TRN(1)
NAME
trn - threaded read news program
SYNOPSIS
trn [options] [newsgroups]
DESCRIPTION
Trn is a threaded version of rn, which is a replacement
for the readnews(1) program. Being "threaded" means that
the articles are interconnected in reply order. Each dis-
cussion thread is a tree of articles where all the reply
(child) articles branch off from their respective origi-
nating (parent) articles. A representation of this tree
(or a portion of it) is displayed in the article header as
you are reading news. This gives you a better feel for
how all the articles are related, and even lets you see at
a glance when an article has replies -- a good thing to
check before posting. In addition, trn has a thread
selector that allows you to quickly browse through a list
of subjects and choose the ones you find interesting.
This thread selector sorts articles according to various
criteria and can be switched into various display modes
that allows you to pick all the subjects separately
(threads can have multiple subjects) or even pick individ-
ual articles. Any items you don't select can be saved for
reading later or marked as read with a single keystroke.
If you are already familiar with trn you may just want to
read the WHAT'S NEW section. People upgrading from rn
will probably want to pay attention to the sections on The
Selector, The Tree Display, and the aforementioned WHAT'S
NEW. If you're impatient, just dive in and get started.
All the regular commands will be familiar to an rn or trn
user, and the on-line help will give you a quick run-down
of what commands are available (just type 'h' from any
prompt). I'd also suggest using the command:
trn -x -X
to make sure some of the best features are turned on.
Starting Trn
If no newsgroups are specified, all the newsgroups which
have unread news will be presented to the user in the
order in which they occur in the .newsrc file. At the
prompt for each group you can choose to read it, skip it,
move it, etc. If a list of newsgroups is provided on the
command line, trn will start up in "add" mode, using the
list as a set of patterns to add new newsgroups and
restrict which newsgroups are displayed (see also the dis-
cussion of the 'a' command on the newsgroup-selection
level).
Trn operates on four levels: the newsgroup-selection
level, the thread selector, the article-reading level, and
the paging level. Each level has its own set of commands,
and its own help menu. At the paging level (the bottom
level) trn behaves much like the more(1) program. At the
article-reading level articles are presented to you in the
order of their replies, with the subjects being ordered by
the date of the oldest unread article (though there are
commands for changing the default display order). In the
thread selector you are presented with the subjects and
(usually) authors associated with each discussion thread,
and given a chance to choose which ones you wish to read
now, save for later, or manipulate in some way. At the
newsgroup-selection level (the top level), you may specify
which newsgroup you want next, or read them in the default
order, which is the order that the newsgroups occur in
your .newsrc file. (You will therefore want to rearrange
your .newsrc file to put the most interesting newsgroups
first. This can be done with the 'm' command on the News-
group Selection level. WARNING: invoking readnews/vnews
(the old user interface) in any way (including as a news
checker in your login sequence!) will cause your .newsrc
to be disarranged again.)
On any level, at ANY prompt, help is available by typing
an 'h'. This gives you a summary of available commands
and what they do. Remember this command, you'll need it.
Typing space to any question means to do the normal thing.
You will know what that is because every prompt has a list
of several plausible commands enclosed in square brackets.
The first command in the list is the one which will be
done if you type a space. (All input is done in cbreak
mode, so carriage returns should not be typed to terminate
anything except certain multi-character commands. Those
commands will be obvious in the discussion below because
they take an argument.)
Upon startup, trn will do several things:
1. It will look for your .newsrc file, which is your list
of subscribed-to newsgroups. If trn doesn't find a
.newsrc, it will create one. If it does find one, it
will back it up under the name ".oldnewsrc".
2. It will input your .newsrc file, listing out the first
several newsgroups with unread news.
3. It will perform certain consistency checks on your
.newsrc. If your .newsrc is out of date in any of
several ways, trn will warn you and patch it up for
you, but you may have to wait a little longer for it
to start up.
4. Trn will next check to see if any new newsgroups have
been created, and give you the opportunity to add them
to your .newsrc.
5. Trn goes into the top prompt level -- the newsgroup-
selection level.
Newsgroup Selection Level
In this section the words "next" and "previous" refer to
the ordering of the newsgroups in your .newsrc file. On
the newsgroup-selection level, the prompt looks like this:
====== 17 unread articles in talk.blurfl -- read now?
[ynq]
unless the group is set for unthreaded reading, in which
case the first six characters are "******". The following
commands may be given at this level:
+ Enter this newsgroup through the selector.
y Begin reading this newsgroup now.
SP Enter the newsgroup by executing the default com-
mand listed in []'s.
.command
Do this newsgroup now, but execute command before
displaying anything. The command will be inter-
preted as if typed on the article selection level.
= Start this newsgroup, but list subjects before
displaying articles.
U Enter this newsgroup through the "Set unread"
prompt.
t Toggle the newsgroup between threaded and
unthreaded reading. The default is threaded, and
the current setting is stored in your .newsrc.
n Go to the next newsgroup with unread news.
N Go to the next newsgroup.
p Go to the previous newsgroup with unread news. If
there is none, stay at the current newsgroup.
P Go to the previous newsgroup.
- Go to the previously displayed newsgroup (regard-
less of whether it is before or after the current
one in the list).
1 Go to the first newsgroup.
^ Go to the first newsgroup with unread news.
$ Go to the end of the newsgroups list.
g newsgroup
Go to newsgroup, which can be the group's name or
a zero-relative number of the groups in your
.newsrc (see the 'L' command to list your
.newsrc). If it isn't currently subscribed to,
you will be asked if you want to subscribe.
/pattern
Scan forward for a newsgroup matching pattern.
Patterns do globbing like filenames, i.e., use *
to match any sequence of characters, and [] to
specify a list of characters to match. Use . to
match a single character. Unlike normal filename
globbing, newsgroup-searching is not anchored to
the front and back of the filename, i.e. "/ski"
will find rec.skiing. You may use ^ or $ to
anchor the front or back of the search: "/^test$"
will find newsgroup test and nothing else If you
want to include newsgroups with 0 unread articles,
append /r. If the newsgroup is not found between
the current newsgroup and the last newsgroup, the
search will wrap around to the beginning.
?pattern
Same as /, but search backwards.
u Unsubscribe from the current newsgroup.
l string
List newsgroups not subscribed to which contain
the string specified.
L Lists the current state of the .newsrc, along with
status information.
Status Meaning
<number> Count of unread articles in newsgroup.
READ No unread articles in newsgroup.
UNSUB Unsubscribed newsgroup.
BOGUS Bogus newsgroup.
JUNK Ignored line in .newsrc
(e.g. readnews "options" line).
(A bogus newsgroup is one that is not in the list
of active newsgroups in the active file, which on
most systems is /usr/lib/news/active unless you
use NNTP.)
m {name}
Move the named newsgroup somewhere else in the
.newsrc. If no name is given, the current news-
group is moved. There are a number of ways to
specify where you want the newsgroup -- type h for
help when it asks where you want to put it.
c Catch up -- mark all unread articles in this news-
group as read.
A Abandon the changes made to the current newsgroup
since trn was started. Useful when you acciden-
tally mark a group as read.
o {pattern}
O {pattern}
Only display those newsgroups whose name matches
pattern. Patterns are the same as for the '/'
command. Multiple patterns may be separated by
spaces, just as on the command line. The restric-
tion will remain in effect either until there are
no articles left in the restricted set of news-
groups, or another restriction command is given.
Since pattern is optional, 'o' by itself will
remove the restriction. Using 'O' will omit empty
groups from the cycle.
a pattern
Add unsubscribed newsgroups matching pattern. If
any matching newsgroups are found, you will be
asked for each one whether you would like to add
it. If you want to add all the newsgroups, you
can type 'Y' and they will be added the the end of
the .newsrc file. If you don't want to subscribe,
all the remaining groups can be ignored by typing
'N'. After any new newsgroups have been added,
the 'a' command also restricts the current set of
newsgroups just like the 'O' command does.
