The Forum application allows you
to subscribe to News Servers in your local Intranet environment
or on the Usenet. You can connect to more than one news server,
subscribe to newsgroups, work offline, read articles, and post articles
containing multi-media (HTML) and attachments.
Forum is used to exchange information in the
form of news articles that are broadcast to discussion groups to
which a group of members are subscribed. News articles are posted
into newsgroups according to their subject matter. The number and
type of newsgroups available to you are set by your system administrator.
Forum in previous versions was called NEWTNews.
The icon for NEWTNews (Internet Access group) and the icon for Forum
(Group Collaboration group), both open the same application.
Using Forum
To use Forum:
Choose the Forum or NEWTNews icon.
Log into Forum using the same name and password
that you would use for Z-Mail Pro.
If you are already logged into a NetManage
mail application, the login pop up will not appear.
If this is the first time you are using Forum,
the Forum Configuration Wizard will guide you through the easy
steps of configuring Forum.
You are automatically connected to the enabled
Servers specified in the news tab of the Network Settings dialog
box. If there are no active servers specified, select Network
Settings from the Settings menu and enter the appropriate information.
The groups you are subscribed to are displayed. If you are not
subscribed to any groups, select subscribe from the Groups menu
and subscribe to news groups.
Whenever there are no servers defined, or
none of the defined servers are active, or no subscribed newgroups
exist for a server, a Forum popup tip outlines the required
above step.
To view the articles in a group, select the
group and either double click on it or choose the Open Group command
from the Groups menu.
You may view existing articles, or post and
reply to articles.
You may toggle the Forum connectivity state,
by choosing the Go Online and Go Offline commands.
News Servers
To specify the news servers used during your
Forum sessions complete the following:
Select Network Settings from the Settings
menu.
The Network Settings dialog
appears with the news tab selected. This dialog contains a list
of all the profiles in the current configuration file. All enabled
profiles appear with an asterisk to the left of the profile
name (disabled servers do not have an asterisk).
To create a new profile choose the Add button,
the Add Server dialog appears.
Specify the Profile Name: This is the name
that will appear in the News Server Profiles list box.
Specify the News Server:
Host: the name or IP address of the news
server.
Port: the number of the port to connect
to on the news server. The default is 119.
Note: There may be several
profiles for the same news server.
Specify the Login details (for servers that
require Authentication):
Username: the user name used to log into
the news server.
Password: the password used to log into
the news server. The password is not displayed.
Specify any required option in the General
Preferences section:
Check new groups at startup: when checked,
each time the Forum program is started, a check for new groups
will be performed on the news server. You can view new groups
in the Subscribe dialog.
Check for new articles: when checked, performs
periodic checks for new articles in the subscribed groups on
the news server, according to the set interval.
Check interval: specifies the interval for
checking for new articles (in hours and minutes).
Choose the OK button.
The new profile appears in the profile list,
in the Network Settings dialog.
Enable / Disable button: used to enable or disable
the currently selected profile. Enabled profiles are active during
the Forum session, whereas the disabled profiles are kept in the
configuration file, but are not active and are not displayed. All
enabled profiles appear with an asterisk to the left of the profile
name.
The Modify, Add buttons: activate the server
dialog box. The Delete button deletes the selected profile.
Default Server: select which profile should
be used as your default server. It is advised to set the profile
defining the Usenet server, as this default. Forum will use the
server specified in this profile, in the following cases:
When as articles sent from Forum specifies
news group addresses that do not specify a server. Forum will
post the article to the news group in the Default Server.
When Forum receives a URL request (e.g. when
activating a jump to a news group from a Web browser) which does
not specify a server. The specified news group or article will
be searched for on the Default Server.
Note: Forum supports URLs
using the NEWS protocol.
Subscribing and Unsubscribing to Newsgroups
This section describes how to subscribe and
unsubscribe to available newsgroups.
To subscribe to a news group:
Choose the Subscribe command from the Groups
menu. The Subscribe dialog box appears.
Select the News Server you require.
Select the appropriate radio button for the
view you require of Unsubscribed groups:
All: full list of groups - default view
New: a list of the newest groups on the
server
Note: The list of the
new groups is preserved locally and can be displayed at
any time by choosing the New view radio. This list is recreated
each time Forum performs a check for new groups on the server,
either at startup or when using Update List.
Pull down list of hierarchies: a list
of the groups according to the type of group which can be
viewed by selecting the radio button.
If you know the name or part of the name
of the news groups you want to subscribe to, then type text into
the edit box above the list. The current list will be filtered
according to what you enter.
Once you locate the desired news group(s)
to which you want to subscribe, highlight them and choose the
right arrow (>>) button. The selected groups will appear
in the Subscribed groups list. You may also subscribe to all the
groups in the non-subscription list at the same time by clicking
the Subscribe to All (>>) button.
Additional activities available in the Subscribe
dialog:
Rebuild List - choose the Rebuild List button
to connect to the server and retrieve the full list of all groups
from the server. The groups will appear in the list of Unsubscribed
groups (except those you are already subscribed to - which will
appear in the list of Subscribed groups, on the right side).
Note: This operation may
take several minutes - depending on the amount of groups on
the server.
