NaN - Never Again Netscape
NaN, or Never Again N@tscape, is a newsreader program. It reads
news from news (also known as NNTP) servers.
This page serves to describe the basic functionality of NaN.
Table of Contents
The View
NaN was designed to be a very useful and intuitive program. But
any new program has a learning curve, and it is best not to
assume the user will just 'know' what we mean. The look and
feel is similar to Mozillatm Mail or Microsoft
Outlook Express ®, so it should be an easy switch over if
you have ever used either of these programs.
The Subscribed Groups List
On the left side of the application is the Subscribed Groups
List. This list is used to select the active newsgroup, in
other words, the one you wish to read and/or post to. In our
screenshot, you can see we are currently subscribed to three
newsgroups: alt.comp.lang.c, alt.comp.lang.java, and
alt.com.lang.perl. We are currently reading the group
alt.com.lang.java. You can tell this because it is highlighted.
The Message Tree
On the right side of the application on the top is the
Message Tree. The Message Tree is used to browse the
current newsgroups messages. When you select a group in the
Subscribed Groups List, the current messages from this group
will be loaded from the server and be displayed on the Message
Tree.
The Message Information Panel
Just under the message tree is the Message Info Panel.
This panel displays information about the currently selected
message. Who the message is from, the subject of the message,
and the date the message was posted. In addition, there is a
button on the far right side which allows us to access the
message's attachments.
The Message Preview Pane
At the bottom right part of the screen is the Message
Preview Pane. This is where the text of the current message
will be displayed when you select a message from the Message
Tree.
The About Dialog
The box in the middle of our screenshot is the About dialog.
The about dialog can be displayed from the menu. It will only
be there at your request, and goes away when you press its OK
button.
This concludes our discussion of the View. The next section
deals with the menu at the top of the application.
Return to the Table of Contents
The Menu
This section of the manual discusses the main menu for NaN. The
main menu is the one shown in the screenshot. It consists of
the following menus: File, Preferences, Newsgroup, Message, and
Help.
The File Menu
The File Menu is essentially the exit menu. The only option is
exit which quits the program. There is however a difference
between using this and the window close (The Red X on Windows
and Mac OS). Using the X will ask you if you want to exit the
program before quitting to prevent accidental exits. Choosing
exit from the file menu quits the program immediately.
The Preferences Menu
The Preferences Menu allows you to setup the preferences for
the program.
User Settings
The User Settings option allows you to change the settings for
the user of the program. The name, email, and signature are
set using this control. If you enter text into the signature,
it will be automatically appended to all messages you post.
Server Settings
The Server Settings dialog is much more complex than the User
Settings control. This control is how you set the NNTP server
hostname and port. These can be obtained from your internet
service provider or network administrator. The news server
is generally news.yourisp.com or netnews.yourisp.com.
For a description of the other properties, see the
How To section.
Newsgroups
The Newsgroup control is used to add or remove groups from your
Subscribed Groups List. When you first bring it up, it will ask
to download the list of available Newsgroups (Mac users see the
Known Issues section). There will most
likely be many newsgroups to choose from. There are over 34,000
groups on my service provider's news server.
You can select a Newsgroup by double-clicking the list on the
left side, or clicking it once, then using the Add button. You
can also remove groups from your Subscribed Groups List by
using the remove button or double-clicking them on the list on
the right side of the screen.
If you wish to see only certain newsgroups, you can filter the
list a little. Enter the first few characters of the newsgroups
you wish to examine, such as 'ac.csci' in the Filter box at
the bottom of the screen. You can then click the Filter button
and the list will show only those groups which start with those
letters. To remove the filter and see the entire list, delete
the text from the filter box and select filter again.
The Newsgroup Menu
The Newsgroup menu handles some special optionns regarding
Newsgroups and Messages.
Set Messages to Cache
When a current Newsgroup is selected from the Subscribed
Newsgroups List, this option will let you change the number
of messages NaN initially caches.