& Print out the current status of command-line
switches and any newsgroup restrictions.
&switch {switch}
Set additional command-line switches.
&& Print out the current macro definitions.
&&keys commands
Define additional macros.
!command
Escape to a subshell. One exclamation mark (!)
leaves you in your own news directory. A double
exclamation mark (!!) leaves you in the spool
directory for news, which is usually
/usr/spool/news unless you're using NNTP to read
news. The environment variable SHELL will be used
if defined. If command is null, an interactive
shell is started.
v Print the current version number and information
on where to send bug reports.
q Quit.
x Quit, restoring .newsrc to its state at startup of
trn. The .newsrc you would have had if you had
exited with 'q' will be called .newnewsrc, in case
you didn't really want to type 'x'.
^K Edit the global list of memorized commands (in the
global KILL file) that you wish to be performed in
every newsgroup as it is started up (that is, when
it is selected at the newsgroup-selection level).
This file contains commands (one per line) such as
/subject/:j or /author/f:+ to kill or select arti-
cles based on the indicated search criteria.
There is also a local list of commands for each
newsgroup that can contain kill/selection commands
tailored for each specific group. Because of the
overhead involved in searching for articles to
kill, it is better if possible to use a local list
rather than the global one. Local memorized com-
mands are usually maintained by using the 'A' or
'T' commands from the article/pager level or in
the selector. There is also a K search modifier
that appends any search command you desire to add.
It is also possible to manually edit the file with
the '^K' command from anywhere inside a newsgroup.
If either of the environment variables VISUAL or
EDITOR is set, the specified editor will be
invoked; otherwise a default editor is invoked on
the KILL file.
The Selector
Most people who don't have all day to read news will want
to enter a newsgroup by way of the selector. This is
accomplished by using the '+' command at the newsgroup-
selection or article/pager levels. In fact, this may be
the default command for entering a newsgroup, depending on
how your version of trn was configured and your use of the
-X option.
The selector displays a list of articles by their subjects
and (usually) authors. The articles are grouped into
threads by default (which may list multiple subjects per
selectable item if the subject has changed during the dis-
cussion) and ordered by the date of their oldest unread
article. Thread or subject groups are also shown with a
count of the number of articles in each group. Each
selectable item is preceded by a letter or number that can
be typed to toggle its selection. Items that are selected
are flagged with a '+' after their letter. Groups that
have only some of their articles selected are flagged with
a '*'. You can change the selector's mode (to pick each
subject separately or pick individual articles), order the
list by a variety of sort criteria, and switch the author
display between its long, medium and short styles using
the commands detailed below.
The following commands are available in the selector:
a-z,0-9,A-Z
Select/deselect the indicated item by its letter
or number. There are quite a few letters omitted
from the alpha characters to be typed as commands
-- see below. Also, the variable SELECTCHARS is
available to customize which characters you want
to be used as selection letters, overriding their
command function.
SP Perform the default command. This is usually >
for most pages, and Z on the last page (although D
and X are also quite popular).
CR Begin reading. If no articles are selected, the
current item is selected (unless you've marked it
as killed).
Z,TAB Begin reading. If no articles are selected, read
all unread articles.
'.' Toggle the current item's selection (the one under
the cursor).
* Same as '.' except that it affects all articles
with the same subject (useful in the article
selector).
# Make an overriding selection that reads the cur-
rent item only, temporarily ignoring all other
selections.
k, ',' Mark the current item as killed.
m, \ Unmark the current item.
- Set a range, as in a - k. Repeats the last mark-
ing action: selection, deselection, killing, or
unmarking.
@ Toggle all visible selections.
M Mark the current item's article(s) to return on
newsgroup exit and kill the item.
Y Yank back and select the marked-to-return arti-
cles, clearing their to-return status.
E Exclude all unselected items from the selection
list (narrow the display). Press it again to pick
from all available items.
n, ] Move down to the next item (try the down-arrow
keypad key also).
p, [ Move up to the previous item (try the up-arrow
keypad key also).
< Go to previous page (try the left-arrow keypad key
also).
> Go to next page (try the right-arrow keypad key
also).
^ Go to the first page.
$ Go to the last page.
S Set the items the selector displays: threads, sub-
jects or articles. If the group is unthreaded
setting this to threads will thread the group.
= Switch between the article selector and the sub-
ject/thread selector.
O Pick the order for the items: date, subject,
author, item count (for thread/subject groups),
and a subject-date grouping of individual arti-
cles. Typing the selection in lower-case will
sort the articles in the default direction, while
using upper-case will reverse the sort. There is
a separate default sort order for the sub-
ject/thread selector and the article selector.
See the -O option to set your favorite selector
mode and sort order as the default.
R Reverse the current sort order.
L Switch the selector's display between the long,
medium and short display styles. See the -x
option to set your favorite style as the default.
U Switch between selecting unread/read articles.
X Mark all unselected articles as read and start
reading.
D Mark unselected articles on the current page as
read and begin reading if articles are selected,
otherwise go to the next page.
J Mark all selected articles as read (useful after
performing some action on them with the ':' com-
mand).
c Catch up -- marks ALL articles as read without
affecting their cross-posted counterparts.
A Add a subject-search command to the memorized list
(a.k.a. a KILL file) for this group. You are
prompted to choose selection (+), junking (j),
selection including all replies (.) or junking
including all replies (,). If the thread has more
than one subject the first subject is the one cho-
sen for the memorized command.
T Add a thread-oriented command to the memorized
list for this group. You are prompted to choose
selecting the thread (+), junking the thread (j),
or clearing the auto-selection/junking for the
thread (c). (Note: there are three other options
('.', ',', and 'C') on the article-reading level
-- look there for an explanation of their use.)
^K Edit the local list of memorized commands (a.k.a.
a KILL file) for this newsgroup. A detailed
description of memorized commands is found in the
Article Selection section.
:command
Apply a command to all the selected threads or
their selected articles. You can also use ":E" to
end a binary extraction or ":p" to post a new
article. Use "::command" to apply it to all non-
selected threads/articles.
Applicable commands include '+'/'-' (select/dese-
lect an article), "++"/"--" (select/deselect a
thread), "T+" (auto-select the entire thread),
"Tj" (auto-junk the entire thread), 't' (display
article tree), "s dest" (save article to a desti-
nation), "e dir" (extract to directory), 'E' (end
partial uudecode), as well as: S, |, w, W, m, M,
j, = and ','.
:.command
Apply a command to the current thread or the
selected articles in the current thread. Use
"::.command" to apply a command to the unselected
articles in the current thread.
/pattern
Scan all articles for a subject containing pattern
and select it.
/pattern/modifiers:command{:command}
Apply the commands listed to articles matching the
search command (possibly with h, a, b, r, or K
modifiers). The default action, if no command is
specified, is to select the article's item in the
selector (e.g. the entire thread ("++") in the
thread selector). See the section on Regular
Expressions and the description of pattern search-
ing in the Article Selection section.
One example: to scan all the unread articles look-
ing for "topic" anywhere in the article and then
select its group and save the articles to the
files topic.1, topic.2, etc. use "/topic/a:++:s
topic.%#".
N Go to the next newsgroup with unread news.
P Go to the previous newsgroup with unread news.
& Display or set the current status of command-line
switches.
&& Display or set the current macro definitions.
!command
Escape to a subshell.
q Quit this group.
ESC,+ Quit the selector to the article level. Note: ESC
won't work if trn has mapped your arrow keys with
default macros and the first character that your
arrow keys send is an ESC.
Q Quit the current newsgroup and return to the news-
group-selection prompt for this group.
