Groundhog Newsreader instant novice guide

This short introduction has been written to guide users who are just discovering Usenet using Almarsoft’s Groundhog Newsreader. Usenet has thousands of educated and interesting people sharing common interests on a wide range of topics, and if you’ve never looked inside before you’ll discover that you’ve been losing an important part of the Internet.

What is Usenet?

Usenet is a network of discussion forums (called newsgroups on Usenet slang) on almost any imaginable topic, and lighter on data transfer (and thus faster) than common Internet forums. Usenet has been around for about 30 years and there are thousands of newsgroups on almost every topic and language.

How do I use Groundhog Reader?

1. Get an account on a Usenet Server and enter the login and user info on the settings

The only requisite to use the Usenet network with Groundhog Reader is to have an account on a Usenet server. If you don’t have an account you can register one easily on a free server like news.motzarella.org (we’re not affiliated with them, but we recommend that server.) Just go with the browser to that link and input your email and desired username, and a password will be sent to your email (you can later change the password if you want on the same page.)

Once you’ve an account on a server you can enter that account information on the settings page, which you can reach using Menu -> Global Settings or accepting the dialogs that will be shown when you try to use the program without having configured it.

2. Subscribe to newsgroups of you interest

To subscribe newsgroup click on the “Subscribe Groups…” text on the first screen of the program, or use Menu -> Add group. This will show the subscribe screen. On this screen you can enter terms on the box and click on the Search button. If you want to search for topics of interest use single words like “cats”, “pets”, “motor”, “linux”, “politics”, etc.

Searching for basket related groups

With the current version don’t use more than one word on the search box (i.e. don’t put “motor linux”); multiterm searches will be implemented before the end of the beta period. You can also use country codes to search for groups related with a particular country, usually in the local language. Since the search only currently allows for search with terms at least three characters long, add a point if the country code is two chars long; for example you can use “es.” on the search box for groups related to Spain and in Spanish language. In general, the groups naming is a collection of terms from the generic to the specific, separated by dots. Sometimes the first term is a country code (’de.’ for Germany, ‘at.’ for Austria, ‘it.’ for Italy, and sometimes when the groups are in English the first part is a wide topic like ‘comp.’ for computers.

Once you click the button and get some results, to subscribe to one of the groups listed you only have to tap in the name and after a confirmation dialog you’ll be subscribed to that group. You can continue subscribing to groups or you can use the back button to return to the subscribed groups listing to start reading.

Note: if you want to really, really, really see al the groups available, you can write “***” on the search box. But better be patient and do it when you’ve a WIFI connection because the list could take a while to load.

3. Fetch some messages from the groups

Once you are on the subscribed groups list you can start reading them. For that, you can click on a group’s name, or you can select Menu -> Fetch headers (if you’re in online mode, more about that later.) An initial set of messages will be fetched, which is 100 by default (you can change that number in the settings). The first time you enter a group, the more recent messages will be fetched, after that the next time the program will fetch the messages that were written after the last ones you got. Also, the first time you fetch messages from a group it will take a few seconds more than the next times you do, because it has to request the full message list from the server.

4. Browsing the group’s message list

After entering a group you’ll see a list of items with subjects. This list is not very different from the Android mail application, showing the subject and the Author. Notice how subjects are grouped together and in the correct order, this is called “threading” of subjects. The “>>” characters that you will see at the top of some items indicate the level inside that thread, so if a message from “Will” has a “>>” and the next message from “John” has two “>> >>”, this indicates that the message from John is a reply to Will.

You’ll also see a star at the right of every item; tapping that star will “star” the thread, and this will make the thread appear at the top of the list the next time you enter the group or use Menu -> Refresh. To read a complete message just tap on it, and after requesting the full message from the server (or loading it from the sdcard, if you’re in offline mode) the message contents view will be shown.

The message list

5. Reading messages

Once you’re in the message view, you’ll see the author, date and subject at the top of the view on a gray area and below it, with a white scrollable background, the full message text. You’ll notice that on most messages some parts of the text have a background on different colors. This indicates that the text is a quote from a previous message that the author of the current message decided to include in the reply. Different colors indicate different levels of quoting so for example green is text from the previous author while other colors indicate previous authors. Also, at the start of every quoted line there will be “>” characters indicating the level of the quoting (”>” for the text the current author is replying to, “>>” for the former message and the such.) These indicators are the standard way of indicating quoting on Usenet, while the colors are a feature of Groundhog Newsreader than other people on Usenet will not see (except if they are using a client supporting colors for quoting.)

At the bottom of the message, you’ll see two buttons to go to the next and the previous message. You can also navigate the messages going back to the messages list using the back button and tapping on a different message, through using the next and previous buttons is faster in online mode.

Reading a message

Read messages will be shown grayed out in the message list, and they will disappear the next time you enter the group. If you want to save a particular message you can forward it to your email using Menu -> Forward.

6. Posting messages

There are two ways you can write new messages on a newsgroup: as a new subject or as a reply to another message. To start a new subject, use Menu -> New Post. You’ll start with an empty composing screen where you can write anything you want (don’t forget to include a subject), and to sent the message click on Menu -> Send. To reply to an author, select Menu -> Reply when reading a message from other person. This time, before the composing screen is shown, you’ll be prompted to select what lines of the original message you want to include in your reply. It’s considered good manners on Usenet to include in your reply only the text you are answering too, and not the full message text, except if the original message is very short. Once you click on “done”, the compositing screen will be shown, containing the text of the original author with the quoting indicator (>) before each line. Write your reply and select Menu -> Send Message to publish your content. The message will be shown inside the thread and after the author original message the next time you enter the group or fetch new messages.

Replying to a message

What are online and offline modes?

Online and offline modes specify the way the program loads and stores the messages before displaying them. You can switch between the two modes on the group list selecting “Set online mode” or “Set offline mode” on the menu.

In online mode when you enter a group only the message headers (From, Subject, Date, etc) are downloaded, and the full message will not be requested from the network until you tap on a message or use the Next/Prev buttons on the message view, so you never load any message that you don’t read. In offline mode, when you select “Menu -> Sync Messages” on the group or message lists, all new messages (until the limit configured in the settings, 100 by default) will be downloaded to the sdcard, including the full contents, and the next time you tap on a message subject to read the full contents they will be loaded from the disk and no connection will be done. Since the full message contents are requested, syncing an entire group in offline mode is slower than in online mode but loading individual messages is a lot faster since it is done from the sdcard.

Switching from online to offline

In general, you’ll want to use online mode when you’re on a fast connection like a WIFI, because the message lists will be fetched quickly and the message contents will get loaded also at a decent speed, but you’ll switch to offline mode and download the full messages before leaving the fast connection to a slower one (like 3G, EDGE or GPRS) or no connection at all (like in the subway). Some people prefer to use offline mode all the time instead. Test both modes and decide for yourself.