Pan is a powerful and user-friendly USENET newsreader for GTK+.

# Pan Manual

2006
Douglas Bollinger
2011
Heinrich Müller
2011
Petr Kovar

&legal;

Douglas
Bollinger
V 0.3
April 2017

Petr Kovar

V 0.2
January 2011

Heinrich Müller

Petr Kovar

V 0.1
December 2006

Douglas Bollinger

## Feedback

To report a bug or make a suggestion regarding the Pan application or this manual, follow the directions in the Pan Contact Page.

## Introduction

The &app; application enables you to read and post articles and binaries on Usenet.

## Getting Started

This section provides information on how to start &app;, and describes the &app; user interface.

### To Start Pan

How to start &app; depends on your desktop environment.

The GNOME Desktop Environment

  Press the Super key to enter the Activities Overview, type `pan`, and then press Enter.

Command line

  To start &app; from a command line, type the following command, then press Enter:

      pan

### When You Start Pan

When you start &app;, the following window is displayed:

#### Pan Main Window

This is the &app; main window

The main &app; window contains the following elements:

Menubar

  The menubar contains all the commands that you need to run &app;.

Toolbar

  The toolbar contains a subset of the commands that you can access from the menubar. It also contains two textboxes that allow you to limit the number of groups and/or the number of articles displayed.

Group Pane

  The Group Pane displays a list of all the newsgroups available on the server. This list is split into two groups: Subscribed Groups are a user-selected list of favorite groups, Other Groups are the rest of the available groups from the server.

Header Pane

  The Header Pane displays a list of all the individual article headers available in the selected group. The Header Pane is highly customizable via sorting, threading and scoring.

Body Pane

  The Body Pane displays the text of the selected article header.

Status Bar

  The Status Bar displays information about current &app; activity:

  - Current number of connections to the server

  - Number of uncompleted tasks in the Task Manager

  - Completed percentage of current tasks

  - Error status of the event log

When you right-click in the &app; window, the application displays a popup menu. The popup menu contains the most common commands for whichever pane you clicked.

Like other applications, actions in &app; can be performed in several ways: with the menu, with the toolbar or with shortcut keys. The shortcut key for most menu items is shown in the menu itself, following the menu command.

## Usenet in a Nutshell

Knowledge about how Usenet works will make using Pan easier.

### Description

Usenet is a distributed discussion system. Using a special program called a newsreader, a user accesses a news server to read and post email-like messages called articles. These articles are then exchanged back and forth with other news servers throughout the world. In this way, articles propagate from one news server to another throughout the entire Usenet system.

### Organization

Articles are organized into categories called groups. In discussion groups, most articles are responses to another article. The set of articles which can be traced to one single non-reply article is called a thread. When articles are organized into threads, it is much easier to follow a single discussion.

### Article Headers

Articles are routed around Usenet based on the information contained in the article header, which is the first part of an article that contains information like the subject, author, date and routing information. To save time and bandwidth, most newsreaders first download just the article headers to sort and thread them. The user selects an article of interest from the list of headers and then downloads the article body to read.

### Binary Data

Usenet was originally created to distribute text content encoded in 7-bit ASCII. With additional encoding programs, multiple posts per chunk and other various tricks, it became possible to send binary data through Usenet. Groups that allow for binary content or binaries are called binary groups.

## Basic Usage

This section is an overview on how to perform basic Usenet actions with &app;.

### Set Up a News Server

When you start &app; for the first time, the Add a Server dialog is displayed.

At this point, you must enter the connection information for the server you wish to access. After you enter this information, &app; will contact the server and download a list of all the groups the server carries and save it to disk.

Refer to for more detailed information.

### Selecting a News Group

The Group Pane contains a list of all the news groups available on the server. Scroll through the list and enter a group by clicking on its name.

If this is the first time you have entered this group, you will be prompted on how many article headers you wish to retrieve from the server. You can choose to retrieve all article headers available for that group or limit the retrieval by either quantity of articles or number of days.

After making a selection from this dialog, &app; will download the article headers for the selected group and save them locally on the computer.