Article-Reading Level
On the article-reading level, trn displays unread articles
in thread sequence (reading each article and its replies
before going on to another topic) unless threads are dis-
abled for a particular group, in which case the default
order is the order they arrived at your site (numeric
sequence). In either case if you use the subject-search
command (^N) you will switch to reading the articles in
date order within each matching subject. (Making selec-
tions in the subject selector or using the -S switch will
automatically turn subject search mode on in an unthreaded
group.)
On the article-reading level you are not asked whether you
want to read an article before the article is displayed;
rather, trn simply displays the first page (or portion of
a page, at low baud rates) of an article and asks if you
want to continue. The normal article-reading prompt comes
at the END of an article (although article-reading com-
mands can also be given from within the middle of an arti-
cle in addition to the pager level commands). The prompt
at the end of an article looks like this:
End of article 248 (of 257) -- what next? [npq]
The following are the options at this point:
n,SP Scan forward for next unread article. (Note: the
'n' (next) command when typed at the end of an
article does not mark the article as read, since
an article is automatically marked as read after
the last line of it is printed. It is therefore
possible to type a sequence such as 'mn' and leave
the article marked as unread. The fact that an
article is marked as read by typing n, N, ^N, e,
s, S, |, w, or W within the MIDDLE of the article
is in fact a special case.)
N Go to the next article.
^N Find the next article with the same subject in
date order. This also makes subject search mode
(^N) the default command at the end of an article.
p Scan backward for previous unread article. If
there is none, stay at the current article.
P Go to the previous article.
- Go to the previously displayed article (regardless
of whether that article is before or after this
article in the normal sequence).
^P Find the previous article with the same subject in
date order. Makes subject search mode (^N) the
default.
_N Go to the next article in numeric sequence.
_P Go to the previous article in numeric sequence.
<, > Browse the previous/next selected thread/subject.
If no selections have been made, all the threads
that had unread news when you entered the news-
group (or last left the selector) are treated as
selected. Entering an empty newsgroup makes all
the already-read threads available for browsing.
[, ] Proceed to the left/right in the article tree.
Visits already-read articles as well as empty
nodes. Try using the left-/right-arrow keys also.
{, } Go to the root/leaf of the article tree, even if
the node is already read or empty. Proceeds to
the very first/last node if you're already at a
root/leaf in a multi-root thread.
(, ) Go to the previous/next sibling in the thread,
including "cousin" siblings. Try using the
up-/down-arrow keys also.
t Display the entire article tree and all its asso-
ciated subjects. If the group is not currently
threaded, it will become threaded to process this
command.
^R Restart the current article.
v Restart the current article verbosely, displaying
the entire header.
^L Refresh the screen.
^X Restart the current article, and decrypt as a
rot13 message.
X Refresh the screen, and decrypt as a rot13 mes-
sage.
b Back up one page.
^E Display the last page of the article.
q Quit this newsgroup and go back to the newsgroup-
selection level.
^ Go to the first unread article.
$ Go to the last article (actually, one past the
last article).
number Go to the numbered article.
_C Switch to next available charset conversion.
range{,range}:command{:command}
Apply a set of commands to a set of articles. A
range consists of either <article number> or
<article number>-<article number>. A dot '.' rep-
resents the current article, and a dollar sign '$'
represents the last article.
Applicable commands include 'm' (mark as unread),
'M' (mark as read-until-exit), 'j' (mark as read),
"s dest" (save to a destination), "e dir" (extract
to directory), "!command" (shell escape), "="
(print the subject), '+'/'-' (select/deselect the
article), 'T+' (auto-select the entire thread),
'Tj' (auto-junk the entire thread), "++"/"--"
(select/deselect the associated thread), 'C' (can-
cel), as well as S, |, w, W, and t.
:command
Apply a command to all the selected threads or
their selected articles. Use "::command" to apply
it to all non-selected threads/articles. For
applicable commands, see the discussion above for
the range command.
:.command
Apply a command to the current thread or the
selected articles in the current thread. Use
"::.command" to apply a command to the unselected
articles in the current thread.
j Junk the current article (i.e. mark it as read).
If this command is used from within an article,
you are left at the end of the article, unlike
'n', which looks for the next article.
m Mark the current article as still unread. (If you
don't want to see this article for a while you're
probably better off using M instead of m, other-
wise this article might get picked again as the
first available article sooner than you'd like.)
M Mark the current article to return on newsgroup
exit. Until then, the current article will be
marked as read. This is useful for returning to
an article in another session.
Y Yank back the marked-to-return articles, clearing
their to-return status. If you are reading
selected articles, the yanked articles come back
selected.
/pattern
Scan forward for article containing pattern in the
subject. See the Regular Expressions section.
Together with the escape substitution facility
described later, it becomes easy to search for
various attributes of the current article, such as
subject, article ID, author name, etc. The previ-
ous pattern can be recalled with ESC. If pattern
is omitted, the previous pattern is assumed.
/pattern/f
Scan forward for article containing pattern in the
from line. If you are using thread files the
article data you are matching against MAY contain
only the real name of the user. If you want to
always match the full from line, see the following
header-matching option that will read in the full
from-line data if it is not already available.
/pattern/Hheader
Scan forward for article containing pattern in the
indicated header. Because we scan the entire
string up to the end of the modifiers, this modi-
fier must be the last one. For example,
"/jsmoe@somesite.com/rHfrom:m+" will mark all
articles from "jsmoe@somesite.com" as unread and
select them. Note that if the header line isn't
one that trn recognizes in its header parser,
you'll have to use the following full-header
matching.
/pattern/h
Scan forward for an article containing pattern in
the header.
/pattern/a
Scan forward for an article containing pattern
anywhere in the article.
/pattern/b
Scan forward for an article containing pattern in
the body of the article, but not the signature.
(The signature must be properly delimited to be
ignored, however.)
/pattern/B
Scan forward for an article containing pattern
anywhere in the body of the article.
/pattern/r
Scan read articles also.
/pattern/c
Make search case sensitive. Ordinarily upper- and
lower-case are considered the same.
/pattern/t
Force the search to start at the top of the group
(useful while reading the group, since the default
is to start at the current article).
/pattern/I
Force the search to ignore the THRU line when exe-
cuted as a memorized command. If the command por-
tion is a selection command (i.e. it starts with a
'+' or a '.') this is the default behavior.
/pattern/N
Force the search to NOT ignore the THRU line when
executed as a memorized command (useful on selec-
tion commands -- see also -k).
/pattern/modifiers:command{:command}
Apply the commands listed to articles matching the
search command (possibly with h, a, b, or r modi-
fiers). Applicable commands include 'm' (mark as
UNread), 'M' (mark as read-until-exit), 'j' (junk
-- mark as read in all groups), 'x' (mark as read
in this group), "s dest" (save to a dest), "e dir"
(extract to dir), "!command" (shell escape), "="
(print the subject), '+' (select the article), '-'
deselect the article, 'T+' (auto-select the entire
thread), 'Tj' (auto-junk the entire thread), "++"
(select the associated thread), "--" deselect the
associated thread), and 'C' (cancel). If the
first command is 'm' or 'M', modifier r is
assumed. A K may be included in the modifiers
(not the commands) to cause the entire command
(sans K) to be saved to the local KILL file, where
it will be applied to every article that shows up
in the newsgroup.
For example, to save all articles in a given news-
group to the line printer and mark them read, use
"/^/|lpr:j". If you type "/^/K|lpr:j", this will
happen every time you enter the newsgroup.
?pattern
Scan backward for article containing pattern in
the subject. May be modified as the forward
search is: ?pattern?modifiers[:commands]. It is
likely that you will want an r modifier when scan-
ning backward.
k Mark as read all articles with the same subject as
the current article. (Note: there is no single
character command to temporarily mark as read (M
command) articles matching the current subject.
That can be done with "/<ESC>s/M", however.)