In other words, NaN only downloads the most recent 50 messages
by default to save time. It will also download any newer
messages that become available later. If you want to download
older messages, you can change this setting to download the
most recent 100 messages, or 1000, or all messages. When you
change this setting, NaN will discard the current message cache
and download the most recent x messages. Depending upon the
number of messages you select, this might take some time.
Download Full Messages
This option can be used to download the full text of all the
messages you are currently caching. If you have a slow
connection, you might use this option so you can read the
messages offline. Just use this option, come back later when
its finished, and read everything at your own pace.
Refresh Current Newsgroup
This option will search the current newsgroup for new messages.
This is automatically done every time a group is selected, so
it is only needed if you want to make sure your messages was
posted to the server.
Check for New Newsgroups
This option will check the News service for new groups that
you can subscribe to. This is automatically done everytime NaN
is started, so it should not be necessary to use this option
very often.
The Message Menu
The Message menu is used to post and reply to messages on the
current newsgroup. You can also view the source of the current
message if you want to see the full headers.
Post
Use the Post command to post a new message to the currently
selected newsgroup on the Subscribed Newsgroup List.
Reply
Use the Reply command to respond to a message. Replying to
messages automatically quotes the entire message for easy
response. In addition, the message will appear inside the same
thread so people understand its a reponse and not a new
message.
View Message Source
This command will display the source with all the message
headers for the currently selected message.
The Help Menu
The Help menu is used to get help with NaN and display the
license agreements, should you want to look over them again.
View Documentation
This option brings up this documentation.
License
Use this menu to view the license agreements.
About
Brings up a small dialog that tells the version number of NaN
you are running, the copyright notice, and the number of files
and lines of code in the source.
Return to the Table of Contents
Learning to Use NaN
NaN is a very simple program and should not be difficult to
learn. When you first start the program, it will ask you for
your settings, both personal and server.
Your personal settings are easy enough. Just enter your name,
your email address, and if you choose, a short text message
to sign all your messages with. This signature will be
automatically appended to every message you write.
The server settings look complex, but you probably only need
to worry about the first one. The news server hostname. You
will need to obtain this information from whoever you get
your internet service from.
When you have entered your server settings, NaN will try to
connect to your news server. If something goes wrong, a
message will be displayed. Otherwise, you should be good to
go. Just go to the preferences menu, select Newsgroups, and
find the Newsgroups you want to read.
When you have your subscribed newsgroups, just select one from
the list by clicking it with the mouse. The messages will
appear on the right side on the Message Tree. It should be
very easy if you have ever used any other news reader or an
email program.
That covers the basic usage of NaN. Simple, no?
Return to the Table of Contents
How To...
This section covers tasks that may not be readily obvious as to
how you would do them.
How to View a Message with Full Headers
If you want to see the full message source, simply click on the
message, and select View Message Source from the Message menu.
How to Attach a File
When you post or respond to a message, click Add from the
Attachment menu on the composer frame. It will bring up a
dialog that will look for the file and add it to the
attachment list. You can remove it by selected remove.
Be aware that not all groups permit attachments to be posted
to them due to viruses and other unsavory things bad people
tend to post.
How to Download an Attachment
If a message has attachments, then the attachment button on
the Message Information Panel will be enabled. You should be
able to tell because the text will look bold instead of grayed
out. Simply click the button and select the attachment to
download.
NaN does not currently support MIME messages, so MIME
attachments cannot yet be downloaded. Look for this feature
in a future release.
How to Save a Group for Offline Reading
To save a groups messages, simply select Download Full Messages
from the Message menu. You can now read all the messages in
this group, even if you are not connected.
How to Setup an SSH Tunnel
Some news servers (most, in fact) allow only users from their
own network to connect to them. If you have access to an SSH
server on the network from your computer, you can setup an SSH
tunnel which will allow you to use the news server, even though
you are not part of the news server's network.