Depending on the news server, certain groups might be "dead" and have no headers available for download.

After article header retrieval, the group name in the Group Pane will turn bold, which means there are unread articles in that particular group. Also the number of unread articles in the group will be displayed in parenthesis following the group name.

It's not unusual for a server to have tens of thousands of groups, but usually a user is only interested in a few. To better keep track of the interesting groups, select the group name by middle-clicking on it and choose Groups Subscribe . Scroll the group window to the top if necessary and you will see that the selected newsgroup is listed directly under the Subscribed Groups section.

### Reading Articles

After entering a group, the header pane will be filled with article headers. The header pane can be sorted by clicking on the topmost row of a column, where the column name is located. Clicking again will reverse the sort. The column that is used for sorting will have a downward arrow after the column name and the entire column will darken.

&app; defaults to showing collapsed threads. Only the first article of the thread is shown with a number in parenthesis indicating how many posts are hidden. Clicking on the right-facing arrow before the header text will expand the thread, showing the hidden articles in the thread. Reading the first article of the thread will also expand the thread. The keyboard shortcut for expanding threads is Shift→. Shift← will collapse the thread.

Clicking on a header will download the article from the server, store it in the article cache and display it in the article pane. The article is then marked as read. Read articles are distinguished in the header pane by using a normal (not bold) font and by showing an open envelope icon in the state column.

You can scroll the message in the Article Pane by using the scrollbar or by pressing Space. Whenever the bottom of the retrieved article is already displayed, pressing Space will download the next article.

### Posting Articles

To post an article in a group and start a new thread, select the group you wish to post to in the Group Pane and then choose Post Post to a Newsgroup . If this is the first time you have posted an article to a newsgroup, the Posting Profile dialog will appear and you will be required to fill in some information. Next, the Post Article dialog will appear. Type in a subject and then enter the body of the message at the bottom. When done, choose File Send Article to send the article to the news server and out to the rest of Usenet.

Refer to and for more detailed information:

### Replying to Articles

If you want to post a reply to a specific article and have your followup appear in that article's thread, highlight that article in the Header Pane with the middle mouse button and use Post Followup to Newsgroup . The highlighted article's text will appear as quoted text (each line is preceded by a ">") in the editor window. Type in your response and then choose File Send Article to send the article to the news server.

If you want to send a reply to a specific article via email, highlight that article in the Header Pane with the middle mouse button and choose Post Reply to Author in Mail . The highlighted article's text will appear as quoted text (each line is preceded by a ">") in the editor window. Type in your response and then choose File Send Article and the text will be sent to the default external email application. Double-check the To: field and then send the email as you normally would with that application.

### Downloading Binaries

A binary file in Usenet is usually composed of many smaller articles. &app; automatically organizes all these articles under one special article header. If all the data that comprises the binary header made it through the Usenet network successfully, a green, full puzzle-piece is displayed in the first column. To save the data, select the special header in the header window and use Articles Save Articles to download and save the binary data to disk.

If the binary posts are corrupted by missing or incorrect data, a red, incomplete puzzle-piece is displayed in the first column. The file may be saved, but it will probably be corrupt in some way.

Supporting binary newsgroups takes a large amount of bandwidth. Unless you are using a premium news server provider, it is not unusual for many binary files to be missing or corrupt.

## Groups

Working with groups in &app;.

### Group Views

The total number of groups on a news server can be quite extensive. An easy way to find a specific group is to use the Group text box in the toolbar. Only groups that match the characters typed in the box will be displayed in the Group Pane. If you wish to return the Group Pane to its original state, simply delete the characters in the box by clicking the X icon to the right of the box.

The group names presented in the Group Pane can be shortened by choosing View Group Pane Abbreviate Names in Group Pane . This only alters the way the names are presented in this pane.

### Group Actions

While a news group is selected, you can perform the following actions:

Groups Mark Group Read

  Mark all articles in a group read.

  A typical way to read news is to read all the interesting threads and when done mark the group read. The next time you start the news reader, choose Groups Get New Headers in Selected Group . With View Header Pane Match only Unread Articles , the only headers you will see will be the new headers you just downloaded.