Mark the current article and all its replies as
read.
J Junk all the articles in the current thread, even
if it contains multiple subjects.
A Add a subject-search command to the memorized list
for this group (in the KILL file). You are
prompted to choose selection (+), junking (j),
selection including all replies (.) or junking
including all replies (,).
K This is a synonym for the command "Aj" which adds
a command to junk the current subject to the memo-
rized commands for the group. See also the K mod-
ifier on searches above.
T Add a thread-oriented command to the memorized
list for this group. You are prompted to choose
selection of entire thread (+), junking of entire
thread (j), selection of an article and its
replies (.), junking of an article and its replies
(,), clearing the auto-selection/junking for this
thread (c), or clearing the auto-selection/junking
for an article and its replies (C).
^K Edit the local list of memorized commands (a.k.a.
a KILL file) for this newsgroup. Each line of the
KILL file is either a subject-affecting command of
the form /pattern/x or a thread-affecting command
of the form <message-id> Tx. The first line in
the KILL file has the form "THRU <number>", which
tells trn the maximum article number that the KILL
file has been applied to. The THRU value is usu-
ally only used to keep header or article searches
from happening multiple times. Subject and from-
line searches are quite fast if the group has
cached data around (e.g. a .thread or .overview
file). If it doesn't, the THRU line is used to
set a lower boundary on the search to keep the
startup time as short as possible. If trn skipped
some selections (or you're not sure), wait for the
group to finish being cached (e.g. visiting the
selector forces the caching of all unread arti-
cles), quit the group, and re-enter.
To see only newgroup articles in the control news-
group, for instance, you might include the line
/newgroup/:+
which selects all subjects containing "newgroup".
You can add lines automatically via the A and T
commands as well as the K search modifier, but
editing is the only way to remove subject commands
(thread commands die automatically as the thread
dies). If either of the environment variables
VISUAL or EDITOR is set, the specified editor will
be invoked; otherwise a default editor (normally
vi) is invoked on the KILL file.
The KILL file may also contain switch-setting
lines beginning with '&' (see the section on
"Options") and special commands beginning with
'*'. There are two such commands at the moment:
"*j" (junk all articles from THRU to the end of
the group) and "*X" (junk all unselected articles
from THRU to the end of the group). Additionally,
any line beginning with 'X' is executed on exit
from the newsgroup rather than on entrance. This
can be used to set switches back to a default
value. One use for this capability is to set your
save directory to a custom value upon entry to a
newsgroup and set it back on exit using the
-ESAVEDIR option. See also the -/ option for
another solution to multiple save directories
without using KILL files.
r Reply through net mail. The environment variables
MAILPOSTER and MAILHEADER may be used to modify
the mailing behavior of trn (see the environment
section). If the current article does not exist
(such as the "End of newsgroup" pseudo-article you
can get to with a '$' command), invokes the mailer
to nobody in particular.
R Reply, including the current article in the header
file generated. (See 'F' command below). The
YOUSAID environment variable controls the format
of the attribution line.
^F Forward the current article.
f Submit a follow-up article. If the current arti-
cle does not exist (such as the "End of newsgroup"
pseudo-article you can get to with a '$' command),
posts an original (root) article.
F Submit a follow-up article, and include the old
article, with lines prefixed either by ">" or by
the argument to the -F switch. Trn will attempt
to provide an attribution line in front of the
quoted article, generated from the From: line of
the article. Unfortunately, the From: line
doesn't always contain the right name; you should
double check it against the signature and change
it if necessary, or you may have to apologize for
quoting the wrong person. The environment
variables NEWSPOSTER, NEWSHEADER and ATTRIBUTION
may be used to modify the posting behavior of trn
(see environment section).
C Cancel the current article, but only if you are
the contributor or superuser.
z Supersede the current article, but only if you are
the contributor.
Z Same as the 'z' command, but you start with a copy
of the original article to work with.
c Catch up in this newsgroup; i.e., mark all arti-
cles as read.
U Mark some or all articles as unread. You can
choose to mark the current thread, sub-thread (the
current article and its replies), all the arti-
cles, or start up the selector to choose specific
articles to set unread.
u Unsubscribe from this newsgroup.
s destination
Save to a filename or pipe using sh. If the first
character of the destination is a vertical bar,
the rest of the command is considered a shell com-
mand to which the article is passed through stan-
dard input. The command is subject to filename
expansion. (See also the environment variable
PIPESAVER.) If the destination does not begin
with a vertical bar, the rest of the command is
assumed to be a filename of some sort. An initial
tilde '~' will be translated to the name of the
home directory, and an initial environment vari-
able substitution is also allowed. If only a
directory name is specified, the environment vari-
able SAVENAME is used to generate the actual name.
If a non-absolute filename is specified, the envi-
ronment variable SAVEDIR will be used to generate
the actual directory. If nothing is specified,
then obviously both variables will be used. Since
the current directory for trn while doing a save
command is your private news directory, typing "s
./filename" will force the file to your news
directory. Save commands are also run through %
interpretation, so that you can enter "s %O/file-
name" to save to the directory you were in when
you ran trn, and "s %t" to save to a filename con-
sisting of the Internet address of the sender.
After generating the full pathname of the file to
save to, trn determines if the file exists
already, and if so, appends to it. trn will
attempt to determine if an existing file is a
mailbox or a normal file, and save the article in
the same format. If the output file does not yet
exist, trn will by default ask you which format
you want, or you can make it skip the question
with either the -M or -N switch. If the article
is to be saved in mailbox format, the command to
do so is generated from the environment variable
MBOXSAVER. Otherwise, NORMSAVER is used.
S destination
Save to a filename or pipe using a preferred
shell, such as csh. Which shell is used depends
first on what you have the environment variable
SHELL set to, and in the absence of that, on what
your news administrator set for the preferred
shell when he or she installed trn.
| command
Shorthand for "s | command".
w destination
The same as "s destination", but saves without the
header.
W destination
The same as "S destination", but saves without the
header.
e directory
Extract a shell archive or uuencoded binary to the
designated directory. The article is first
scanned to try discover what type of data is
encapsulated. If a "cut here" line is found, the
first non-blank line after it must be either the
start of a shar header, or the "begin" or "table"
line of a uuencoded binary. The default for
extracting shars is to send the data portion of
the file to /bin/sh, but that can be overridden
with the UNSHAR variable (see the ENVIRONMENT sec-
tion). Uudecoding is done internally by a decoder
that can handle the data being split up over mul-
tiple articles, and extracted one piece at a time.
To decode a multi-article file, either execute the
'e' command in each article in sequence, use an
article range to execute the command, or use the
":e" command to repeat the command for each of the
currently selected articles. When the 'e' command
is not followed by any arguments, it will repeat
the arguments from the last extraction. All
directory specifications are relative to the value
of SAVEDIR, so you can use the command "e ." to
force an extraction to SAVEDIR itself. If a
uudecoding is in progress (i.e. the last piece
wasn't extracted yet) and you exit the group, the
partial file will be removed. This also occurs if
you start to extract a new uuencoded file before
the previous one was finished. See also the 'E'
command for ending a multi-part uudecoding manu-
ally.
There is one special case that is handled differ-
ently: if the first file in a recognizable shar
file is a uuencoded binary that was packed with
lines starting with an 'X', we will not unshar the
file but instead uudecode it. If this causes
problems, you can override the default extraction
method by following the directory with an explicit
command to execute, as described below.
e directory|command
This form of the 'e' command allows you to extract
other data formats than shar or uuencoded files or
to override the decisions made by the automatic
extraction selection described above. In normal
operation, all data following what we recognize as
a "cut here" line will be sent to the specified
command. Additionally, the distinctive beginning
of a shell archive is also recognized without a
preceding cut line. When the command is run, the
default directory will be set to the specified
directory, or the value of SAVEDIR if unspecified.
