trn: How do I read Usenet?

Now it's time to actually take a look at some newsgroups and articles. The program that we will use to look at the newsgroups is called trn, which stands for Threaded Read News. (yes, the name is backwards from what you would expect, but these are programmers.) It has the nifty ability to group articles on the same subject together (i.e. threaded).

1. Log in.
   All of these commands must be done from your account at NMT.
2. Type trn.
   This will start the program.
3. The first time that you use trn it will ask if you want to subscribe to a very long list of groups. This is the easiest way to find out what exactly is out there. Make sure to subscribe to the nmt groups. Lots of important information there.
4. Now the program will go through each of the subscribed groups and ask if you want to read the group. Type y for the group you want to read.
5. The program will thread the group. You will see a list of article titles preceeded by the letter of the alphabet. Type the letter of the articles that you wish to read. Press the space bar to get to the next list of articles.
6. Press shift-x to erase the unwanted articles.
7. Press return or go through the entire list of articles to start reading.
8. If at any time you get confused or want to know what your options are, press h for help.
9. At the end of the article, press return to go to the next article.
10. When you have finished all of the articles in the newsgroup, the program will ask if you want to go to the next newsgroup.
11. To get out of trn press q for quit.
12. See `trn: Common commands' for some more useful commands. But you already have the basics on how to read Usenet!

Last updated: 1995/12/19 18:47:56 UT
URL: http://www.nmt.edu/tcc/help/news/get_there.html