Groups Get New Headers in Subscribed Groups

  Grab new headers for all the groups in the Subscribed Groups section.

Groups Edit Group Preferences

  Opens the Group Preferences dialog. Within this dialog you can customize certain &app; features per group:

  - Character encoding

  - Location in the file hierarchy where attachments are saved

  - The posting profile.

Groups Subscribe

  Add a favorite group to the Subscribed Groups section of the Group Pane. Unsubscribe is the opposite of this command.

Groups Refresh Group List

  Resync the local group list that &app; uses with the current listing on the news server.

Groups Delete Group's Articles

  Delete all the articles for the selected group from the article index.

### The Newsrc File

The group list, subscribe/unsubscribe status of each group and the articles marked read in each group are stored in the newsrc file at `$HOME/.pan2/newsrc-1.`

The newsrc file format is standard among many Unix newsreaders and can be used to import and export this information between these applications.

## Headers

Users will spend most of their time in &app; interacting with the article headers in the Header Pane. &app; has many features to optimize header viewing and article retrieval.

### Header View

Since the total number of all the available article headers in a group might be enormous, &app; has several options to limit the number of visible headers to a more manageable number.

In the toolbar, the Subject or Author text box is a filter than can be used to limit the visible headers. Usually this is used to search for a specific article or a group of articles. Click on the magnifying glass icon to choose which header field to base the filter. Only the article headers that match the characters typed into the text box will be displayed. Click the X to erase and reset.

Choose Edit Preferences Headers

  To hide or change the display order of the Header Pane columns.

Choose View Header Pane Thread Headers

  To enable or disable header threading in the Header Pane.

#### Replies of Matched Articles

The user can pick one of the next three options to control how &app; will display replies of matched articles.

In View Header Pane

  - Show Matching Articles

    Show only articles that match the article view options..

  - Show Matching Articles' Threads

    Not only show articles that match the article view options, but also show all the articles in the entire thread of the matched article. This option will force read headers to be visible regardless of the view options.

  - Show Matching Articles Subthreads

    Not only show articles that match the article view options, but also show articles that are replies of any matched article.

#### Article View Matches

These options control which article headers are displayed in the Header Pane.

In View Header Pane

  - Match Only Unread Articles

    Only display articles that haven't been marked read.

  - Match Only Cached Articles

    Only display articles that are available in the local article cache in the computer's hard drive.

  - Match Only Complete Articles

    Only binary articles that are complete (full, green puzzle piece in the state column) will be displayed. This also hides text articles.

  - Match Only My Articles

    Only articles that the user has posted will be displayed.

  - Match Scores of xxxx

    These options deal with scoring where you choose to display an article based on its score. Refer to for more information.

### Header Movement

Movement around the Header Pane can be controlled by several methods, allowing the user to easily jump around complicated discussion threads with minimal input. &app; was designed for mouse-less article viewing, so most people use the keyboard shortcuts associated with these menu actions. The keyboard shortcut for most menu actions is displayed after the menu command.

Go Read More

  Scroll the article in the Article Pane. If the article is already scrolled to the bottom, grab the next article. You can customize the function of this key by changing Preferences Articles Space selects next article rather than next unread .

Go Read Back

  Scroll the article up in the Article Pane. If it's already scrolled to the top, grab the previous article displayed in the Thread Pane.

Go Next Unread Group

  Skip down to the next subscribed group in the Group Pane with unread articles and read the first article.

Go Next Group

  Skip down to the next subscribed group in the Group Pane and read the first article.

Go Next Unread Article

  Read the next unread article in the Thread Pane.

Go Next Article

  Read the next article, regardless of its read/unread state.

Go Next Watched Article

  Read the next watched article. A watched article is an article with a score of at least 9999. Refer to for more information.

Go Previous Article

  Read the previous article in the Thread Pane. This doesn't scroll the Article Pane like Go Read Back .

Go Parent Article

  Read the article for which the currently selected article is a reply.

Go Next Unread Thread

  Skip to the next unread thread and read the first article.