Entering the 'e' command without arguments will
repeat your previous extract command. You can use
the command "e dir|" to extract to a new directory
using the previously-specified command.
E This command ends any multi-part uuencoded file
extraction that you began, but are unable (or
unwilling) to complete. The partially extracted
file is removed.
& Print out the current status of command-line
switches.
&switch {switch}
Set additional command-line switches.
&& Print out current macro definitions.
&&keys commands
Define an additional macro.
!command
Escape to a subshell. One exclamation mark (!)
leaves you in your own news directory. A double
exclamation mark (!!) leaves you in the spool
directory of the current newsgroup. The environ-
ment variable SHELL will be used if defined. If
command is null, an interactive shell is started.
You can use escape key substitutions described
later to get to many run-time values. The command
is also run through % interpretation, in case it
is being called from a range or search command.
+ Start the selector in the last-used mode. If the
newsgroup is unthreaded and the default selector
mode is threads, we temporarily switch to subject
selection unless manually overridden.
_a Start the selector in article mode.
_s Start the selector in subject mode.
_t Start the selector in thread mode.
_T Start the selector in thread mode unless the group
isn't threaded, in which case we settle for the
subject selector.
= List subjects of unread articles.
# Print last article number.
_+ Select the entire thread associated with the cur-
rent article.
_- Deselect the entire thread associated with the
current article.
Pager Level
At the pager level (within an article), the prompt looks
like this:
--MORE--(17%)
and a number of commands may be given:
SP Display next page.
x Display next page and decrypt as a rot13 message.
d Display half a page more.
CR Display one more line.
q Go to the end of the current article (don't mark
it either read or unread). Leaves you at the
"What next?" prompt.
j Junk the current article. Mark it read and go to
the end of the article.
^L Refresh the screen.
X Refresh the screen and decrypt as a rot13 message.
b Back up one page.
^E Display the last page of the article.
_C Switch to next available charset conversion.
t Display the entire article tree, including its
associated subjects, and continue reading. If the
group is not currently threaded, it will be
threaded first.
gpattern
Goto (search forward for) pattern within current
article. Note that there is no space between the
command and the pattern. If the pattern is found,
the page containing the pattern will be displayed.
Where on the page the line matching the pattern
goes depends on the value of the -g switch. By
default the matched line goes at the top of the
screen.
G Search for g pattern again.
^G This is a special version of the 'g' command that
is for skipping articles in a digest. It is
equivalent to setting "-g4" and then executing the
command "g^Subject:".
TAB This is another special version of the 'g' command
that is for skipping inclusions of older articles.
It is equivalent to setting "-g4" and then execut-
ing the command "g^[^c]", where c is the first
character of the last line on the screen. It
searches for the first line that doesn't begin
with the same character as the last line on the
screen.
!command
Escape to a subshell.
The following commands skip the rest of the current arti-
cle, then behave just as if typed to the "What next?"
prompt at the end of the article. See the documentation
at the article selection level for these commands.
# $ & / = ? A c C f F k K T ^K J , m M r R ^R u U v Y
^
p P ^P - < > [ ] { } number
range{,range} command{:command}
The following commands also skip to the end of the arti-
cle, but have the additional effect of marking the current
article as read:
n N ^N e s S | w W
Miscellaneous facts about commands
An 'n' typed at either the "Last newsgroup" prompt or a
"Last article" prompt will cycle back to the top of the
newsgroup or article list, whereas a 'q' will quit the
level. (Note that 'n' does not mean "no", but rather
"next".) A space will of course do whatever is shown as
the default, which will vary depending on whether trn
thinks you have more articles or newsgroups to read.
The 'b' (backup page) command may be repeated until the
beginning of the article is reached. If trn is suspended
(via a ^Z), then when the job is resumed, a refresh (^L)
will automatically be done (Berkeley-type systems only).
If you type a command such as '!' or 's' which takes you
from the middle of the article to the end, you can always
get back into the middle by typing '^L'.
In multi-character commands such as '!', 's', '/', etc,
you can interpolate various run-time values by typing
escape and a character. To find out what you can interpo-
late, type escape and 'h', or check out the single charac-
ter % substitutions for environment variables in the
Interpretation and Interpolation section, which are the
same. Additionally, typing a double escape will cause any
% substitutions in the string already typed in to be
expanded.
The Tree Display
When reading a threaded newsgroup, trn displays a charac-
ter representation of the article tree in the upper right
corner of the header. For example, consider the following
display:
(1)+-(1)--(2)--[2]
|-(1)+-<3>
| \-[1]
\-(1)+-[1]--[1]
\-[1]
This tree represents an initial article that has three
direct replies (the second column with three (1)'s). Each
reply has further replies branching off from them. In two
cases the subject line was altered in the reply, as indi-
cated by the increasing numbers.
The third subject is not selected for reading, as indi-
cated by the <>'s. Note you can always forcefully visit
an unselected article with 'N' and 'P' as well as the
thread-navagation commands (which are typically macro'ed
to the arrow keys on your keypad).
When there is only one subject associated with a thread,
all the nodes are marked with the number 1. When the
first subject change arrives, it is marked with the number
2, and so on. If you were to look at this thread in the
thread selector, the three subjects associated with it
would be listed in the same order as the ascending digits.
In those rare cases where more than 9 subjects are associ-
ated with each thread, the nodes are marked with the let-
ters A-Z, and then by a-z.
The articles that have already been read are enclosed in
()'s, Unread articles are displayed in []'s, and unread-
but-unselected articles are displayed in <>'s. The cur-
rently displayed article has its entire node highlighted
in the display. The previously displayed article has only
its number highlighted. If the group has not been com-
pletely threaded yet, some articles will appear as (?)
until trn can determine if the referenced article truly
exists or not. If you visit such an article and wait for
trn to finish threading the group, the screen will refresh
as soon as the presence or absence of the article is
determined.
Options
Trn has a nice set of options to allow you to tailor the
interaction to your liking. (You might like to know that
the author swears by "-x6ms +e -mu -S -XX -N -B -p".)
These options may be set on the command line, via the
TRNINIT environment variable, via a file pointed to by the
TRNINIT variable, or from within trn via the & command.
Options may generally be unset by typing "+switch".
Options include:
-a causes trn to always thread the unread articles on
entry to a group. Without this option trn may enter
a group in a partially-threaded state and process the
unthreaded articles in the background. The down side
of this is that the tree display may not be complete
when it is first displayed and you may start out at
an odd position in the first thread's article tree.
-A tells trn to attempt to create some default macros
that will map your arrow keys to useful trn functions
(this is the default). Use +A to turn this behavior
off.
-b will force trn to read each thread in a breadth-first
order, rather than depth-first.
-B will turn on a spinner that twirls when trn is doing
background article-processing. A gizmo for those
interested in what's going on behind the scenes.
-c checks for news without reading news. If a list of
newsgroups is given on the command line, only those
newsgroups will be checked; otherwise all subscribed-
to newsgroups are checked. Whenever the -c switch is
specified, a non-zero exit status from trn means that
there is unread news in one of the checked news-
groups. The -c switch does not disable the printing
of newsgroups with unread news; this is controlled by
the -s switch. (The -c switch is not meaningful when
given via the & command.)
-C<<number>>
tells trn how often to checkpoint the .newsrc, in
articles read. Actually, this number says when to
start thinking about doing a checkpoint if the situa-
tion is right. If a reasonable check-pointing situa-
tion doesn't arise within 10 more articles, the
.newsrc is check-pointed willy-nilly.
-d<<directory name>>
sets your private news directory to something other
than ~/News. The directory name will be globbed (via
csh) if necessary (and if possible). The value of
SAVEDIR (where articles are saved) is initially set
to this directory, but is often manipulated via the
-/ option or by manipulating SAVEDIR directly (per-
haps via the memorized commands (the KILL file) for a
group. Any KILL files (see the K command in the
Article Selection section) also reside in this direc-
tory and its subdirectories, by default. In addi-
tion, shell escapes leave you in this directory.
