" with an "N" in the index screen).

This ios done by looking at the highest numbered deleted article.  Pine 
then *assumes* that previous (lower numbered) articles you have already 
read but not deleted and so shows them with " " status.  Higher numbered 
articles it assumes are newly delivered, and so marks with an "N".

This *is* a guess (hence the "approximates").  Pine has only one bit 
available to it to store three possible states (an impossibility, hence 
the guesswork).  This is because most newsreaders have only "New & 
included in index" and "Seen & excluded from index" message states, as 
against Pine's three: "New & included in index", "Seen & included in 
index", "Seen & excluded from index".

This is because of the Pine Team's idea that news articles should *not*
automatically disappear from the index once they are read.  Instead the
user must take some deliberate action to exclude it.  I think they have a
good idea here; I have found the "read once and it's gone"  approach of
other news readers to be their most confusing attribute (both personally
and in others). 

So the upshot is simply to use the D command to "delete" each article 
when you have finished with it.

You'll probably ask this at some point next, so here's a pre-emptive 
answer...

You can mark all the articles in a newsgroup as "seen" (deleted) by first 
using the Select command (;) to choose them All (A), then Apply (A) a 
Delete command (D) to them.  That is, type ;AAD

Note that for the Select and Apply command to be available you must have 
the "enable-aggregate-command" option set in the Setup Configuration screen.

Mike Brudenell                                               <[email-masked]>
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