Go Next Thread

  Skip to the next thread and read the first article in that thread.

Go Previous Thread

  Skip back to the last thread and read the last article in that thread.

### Header Selection

In order to perform an action on an article header, you must select it first. Use the middle mouse button to select an article. Drag the selection field with the mouse to select multiple articles. Hold down the Ctrl key while clicking articles with the middle mouse button to add individual articles to the selection.

&app; also offers a number of other ways to efficiently select articles.

Edit Select All Articles

  Select all articles in the Header Pane.

Edit Add Subthreads to Selection

  Add all articles that are a reply to the selected article to the selection.

Edit Add Threads to Selection

  Add the entire thread of the selected article to the selection.

Edit Add Similar Articles to Selection

  With one article selected, add others articles with the same author and from the current thread to the selection.

Edit Deselect All Articles

  Cancel the current selection.

Edit Select Article Body

  Select the entire article body. You must retrieve the article first.

### Header Action

Whenever &app; downloads an article body, the data is saved to disk in the article cache. The article cache is a fixed-size buffer and when the cache has been filled, the older articles are erased to make room for newer ones.

These are the actions you can perform on an article selected in the Header Pane.

Articles Save Article

  Save the highlighted article to disk. When you select this option, the Save Articles dialog will open. From here, you can choose to:

  - Save Text

    Save the text of the displayed article.

  - Save Attachments

    Save the binary attachments of the selected article to disk.

  - Path

    Where in the file hierarchy to save the binary attachment or text.

  - Priority

    Where to add the file in the Task Manager queue.

Articles Read Article

  Download the body of the selected article in the Header Pane and display it in the Article Pane.

Articles Cache Article

  Download the body of the selected article in the Header Pane but do NOT display it in the Article Pane.

Articles Mark Article as Read

  Change the state of the article to read.

Articles Mark Article as Unread

  Change the state of the article to unread.

Articles Delete Article

  Delete the selected article in the current group from the article index.

## Body

The Body Pane displays the text of a selected article header.

### Digital Images

Some groups specialize in digital images where each binary post is a separate image. &app; can automatically decode and display these images. To display the image, select and view the article header as you normally would for text and the image will be displayed in the Body Pane.

### Body Views

The way information is presented in the Body Pane can be customized in several ways.

In View Body Pane

  - Wrap Article Body

    Will force the text to flow into paragraphs instead of running off the edge of the text window. This is useful to fix badly formatted articles.

  - Show All Headers in Body Pane

    The headers displayed in the Header Pane are only a small subset of the all the article headers. This commands will display the complete list of article headers in the Body Pane before the article text.

  - Rot 13 Selected Text

    A simple cipher used to hide story spoilers, joke punchlines, etc. Select a block of encrypted text and use this option to decode it to clear text.

  - Use Monospace Font

    Sometimes Usenet authors will create simple ASCII artwork or diagrams. By default, &app; uses proportional fonts for all text which renders ASCII artwork unreadable. By choosing this option, the text of the Body Pane will be displayed using the Monospace Font.

    You can configure the monospace font in Edit Preferences Font .

  - Show Smilies as Graphics

    Change ASCII emoticons like :) into graphical versions.

  - Show *Bold*, _Underlined_ and /Italiced/

    Over the years, Usenet authors have devised several strategies to overcome the limited typographic ability of ASCII. Enabling this option will format the article text following these typographic hints.

  - Size Pictures to Fit

    Size digital images so they will display in the Body Pane without scrolling. Click on the image to view it in its original size.

## Posting

How to post articles in &app;.

### Actions

Post Post to Newsgroup

  Post an article to the selected newsgroup.

Post Followup to Newsgroup

  Post a reply to the selected article and continue the thread.

Post Reply to Author in Mail

  Post a reply to the selected article via email.

While highlighting in the Header Pane the article header of a post that you posted to the news server, you can perform these two actions:

Post Supersede Article

  This allows you to supersede an earlier article with another newer post.

Post Cancel Article

  This allows you to cancel a earlier article.