-D<<flags>>
enables debugging output. See common.h for flag val-
ues. Warning: normally trn attempts to restore your
.newsrc when an unexpected signal or internal error
occurs. This is disabled when any debugging flags
are set.
-e causes each page within an article to be started at
the top of the screen, not just the first page. (It
is similar to the -c switch of more(1).) You never
have to read scrolling text with this switch. This
is helpful especially at certain baud rates because
you can start reading the top of the next page
without waiting for the whole page to be printed. It
works nicely in conjunction with the -m switch, espe-
cially if you use half-intensity for your highlight
mode. See also the -L switch.
-E<<name>>=<<val>>
sets the environment variable <name> to the value
specified. Within trn, "&-ESAVENAME=%t" is similar
to "setenv SAVENAME '%t'" in csh, or "SAVENAME='%t';
export SAVENAME" in sh. Any environment variables
set with -E will be inherited by subprocesses of trn.
-f will make trn avoid various sleep calls and the
prompt after the processing of the memorized commands
that are intended to allow you time to read a message
before the screen clears. This allows the advanced
user to cruise along a little faster at the expense
of readability. The -t (terse) option turns on -f by
default, but you can override this by specifying +f
after the -t option.
-F<<string>>
sets the prefix string for the 'F' follow-up command
to use in prefixing each line of the quoted article.
For example, "-F<tab>" inserts a tab on the front of
each line (which will cause long lines to wrap
around, unfortunately), "-F>>>>" inserts ">>>>" on
every line, and "-F" by itself causes nothing to be
inserted, in case you want to reformat the text, for
instance. The initial default prefix is ">".
-g<<line>>
tells trn which line of the screen you want searched-
for strings to show up on when you search with the
'g' command within an article. The lines are num-
bered starting with 1. The initial default is "-g1",
meaning the first line of the screen. Setting the
line to less than 1 or more than the number of lines
on the screen will set it to the last line of the
screen.
-G selects the "fuzzy" processing on the go command when
you don't type in a valid group name. With this
option on trn will attempt to find the group you
probably meant to type, but it can be a little slow
about it, so it's not on by default.
-h<<string>>
hides (disables the printing of) all header lines
beginning with string that trn recognizes. For
instance, -hexp will disable the printing of the
"Expires:" line. Case is insignificant. Headers
unknown to trn cannot be disabled except by turning
them all off (-h without a string will disable all
headers except the Subject) and then using +h to
select those lines you want to see. You may wish to
use the baud-rate switch modifier below to hide more
lines at lower baud rates.
-H<<string>>
works just like -h except that instead of setting the
hiding flag for a header line, it sets the magic flag
for that header line. Certain header lines have
magic behavior that can be controlled this way. At
present, the following actions are caused by the flag
for the particular line: the Date line prints the
date in local time if the group is threaded; the From
line will only print the commented portion of the
user name; the Newsgroups line will only print when
there are multiple newsgroups; the Subject line will
be underlined and (when threaded) the keyword 'Sub-
ject:' is replaced by its subject number (e.g. [1]);
and the Expires line will always be suppressed if
there is nothing on it. In fact, all of these
actions are the default, and you must use +H to undo
them.
-i=<<number>>
specifies how long (in lines) to consider the initial
page of an article -- normally this is determined
automatically depending on baud rate. (Note that an
entire article header will always be printed regard-
less of the specified initial page length. If you
are working at low baud rate and wish to reduce the
size of the headers, you may hide certain header
lines with the h switch.)
-I tells trn to append all new, unsubscribed groups to
the end of the .newsrc.
-j forces trn to leave control characters unmolested in
messages.
-J{<<number>>}
causes trn to join similar subjects into a common
thread if they are the same up to the indicated num-
ber of characters (the default is 30). You can turn
this on and off for specific groups by putting the
following lines into your kill file for the group(s):
&-J30
X&+J
-k tells trn to ignore the THRU line when processing
selection searches (i.e. searches with a command por-
tion that starts with a '+' or a '.') in the memo-
rized commands (aka kill files). This is turned on
by default, so use +k if you want to turn it off.
-K is used to keep a trn from checking for new news
while you're in the group. Use this when your kill-
file processing is so slow that you don't want the
group to expand while you're reading. If you only
want specific groups to be affected, put these lines
into your kill file for the group(s):
&-K
X&+K
-l disables the clearing of the screen at the beginning
of each article, in case you have a bizarre terminal.
-L tells trn to leave information on the screen as long
as possible by not blanking the screen between pages,
and by using clear to end-of-line. (The more(1) pro-
gram does this.) This feature works only if you have
the requisite termcap capabilities. The switch has
no effect unless the -e switch is set.
-m=<<mode>>
enables the marking of the last line of the previous
page printed, to help the user see where to continue
reading. This is most helpful when less than a full
page is going to be displayed. It may also be used
in conjunction with the -e switch, in which case the
page is erased, and the first line (which is the last
line of the previous page) is highlighted. If -m=s
is specified, the standout mode will be used, but if
-m=u is specified, underlining will be used. If nei-
ther =s or =u is specified, standout is the default.
Use +m to disable highlighting.
-M forces mailbox format in creating new save files.
Ordinarily you are asked which format you want.
-N forces normal (non-mailbox) format in creating new
save files. Ordinarily you are asked which format
you want.
-o will act like old versions of trn and not junk cross-
referenced articles when using thread commands to
junk articles in the current group (such as the
selector's 'X' command).
-O<<mode>>{<<order>>}
specifies the selector's mode and (optionally) the
sort order. The modes are 'a'rticle, 's'ubject, or
't'hread. The orders are 'd'ate, 's'ubject,
'a'uthor, article 'c'ount per group, 'n'umeric, or
subject-date 'g'roups. The order can be capitalized
to reverse the indicated order. For example, to
choose the article selector in subject order specify
"-Oas".
-p{opt}
tells trn to auto-select your postings and their
replies as it encounters them in the various groups
you read. The optional parameter is either a '.',
'p', or '+' (it defaults to '.' if omitted) and
affects what command trn should execute when it
encounters your postings. The default is to execute
the command "T." on each of your postings which tells
trn to memorize the auto-selection of this article
and all its replies. Using -pp tells trn to use the
same command, but start the selection with the parent
article, so that you see any other replies to the
same article. Using -p+ tells trn to select the
whole thread that contains your reply.
-q bypasses the automatic check for new newsgroups when
starting trn.
-Q<<set>>
defines the set of available charset conversions.
This can be useful to restrict the available conver-
sions to those your terminal can handle and/or to
specify an alternate default. The first element of
this set is taken as default for each article.
-r causes trn to restart in the last newsgroup read dur-
ing a previous session with trn. It is equivalent to
starting up normally and then getting to the news-
group with a g command.
-s with no argument suppresses the initial listing of
newsgroups with unread news, whether -c is specified
or not. Thus -c and -s can be used together to test
"silently" the status of news from within your .login
file. If -s is followed by a number, the initial
listing is suppressed after that many lines have been
listed. Presuming that you have your .newsrc sorted
into order of interest, -s5 will tell you the 5 most
interesting newsgroups that have unread news. This
is also a nice feature to use in your .login file,
since it not only tells you whether there is unread
news, but also how important the unread news is,
without having to wade through the entire list of
unread newsgroups. If no -s switch is given -s5 is
assumed, so just putting "rn -c" into your .login
file is fine.
-S<<number>>
causes trn to enter subject search mode (^N) automat-
ically whenever an unthreaded newsgroup is started up
with <number> unread articles or more. Additionally,
it causes any 'n' typed while in subject search mode
to be interpreted as '^N' instead. (To get back out
of subject search mode, the best command is probably
'^'.) If <number> is omitted, 3 is assumed.