To do this, you will need access to an SSH2 server. SSH1 is
NOT secure and is not used in NaN.
Go to the Server Settings on the Preferences Menu. Click the
SSH checkbox. Fill in the information for your SSH server. The
default port 22 is usually the correct one. Your password will
not be saved with the rest of your settings for security.
Now select the SSH tunnel checkbox and pick a port to run the
tunnel on. The default port is usually fine, unless some other
application is using it.
Select OK and NaN will attempt to connect to the server through
this SSH tunnel.
How to use Remote Save with SSH
If you want to use NaN in multiple places, but do not want to
lose your settings, this option can allow you to keep the same
settings in every place you use NaN.
Select Server Settings from the Preferences Menu. Fill out the
SSH settings as described in the SSH tunnel setup above. Select
the remote-save checkbox, and specify a path on the SSH server
to save settings to. NaN will NOT create this path, it must
already exist. I would choose your home directory. You cannot use
~ or any other shell substitute.
When you exit NaN, your settings will be archived and sent to
the SSH server. When you start NaN, it will download them from
the SSH server and load them.
This setting has very little merit if you do not use NaN in
multiple places.
Return to the Table of Contents
Known Problems and Issues
This section describes some of the issues relating NaN that
the developers are already aware of.
Mac Hides Modal Dialogs
When you first go to the Newsgroups dialog in the Preferences
menu, NaN will ask if you want to download the available list
of newsgroups. However, this dialog will appear behind the
Newsgroup dialog on Mac OS. This is annoying, but we have not
been able to find a fix for it. Simply move the Newsgroups
dialog until you can see the message.
MIME/HTML Messages
NaN has no support for MIME or HTML messages. This means any
message in HTML format will be displayed incorrectly, and no
MIME attachments can be downloaded. Sorry.
NaN is a bit slow at times...
NaN is not the fastest newsreader in existence. We hope you
will be patient with it, as this is mainly a consequence of
Java. If speed is your main concern, NaN is NOT the
program for you.
Attachment Foolies...
It is possible to fool NaN (and other Newsreaders,
Microsoft® Outlook Express 6.0 for sure) into thinking
an attachment exists where it does not by typing the same
information header as an attachment. This is why the new MIME
format is gaining favor and supplanting it. We know of no
solution to this problem at this time. But it is not
restricted solely to NaN, as we were able to reproduce the
error in Microsoft® Outlook Express 6.0.
Return to the Table of Contents
Credits & Thanks
This section contains a list of people who deserve thanks for
one time or another.
-
Dennis Gannon, Chair of Computer Science at Indiana
University -- He believed in the merit of this program and
let me write it as an independent project.
-
Gregory Rawlins, Professor of Computer Science at Indiana
University -- For giving me an better understanding of
appreciation of Java, and for teaching me the only
important thing I ever leaning in school, design; without
which this program would never have existed, or worse,
might event be in C++, *shudder*.
-
Suzanne Menzel, Professor of Computer Science at Indiana
University -- She helped us make it more mac-friendly.
-
Adam Miller - For his suggestion on how to avoid potential
trademark infringement issues.
-
Philip Milne and Scott Violet - The JTreeTable is
invaluable. It really should be added to the Swing
standard base.
-
The Netscape® Corporation -- who would never sue a poor
college student over a small name joke.
Return to the Table of Contents
Contact Information
If you want to contact the developer for support issues or feature
requests or anything else, please email us at
nan@technoplaza.net .
License
NaN is governed by four license. The NaN Free License, which
is similar to the expat license is used for all work done
by John David Ratliff. Libraries are governed by their
respective libraries.
SSH usage in the program is accomplished through the MindTerm
SSH library for Java version 2.4.1. The MindTerm licenses
govern their usage.
XML parsing is accomplished with the dom4j XML library for Java
version 1.4. dom4j is awesome, and you should visit their site
for all your XML needs
http://dom4j.org.