Most public news servers disable the supersede and cancel commands for security reasons. Make sure you are comfortable with your article before you post it to the news server, because in most cases it will be impossible to take back or alter what you have said.

### Posting Profiles Dialog

Posting Profiles allow the user to configure different Usenet personas that may be customized for particular groups.

The Posting Profiles dialog displays a list of currently configured Posting Profiles. From here you can Remove or Edit a profile by clicking on the profile's name and press the appropriate button. Clicking add will start a new profile.

#### Mandatory Information

Each profile contains the following information:

- Profile Name

  The name of this profile.

- Full Name

  The author name that will be used in the article's header.

- Email Address

  The email address that will be used in the article's header.

- Post Articles via

  If multiple news servers are configured, choose which server will receive the article.

#### Signatures

A signature is a block of text that is appended to the end of every outgoing article. Generally it is contact information, a personal motto or a witty saying.

Click Use a Signature to activate signature support.

- Text

  Type in the text you wish to use as a signature.

- Text File

  Enter the location of the file in the disk hierarchy. The Browse button can assist in this.

- Command

  Type in the command you wish to run and the output of that command will be captured and used as the signature text.

  Example: `fortune -s`

- PGP Signature

  Choose this if you want to sign or encrypt your message with PGP. The given email address has to match the PGP email address for this method to work.

  PGP support is an optional feature and may not be available in your &app; build.

#### Optional Information

- Attribution

  When you reply to a post, the text in the attribution box precedes the quoted text. The %d flag is replaced the by the date of the selected post while the %n flag is replaced with the author of the selected post.

- Extra Headers

  This is a advanced option to add extra headers to the article.

### Post Article Dialog

Whenever you post an article you use the Post Article Dialog.

#### Composition

The Post Article Dialog is composed of the following parts:

Menubar

  The menubar contains all the commands that you need to post an article.

Toolbar

  The toolbar contains a subset of the commands that you can access from the menubar.

From

  Select which Posting Profile to use.

Subject

  Type in the subject of your post. If this post is a reply, this line is already filled-in.

Newsgroups

  A comma separated list of all the groups that will receive this article.

Mail To

  Enter an email address to send the article.

More Headers

  An advanced option to manually add more headers.

Text Area

  Where you enter the text of the article.

#### File Commands

These file commands are available from within the Post Article dialog.

File Send Article

  When you are done entering the article, use this command to send the article to the news server.

File Save Draft

  Save your current work on the article to disk.

File Open Draft

  Load a previous draft and continue editing.

#### Editing Commands

This option is available from within the Post Article Dialog.

Edit Manage Posting Profiles

  See Posting Profiles.

Edit Run Editor

  Starts an external editor. Type in your post in the external editor as you normally would and save your work. The external editor will close and the text that was entered into that editor will be located in the text area.

Edit Set Editor

  Choose which external editor to use.

Edit Manage Editor List

  Setup another external editor.

Edit Cut, Copy and Paste

  The standard GUI text functions.

Edit Wrap Now

  Force the text flow into paragraphs instead of running off the edge of the text area.

Edit Wrap Text

  Set this option to have text automatically wrap when entered.

Edit Check Spelling

  Set this option and possible spelling errors in the text area will marked with a red wavy line.

Edit ROT 13

  ROT13 is a simple cipher to hide story spoilers, joke punchlines, etc. Select the text to cipher and use this command.

## Tasks

Certain tasks performed by &app;, like downloading binary posts or grabbing new headers for a group, can take a long time. These tasks are queued and performed in the background while &app; is processing other tasks like grabbing an article.

### Cancel Last Task

You can quickly cancel the last task added to the task queue by selecting: File Cancel Last Task .

### Task Manager

Background tasks can be manipulated by using the Task Manager. The Task Manager can be accessed with File Task Manger or by left-clicking in the task area of the Status Bar at the bottom of the &app; screen.

The Task Manger window is composed of the following parts:

Toolbar

  The toolbar contains all the commands you need to manipulate the tasks in the Task Manger Window.

Informational Area

  The Informational Area displays the number of queued tasks, the amount of data that needs to downloaded to complete the queued tasks, the current download rate and the estimated time needed to complete the queued tasks.