Update List - choose the Update List button
to connect to the server and retrieve a list of all the new groups
from the server. These groups will be added into your current
list of Unsubscribed groups.
Cancel - choose the Cancel button to abort
the Rebuild List or Update List operations.
When you are finished, choose the Close button
to update your subscriptions.
To unsubscribe from a news group:
Select the news group which you want to unsubscribe.
Choose the Unsubscribe command from the Groups
menu. The selected news group will disappear from the view or
Highlight the group in the list of Subscribed
groups and choose the left arrow (<<) button. You may also
unsubscribe from all the groups in the subscribed list by clicking
the Unscribe to All (<<) button.
Handling and Reading Articles
To list and view the articles in a news group,
do the following:
Select the news group whose articles you
want to view. Shown next to each news group are the number of
unread articles and the total number of articles. To sort the
news groups of each server by group name, or by the number of
articles, double-click on the header of the desired column in
the news group list.
Choose the Open Group command from the Groups
menu or double-click on the group. The articles will appear in
the right pane of the Forum window.
The Threading feature organizes the article
listing so that all articles and their associated responding
articles (RE: and FW:) are grouped together. To toggle the Thread
display mode, use the Display option under the Threads menu,
or double-click the header of the Subject/Thread column in the
list of articles. You can display an article and its associated
responding articles hierarchically by selecting the Expand All/Current
command or double-clicking on the thread. Use Expand All only
if you want to expand all threaded articles. If you want to
hide all the responding articles hierarchically, then select
the Collapse All/Current.
Note:
When displaying threads,
for each article you can view either the subject or the From
address according to you setting in Newsgroups tab of the Preferences
dialog ( Settings menu). When displaying the subject, all articles
with a subject equal to the one in the thread's first article
will be indicated by showing "..." instead of the
original subject.
To change the column by which the articles
are sorted, double-click the column header. To change the sort
order (ascending/descending), double-click the blue arrow. Also,
you can change the sort order using the Display Info dialog.
Select the article(s) you want to view and
choose the View command from the Articles menu or double click
the article.
After you read the article, choose the Exit
command from the File menu to close the article and return to
the main screen.
Note that an open book icon appears to the
left of a previously read article.
Use Catch Up to mark all articles in a particular
news group as read, even if you have not read them all. All read
articles may disappear when you exit the current news group. There
are a number of ways to stop read articles from disappearing.
Printing Articles
To print an article, do the following:
Select or view the article, then choose the
Print command from the File menu to display the Print dialog box.
Choose the OK button to print the article.
Saving Articles as Text
To save an article to a specified file, do the
following:
Select or view the article, then choose the
Save as Text from the Articles menu.
Enter the Filename, File Type, Directory,
and Drive and choose the OK button. Note that you can select multiple
messages and save them all at once.
Posting and Replying to Articles
You may post articles to news groups and email
addresses. The following options are available from the Articles
menu:
Post: Send an article to the selected news
group.
Reply to: Send a reply to the selected article,
you have a choice of different recipients: Newsgroups, Current
Newsgroup, Sender and All.
Forward: Forward the selected article.
Downloading Articles to Your Local Drive
Downloading articles enables reading the articles
at your own leisure, when Offline. To download articles, do the
following:
Select or view the article, then choose the
Download command from the Articles menu (you may select more than
one article by holding down the Shift key while selecting the articles).
or
Select a group, then choose the Download Group
command from the Groups menu.
The articles will be downloaded to your local
drive. The articles are automatically downloaded to your news directory.
Note: The icon of downloaded
articles or groups has a picture of a small diskette on it, indicating
the article or group are downloaded.
Forwarding Articles to Your Z-Mail Pro Inbox
The Inbox Delivery Agent allows you to automatically
forward new articles from selected news groups to your Z-Mail Pro
Inbox. Refer to the Inbox Delivery section in the Forum online help
for detailed information on using this feature.
Settings Menu
You may set the mode for editing and viewing
of articles to either the plain text mode or the HTML mode. The
HTML mode will enable creating multimedia (HTML) articles, with
styles, images, links and so on.
You can set preferences to control which articles
you want to read and how they should be displayed.
You can set fonts, colors and display information.
You can define the News Servers that you want
active during your Forum session.
Refer to Forum online help for detailed information
on using the Settings menu.
Services Menu
You may define and edit Address books, launch the
Outbox, and display the log.
Additional Online Information
The online help file for Forum includes a description
of each menu command, plus the following information in the "How
to Use" section:
Additional Publications
Addressing Articles
Login Directory
News Group Types
Posting and Replying to Articles
Reading and Handling Articles
The Usenet
Using Address books
Using Forum
Using the Outbox
Troubleshooting
If you experience difficulties using the Forum
program, refer to the following items:
Make sure the host name to which you are
trying to connect to and its profile information are correctly
entered in the Network Setting dialog, and that the system administrator
assigned you access permissions to that server.
If Forum reports a failure to connect, use
the Diagnose Connection command from the Services menu, which
will verify the connection to the remote host.
Verify that the Forum settings are correct
and the timer settings for retrieval of new articles from the
host are set appropriately.
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