-t puts trn into terse mode. This is more cryptic but
useful for low baud rates. (Note that your system
administrator may have compiled trn with either ver-
bose or terse messages only to save memory.) You may
wish to use the baud-rate switch modifier below to
enable terse mode only at lower baud rates.
-T allows you to type ahead of trn. Ordinarily trn will
eat typeahead to prevent your autorepeating space bar
from doing a very frustrating thing when you acciden-
tally hold it down. If you don't have a repeating
space bar, or you are working at low baud rate, you
can set this switch to prevent this behavior. You
may wish to use the baud-rate switch modifier below
to disable typeahead only at lower baud rates.
-u sets the unbroken-subject-line mode in the selector,
which simply truncates subjects that are too long
instead of dumping the middle portion prior to the
last two words of the subject.
-U tells trn to not write the .newsrc file out after
visiting each group. While this is "unsafe" it can
be faster if you have a really huge .newsrc.
-v sets verification mode for commands. When set, the
command being executed is displayed to give some
feedback that the key has actually been typed. Use-
ful when the system is heavily loaded and you give a
command that takes a while to start up.
-V will output trn's version number and quit.
-x{<<number>>}{<<list>>}
Enable the extended (threaded) features of trn beyond
the rn compatibility mode (this may be the default on
your system, use +x if you yearn for the good ol'
days). The <number> is the maximum number of arti-
cle-tree lines (from 0 to 11) you want displayed in
your header. Use the <list> to choose which thread
selector styles you like ('s'hort, 'm'edium, or
'l'ong), and in what order they are selected with the
'L' command. For example, use -xms to start with the
medium display mode and only switch between it and
the short mode. You can omit either or both of the
parameters, in which case a default of -x6lms is
assumed.
-X{<<number>>}{<<commands>>}
If you like using the selector, you'll probably want
to use this option to make the selector command (+)
the default when a newsgroup is started up with at
least <number> unread articles. (Your installer may
have chosen to make -X1 the default on your system.)
It is also used to select which commands you want to
be the defaults while using the thread selector. For
example, -X2XD will make the thread selector the
default command for entering a newsgroup with at
least 2 unread articles, and set the default command
for the LAST page of the thread selector to be the X
command and the default command for all other pages
to be the D command. Either or both parameters can
be omitted, as well as the second default command
(e.g. -XX would change the default newsgroup entry
to use the selector and the default command for the
last page of the selector to be 'X'). The default is
-X1Z>> if just -X is specified. To set the default
selector commands without having '+' be the default
entry into a newsgroup, specify a high number, like
9999.
-z sets the minimum number of minutes that must elapse
before the active file is refetched to look for new
articles. A value of 0 or using +z turns this off.
-Z is used to select what style of database you want trn
to access. Use -Zt for thread files, -Zo for
overview files, and +Z for none. The default is
whatever your newsadmin compiled into trn, and can be
-Zot to try to access either one.
-/ sets SAVEDIR to "%p/%c" and SAVENAME to "%a", which
means that by default articles are saved in a subdi-
rectory of your private news directory corresponding
to the name of the the current newsgroup, with the
filename being the article number. +/ sets SAVEDIR
to "%p" and SAVENAME to "%^C", which by default saves
articles directly to your private news directory,
with the filename being the name of the current news-
group, first letter capitalized. (Either +/ or -/
may be default on your system, depending on the feel-
ings of your news administrator when he, she or it
installed trn.) You may, of course, explicitly set
SAVEDIR and SAVENAME to other values -- see discus-
sion in the environment section.
Any switch may be selectively applied according to the
current baud-rate. Simply prefix the switch with +speed
to apply the switch at that speed or greater, and -speed
to apply the switch at that speed or less. Examples:
-1200-hposted suppresses the Posted line at 1200 baud or
less; +9600-m enables marking at 9600 baud or more. You
can apply the modifier recursively to itself also:
+300-1200-t sets terse mode from 300 to 1200 baud.
Similarly, switches may be selected based on terminal
type:
-=vt100+T set +T on vt100
-=tvi920-ETERM=mytvi get a special termcap entry
-=tvi920-ERNMACRO=%./.rnmac.tvi
set up special key-mappings
+=paper-v set verify mode if not hardcopy
Some switch arguments, such as environment variable val-
ues, may require spaces in them. Such spaces should be
quoted via ", ', or \ in the conventional fashion, even
when passed via TRNINIT or the & command.
Regular Expressions
The patterns used in article searching are regular expres-
sions such as those used by ed(1). In addition, \w
matches an alphanumeric character and \W a non-alphanu-
meric. Word boundaries may be matched by \b, and non-
boundaries by \B. The bracketing construct \( ... \) may
also be used, and \digit matches the digit'th substring,
where digit can range from 1 to 9. \0 matches whatever
the last bracket match matched. Up to 10 alternatives may
given in a pattern, separated by \|, with the caveat that
\( ... \| ... \) is illegal.
Characterset conversions
trn can use character set conversions when displaying
articles. This helps users in non-English-speaking coun-
tries to display special characters on 7-bit displays.
trn assumes that articles use the ISO-8859-1 character set
and converts the special characters (e.g., "umlauts") to a
string of ASCII characters. Currently the following con-
versions are supported (see the -Q option):
p Plain. No change. This is the default.
a ISO->ASCII. Special characters are mapped to ASCII,
e.g. the umlaut-o character becomes oe.
m ISO->ASCII monospaced. Special characters are mapped
to exactly one similar-looking ASCII character, e.g.
umlaut-o becomes o. Used where correct spacing is
more important than accuracy.
t TeX->ISO. Assuming your display can handle the
ISO-8859-1 charset, trn transforms umlauts in the TeX
notation, which is commonly used in Germany, to real
ISO characters, e.g. "a becomes umlaut-a.
The selected conversion, if different from p, will be dis-
played in the article level and pager prompt. The conver-
sion is also used when including original articles in a
reply or followup. It is not used when saving articles to
files.
Interpretation and Interpolation
Many of the strings that trn handles are subject to inter-
pretations of several types. Under filename expansion, an
initial "~/" is translated to the name of your home direc-
tory, and "~name" is translated to the login directory for
the user specified. Filename expansion will also expand
an initial environment variable, and also does the back-
slash, caret and percent expansion mentioned below.
All interpreted strings go through backslash, caret and
percent interpretation. The backslash escapes are the
normal ones (such as \n, \t, \033, etc.). The caret
escapes indicate control codes (such as ^i, ^l, etc.). If
you wish to pass through a backslash or a caret it must be
escaped with a backslash. The special percent escapes are
similar to printf percent escapes. These cause the sub-
stitution of various run-time values into the string. The
following are currently recognized:
%a Current article number.
%A Full name of current article (%P/%c/%a).
%b Destination of last save command, often a mailbox.
%B The byte offset to the beginning of the part of
the article to be saved, set by the save command.
The 's' and 'S' commands set it to 0, and the 'w'
and 'W' commands set it to the byte offset of the
body of the article.
%c Current newsgroup, directory form.
%C Current newsgroup, dot form.
%d Full name of newsgroup directory (%P/%c).
%D "Distribution:" line from the current article.
%e The last command executed to extract data from an
article.
%E The last directory where an extracted file went.
%f "From:" line from the current article, or the
"Reply-To:" line if there is one. This differs
from %t in that comments (such as the full name)
are not stripped out with %f.
%F "Newsgroups:" line for a new article, constructed
from "Newsgroups:" and "Followup-To:" lines of
current article.
%h Name of the header file to pass to the mail or
news poster, containing all the information that
the poster program needs in the form of a message
header. It may also contain a copy of the current
article. The format of the header file is con-
trolled by the MAILHEADER and NEWSHEADER environ-
ment variables.