Task List

  A list of queued tasks. Each row is a separate task.

In order to manipulate a task, click on it and the row will be highlighted. Then click on one of the buttons in the toolbar.

If &app; is shutdown whiles tasks are still waiting in the task manager, the task list is saved to disk and resumed when &app; is restarted. This, however, is not true for upload tasks in the current version.

### NZB Files

&app; saves its task list in `$HOME/.pan2/tasks.nzb` file. You can import other task lists into &app; by choosing File Import NZB Files .

## Scoring

Scoring allows the user to give an article a rating based on user-defined scoring rules. This rating can then be used by &app; to perform score-based actions.

When a group's article headers are first downloaded from the news server, all the articles have a score of 0. Then the list of scoring rules in the score file are applied to each article. The score file rules might give an article from John Smith a high score, while articles with a subject line containing the phrase "For Sale" a negative score.

### Scoring Actions

&app; can perform two actions based on an article's score:

- View an article by using View Header Pane Match Scores of xxxx . The default is to hide articles (by not matching) with a score of -9999. and view all other scores.

- Change the background and text color of the score column in the Header Pane. This is defined in Edit Preferences Colors .

### Adding Scoring Rules

There are several ways to add rules to the score file. Select an article in the Header Pane and then select Articles Watch Thread . This rule sets the score of any post located in the thread of the selected article to 9999.

The opposite of the above rule is Articles Ignore Thread . This rule sets the score of any post located in the thread of the selected article to -9999.

Both of these scoring rules only work in the selected group and expire in one month.

Selecting an article and selecting Articles Ignore Author will open the New Scoring Rule dialog.

The default of this scoring rule is to score all the posts of the author of the selected article -9999 for the next month in the selected group. By clicking on various fields and selecting different options in the New Scoring Rule dialog, you can customize the rule further. For instance, instead of having the rule expire in one month, you can have the rule last forever. Also note that you can make the rule add to the score of an article, making it a watch rule. So the name "Ignore Author" can be somewhat of a misnomer.

When finished, click Add and Rescore to close the dialog box.

Selecting an article and selecting Articles Add a Scoring Rule is very similar to the Ignore Author section described above as it opens the same New Scoring Rule dialog, just with different defaults. Construct a rule in the same fashion as described above.

### Editing or Deleting Scoring Rules

Selecting an article that is currently being scored and choosing Articles Edit Article's Watch/Ignore/Score will open the Article's Scores dialog box. From this dialog you can manipulate the scoring rule for the currently selected article. Each rule will have its own row describing the scoring action (plus or minus points), locations and line number of this rule in the score file and the texts of the rule. Select the rule and click Add button to alter the rule or Remove button to delete the rule from the score file. Click Close and Rescore when finished.

### Advanced Scoring

The scoring file is located at `$HOME/.pan2/Score`. Advanced users might want to edit this file directly with a text editor to create advanced scoring rules that are difficult or impossible to construct from the New Scoring Rule dialog.

This is probably easiest via the Edit Edit Score File menu as that will automatically rescore articles when you exit the edit window.

The format of the scoring rules is similar to the application slrn, but be aware that not all slrn scoring functions will work in &app;.

The slrn scoring functions are described in the document slrn - Scoring.

## Customization

This section describes how certain features or actions in &app; can be customized.

### Behavior

Many of the default actions of &app;, such as mouse clicks, actions when entering or leaving a group and the action of Space can be altered.

In Edit Preferences Behavior

  - Mouse

    The two boxes of the mouse section change the default action of the left mouse button. If unselected, you would have to double click on a group or article to activate it.

  - Groups

    The selections in the group section control what commands &app; will automatically run when manipulating groups.

    - The first box, when activated, will automatically get new headers for all subscribed groups whenever Pan is started. This is the equivalent of using Groups Get New Headers in Subscribed Groups from the menubar.

    - The next box, when activated, will automatically get new headers when entering a group. This is the equivalent of using Groups Get New Headers in Selected Group from the menubar.

