Subject: Using Pine To Read News

From: [email-masked] (Moshe Segal)
Date: 13 Apr 1995 01:45:35 GMT

Hi.  I just subscribed to this group, and this is my first post.  I have 
been using Pine for a number of months to manage my mail.  It is much 
more efficient and friendly then Unix Mail, especially where the editor 
is concerned.

Until now, I have continued to use Tin to read and post to newsgroups; in 
fact, I am in it right now.  For the first time, I seriously used Pine to 
read news a few days ago.  In some ways, it is better than Tin, making 
articles similar to mail messages, and using simple commands.  There is 
one thing, however, which poses a problem for me, and I am wondering if 
Pine has a way to handle it.  In Tin, articles and their responses are 
chronologically arranged in threads, so that it is easy to follow a 
discussion.  This is particularly useful when I have posted a new 
article, and am waiting for a response.  It seems that in Pine, the 
articles are placed randomly, and in an index of hundreds of articles, 
those with the same name are spread far apart.  Is there a way that Pine 
can be configured to organize news into threads?  Also, is there a search 
command in the index?  Once I have information, I can decide whether or 
not to switch.  Hope to hear from you soon.

--
You're not the only one who's made mistakes    Moshe E. SEgal
But they're the only things   1336 Cory Drive
That you can truly call your own   Dayton, Oh 45406

Some people hope for a miracle cure,   [email-masked] 
Some people just accept the world as it is.   (513) 279-0438

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From: Mike Brudenell <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 13 Apr 1995 09:18:35 +0100 (BST)

You need to use Pine's "sort" command: $

Open up the newsgroup (or mail folder) you want to read.  Type "$" and 
you will get a menu offering various criteria for sorting the messages.

The best criterion for Usenet News is Ordered Subject (O).  This sorts 
first by subject field (getting related messages together), with a 
secondary sort key of the date (sorting the related messages into 
chronological order by the date and time they were posted.

When you close the folder the sorting is forgotten, so my instinctive 
reaction upon opening a newsgroup in Pine is "$O".

If you find this useful you can make it the default sorting option in the 
Setup (S) Configuration (C) screen, accessed from Pine's Main Menu.  
Note, however, that this default currently affects *all* folders be they 
news or mail.  Whilst I find Ordered Subject sorting great for News 
Collection folders I prefer Arrival sorting for ordinary folders, so 
leave my default as Arrival sorting.

Mike Brudenell                                               <[email-masked]>
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From: [email-masked] (Alan J Flavell)
Date: Thu, 13 Apr 1995 10:12:33 GMT

In article <[email-masked]>
[email-masked] (Mike Brudenell) writes:
(in reply to question about threading)
 
>You need to use Pine's "sort" command: $
 
If I'm not mistaken, Pine does not really support viewing "threads"
in the technical sense, ie. via the references header.  Sorting
on the subject field would be the best you can get.  Of course, if
someone changes the subject it will appear as a new thread, even
though the references header is threaded correctly.  Conversely,
when someone posts a followup without a proper references header,
PINE will treat it as part of the same thread, as long as the subject
field is unchanged, whereas a newsreader that goes only on references
headers would treat it as a new thread.