Getting Started

At this point, it is assumed that you’ve already installed the program and have successfully executed it for the first time. If not, you should read Installation and come back here once you’re ready.

Create an identity

From the program’s Account menu, select “Identities ...” The identity edit window should appear. You can use the plus button at the bottom of the window to create a new identity. The minus button will delete the current identity. To switch between identities, use the pop-up menu button at the top of the window. You can create up to 20 identities if you like. Only the first one is required.

When finished editing identities, close the window to save your changes to disk.

Create a server account

Pull down the Account menu and select “Create ...” You’ll see a dialog box that is filled in with example values, which you can edit to suit your particular configuration.

Now you’re ready to create your new server account. Close the window to save your changes. Assuming all data passes the validation checks, your new server account will be created and will appear in the left pane of the main window, referred to as the “storage view.”

Next you’ll see a roll-down sheet asking if you want to download the server’s newsgroups list. This is the master list of all newsgroups available on your server. It is required for proper operation, so you’ll want to do this unless you cannot connect to the internet at the moment for some reason. If you don’t download the list now, you can do it later by selecting “Download newsgroup list ...” from the Account menu.

If you choose to download the newsgroup list, the Transfer Window will appear. With a little luck, everything will go okay and in a minute or two the newsgroups list will be completely downloaded. If not, the Errors tab of the window will display the response the server gave, or perhaps some reason that Pineapple News couldn’t connect with your news server. Hopefully the messages will be of some assistance in helping you resolve the problem.

If you cannot download the server’s newsgroup list for some reason, it is possible to create a text file that will work as a substitute. See the help topic Navigating with Finder for more information.

One USENET server account is enough for most people, but Pineapple News allows you to create up to 20. You might wish to do this if you have a main server account provided by your internet service provider, and one or more specialty servers you’d like to access, such as the ones run by Gibson Research and mozilla.org.

Subscribe to newsgroups

To complete this step, you must have already successfully created a server account, including downloading its master newsgroups list.

Click on the icon that represents the account you’re interested in, which will be in the left pane of the main program window. From the Account menu, pick “Select newsgroups ...” This brings up the newsgroups selection window.

The window has two lists of newsgroups. The list on the left contains the groups your news server carries. The list on the right will be newsgroups you are subscribed to.

By default, the left list in the newsgroup selection window displays all groups that the server carries. For a full-featured USENET server, that might be many thousands of groups. You can narrow the selection by typing a string into the window’s search field. For example, you can narrow the list to newsgroups devoted to the Macintosh by using “comp.sys.mac” as your search string.

Once you’ve located one or more newsgroups you’re interested in, select them with the mouse or keyboard. You can select more than one group at a time by holding down the ⌘ key while you click on them. Press the “Subscribe” button, and all the currently selected newsgroups go into your subscription list, and will be removed from the server’s master newsgroup list. If you change your mind about one or more groups, select them in the right-hand list and press the “Unsubscribe” button. When finished, close the window, which should cause the newly subscribed groups to appear in the storage view, underneath the icon for the current account.

Download articles

Now that you’ve subscribed to newsgroups, it’s time to get some articles. In the storage view, which is in the left pane of the main window, right-click or control-click on the icon for the newsgroup you’re interested in. That should bring up a context menu. The first choice is the one you want, “Download newsgroup.” This will cause the transfer window to appear again, and you’re on your way. You can get the same result by double-clicking on the newsgroup.

The top right pane of the main window is called the headers view, which should start to fill with headers. If this group is set to download full articles, then they will be completely downloaded and ready to read. If you chose headers-only downloads, then you’ll have to double-click on a header you’re interested in to download it. Or you can mark a bunch of headers for download and get them all at once. Control-click on each header, which will produce a context menu. Select “Mark for download.” The article header’s icon will change to include a red arrow, meaning it is ready to be downloaded. When finished marking all articles, you can open the Transfer menu, pick “Download Marked,” then “Group” to get all selected articles.


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