    - The next box, when activated, will mark the entire group read when leaving a group. This is the equivalent of using Groups Mark Group Read from the menubar.

    - The last box in the Groups section, when activated, will expand all threads in the Header Pane when entering a group.

  - Articles

    The first option, when activated, makes Space select the next article rather than the next unread article. This is handy if you are viewing a thread with read and unread articles mixed together.

    The next option activates smooth scrolling in the Article Pane.

### GUI Composition

The layout and view of the Group, Header and Body Panes in &app; can be customized in several ways.

Pane Layout

  In Edit Preferences Layout the orientation of the Groups, Header and Body Panes can be manipulated.

Tabbed Layout

  Instead of having all three panes share the &app; main window at one time, another view, called Tabbed Layout, can be activated by choosing View Layout Tabbed Layout . Now, only one of the three Panes will be displayed at a time. Each Pane is brought to the front of other Panes by clicking on its tab located directly under the tool bar or by pressing "1", "2" or "3" for the Group, Header or Body Pane respectively.

Show/Hide Panes

  You can hide a specific Pane by choosing from View Layout and using the selection box to show/hide each of the Panes.

Fonts

  Choose Edit Preferences Fonts to select a font.

  &app; can use the monospace font in the article Pane, if activated.

Colors

  Choose Edit Preferences Colors to customize the colors used in &app;.

  The first section allows you to customize the colors used by scoring in the Header Pane. See for more information on how to use this feature.

  The second section allows you to customize the colors used in the Body Pane.

### External Applications

In this section you set up external applications that &app; can use.

In Edit Preferences Applications :

  - Web Browser

    Click the Web Button to choose which external application to launch when clicking on an HTML link.

  - Mail Reader

    Choose which external application to launch when clicking on an email address or when sending a post via email.

To set up an external text editor, choose Post Post to Newsgroup . From the Post Article dialog menubar, choose Edit Set Editor

### Article Cache Size

The article cache is a fixed-size disk buffer where &app; stores articles when they are downloaded from a news server. If the user downloads a large amount of binary attachments, the default cache size might be inadequate.

The article cache size can be changed in Edit Preferences Behavior Article Cache

### News Servers

&app; must connect to a special computer called a news server. The news server is the gateway used to access Usenet.

Choose Edit Edit News Servers and the Servers dialog will appear. Click on a server name and you can edit or remove it via the buttons. Click the Add button to add another server.

When you add or edit an existing server, the Edit a Server's Settings dialog will appear.

In the location section:

- Address

  The internet address of the server.

- Port

  The port of the server. Port 119 is the standard port number for unsecured NNTP connections, port 563 is for TLS/SSL connections.

The next section is the login information for the server. If you server requires a username and password, enter them here. If the server allows anonymous login or does not require authentication, just let these fields blank.

- Username

  Enter the login name if required.

- Password

  Enter the password if required.

  &app; can store saved passwords in a password storage service provided by GNOME Keyring or libsecret. To enable this feature, use Edit PreferencesMiscellaneous Save passwords in password storage. Password storage support is an optional feature and may not be available in your &app; build.

The next section allows you to enter certain &app; settings that are server specific.

- Connection Limit

  &app; can open multiple connections to a server so the user can perform simultaneous actions like download a binary attachment will reading articles in a text group.

  In order to follow the GNKSA rules, the maximum number of connections &app; can have open with a server is 4.

- Expire Old Articles

  From this toggle box, you can pick a time when &app; will expire old articles and remove them from its article index.

- Server Rank

  When you have more than 1 server configured, &app; uses server rank to decide from which server to download the article. Only after all primary servers have been tried for the article will &app; use the fallback servers.

  The reason for this feature is that a user might have access to a free server and also have access to a byte-limited premium server. Server ranking allows &app; to use the fallback server as little as possible.

- TLS (SSL) Options

  If security and privacy are of concern, choose secured connections if the server supports it.

  TLS (SSL) support is an optional feature and may not be available in your &app; build.

- Always trust this server's certificate

  If you want to trust the server regardless of the authenticity of its certificate, you can enable this option. Use with caution!