%H Host name (your machine's name).
%i "Message-I.D.:" line from the current article,
with <> guaranteed.
%I The reference indication mark (see the -F switch.)
%l The news administrator's login name, if any.
%L Login name (yours).
%m The current mode of trn, for use in conditional
macros.
i Initializing.
n Newsgroup-selection level.
f end (Finis) of newsgroup-selection level.
t the Thread/subject/article selector.
a Article level (What next?).
e End of the article level.
p Pager level (MORE prompt).
u Set-unread prompt.
d selector moDe prompt.
o selector Order prompt.
m Memorize thread command prompt.
r memoRize subject command prompt.
k processing memorized (KILL file) commands.
A Add this newsgroup?
B aBandon confirmation.
C Catchup confirmation.
D Delete bogus newsgroups?
F Is follow-up a new topic?
M Use mailbox format?
R Resubscribe to this newsgroup?
Note that yes/no questions are all upper-case
modes. If, for example, you wanted to disallow
defaults on all yes/no questions, you could define
the following macro:
\040 %(%m=[A-Z]?h: )
%M The number of articles marked to return via the
'M' command. If the same article is Marked multi-
ple times, "%M" counts it multiple times in the
current implementation.
%n "Newsgroups:" line from the current article.
%N Full name (yours).
%o Organization (yours).
%O Original working directory (where you ran trn
from).
%p Your private news directory, normally ~/News.
%P Public news spool directory, normally
/usr/spool/news on systems that don't use NNTP.
%q The value of the last "quoted" input string (see
the %" interp).
%r Last reference on references line of current arti-
cle (parent article id).
%R References list for a new article, constructed
from the references and article ID of the current
article.
%s Subject, with all Re's and (nf)'s stripped off.
%S Subject, with one "Re:" stripped off.
%t "To:" line derived from the "From:" and "Reply-
To:" lines of the current article. This always
returns an Internet format address.
%T "To:" line derived from the "Path:" line of the
current article to produce a uucp path.
%u The number of unread articles in the current news-
group.
%U The number of unread articles in the current news-
group, not counting the the current article. When
threads are selected, this count reflects only
selected articles.
%v The number of unselected articles, not counting
the current article if it is unselected.
%w The directory where mthreads keeps its tmp files.
%W The directory where thread files are placed.
%x The news library directory.
%X The trn library directory.
%z The length of the current article in bytes.
%Z The number of selected threads.
%~ Your home directory.
%. The directory containing your dot files, which is
your home directory unless the environment vari-
able DOTDIR is defined when trn is invoked.
%# The current count for a multi-file save, starting
with 1. This value is incremented by one for each
file saved or extracted within a single command.
%$ Current process number.
%/ Last search string.
%? A space unless the current interp string is > 79
characters, at which point it turns into a new-
line.
%% A percent sign.
%{name} or %{name-default}
The environment variable "name".
%[name] The value of header line "Name:" from the current
article. The "Name: " is not included. For exam-
ple "%D" and "%[distribution]" are equivalent.
The name must be spelled out in full.
%`command`
Inserts the output of the command, with any embed-
ded newlines translated to space.
%""prompt""
Prints prompt on the terminal, then inputs one
string, and inserts it.
%(test_text=pattern?then_text:else_text)
If test_text matches pattern, has the value
then_text, otherwise else_text. The ":else_text"
is optional, and if absent, interpolates the null
string. The = may be replaced with != to negate
the test. To quote any of the meta-characters
('=', '?', ':', or ')'), precede with a backslash.
%digit The digits 1 through 9 interpolate the string
matched by the nth bracket in the last pattern
match that had brackets. If the last pattern had
alternatives, you may not know the number of the
bracket you want -- %0 will give you the last
bracket matched.
Modifiers: to capitalize the first letter, insert '^':
"%^C" produces something like "Rec.humor". Inserting '_'
causes the first letter following the last '/' to be capi-
talized: "%_c" produces "rec/Humor".
Inserting '\' will insert a backslash before any charac-
ters that would be magic in a regular expression, includ-
ing '%': "%\C" produces "rec\.humor".
Inserting "'" will insert a backslash before any single-
quotes in the result, suitable for enclosing in single-
quotes and sending to a shell: "'%'s'" might produce
"'I'\''m a subject'".
Inserting "''" will insert a backslash before any double-
quotes in the result, suitable for enclosing in double-
quotes and sending to a shell.
Inserting ">" will strip out just the address portion of
an address string such as the From line.
Inserting ")" will strip out just the comment (real name)
portion of an address string such as the From line.
Inserting ":FMT" will format the result according to the
printf-style FMT string: "%:-50.50s" left-justifies the
subject into a 50 character field.
ENVIRONMENT
The following environment variables are paid attention to
by trn. In general the default values assumed for these
variables by trn are reasonable, so if you are using trn
for the first time, you can safely ignore this section.
Note that the defaults below may not correspond precisely
to the defaults on your system. To find the actual
defaults you would need to look in config.h and common.h
in the trn source directory, and the file INIT in the trn
library directory.
Those variables marked (%) are subject to % interpolation,
and those marked (~) are subject to both % interpolation
and ~ interpretation.
ATTRIBUTION (%)
Gives the format of the attribution line in front
of the quoted article included by an F command.
Default: In article %i,%?%)f <%>f> wrote:
AUTOSUBSCRIBE
When trn is checking for new newsgroups and finds
one matching one of the patterns in AUTOSUBSCRIBE,
the new group is automatically added to the end of
the .newsrc, subscribed. Newsgroups not matching
this or AUTOUNSUBSCRIBE, below, are offered to the
user.
AUTOSUBSCRIBE is a comma separated list of news-
group patterns ala 'o', '/', etc. It can also
include "but not" entries preceded by '!'.
"a,b,!c,d" is read as "matching a or b, unless it
also matches c; matching d regardless". Another
way to look at it is "(((a or b) and not c) or
d)". To automatically subscribe to all local
groups but be choosy about non-local groups, one
might say "*,!*.*".
Default: (none)
AUTOUNSUBSCRIBE
AUTOUNSUBSCRIBE is very similar to AUTOSUBSCRIBE,
above, but new newsgroups matching it are automat-
ically added to the end of the .newsrc file,
unsubscribed. If a newsgroup matches AUTOSUB-
SCRIBE, AUTOUNSUBSCRIBE is not consulted.
Default: (none)
CANCEL (~)
The shell command used to cancel an article.
Default: inews -h < %h
CANCELHEADER (%)
The format of the file to pass to the CANCEL com-
mand in order to cancel an article.
Default:
Newsgroups: %n
Subject: cmsg cancel %i
References: %R
Reply-To: %L@%H (%N)
Distribution: %D
Organization: %o
%i cancelled from trn.
DOTDIR Where to find your dot files, if they aren't in
your home directory. Can be interpolated using
"%.".
Default: $HOME
EDITOR (~)
The name of your editor, if VISUAL is undefined.
Default: whatever your news administrator compiled
in, usually vi.
EXSAVER (%)
The shell command to execute in order to extract
data to either /bin/sh or a user-specified com-
mand.
Default: tail +%Bc %A | %e
FIRSTLINE (%)
Controls the format of the line displayed at the
top of an article. Warning: this may go away.
The default (ignoring the Marked to return display
in unthreaded groups) is approximately:
%C #%a%(%Z=^0$?%(%U!=^0$? (%U more\)): (%U + %v
more\))
FORWARDHEADER (%)
The format of the header file for forwarding mes-
sages. See also FORWARDPOSTER.
Default:
To:
Subject: %(%i=^$?:[subject] (fwd\\)
%(%{REPLYTO}=^$?:Reply-To: %{REPLYTO}
)Newsgroups: %n
In-Reply-To: %i)