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News & Mail Reader User's Guide

1. You can modify any of these settings as follows 129 Chapter 5 130 Word wrap quoted printable messages Check this box to have Agent word wrap all quoted printable messages Uncheck this box to turn off the word wrap function Line Length Enter the maximum number of characters that can appear on a single line Agent will word wrap any lines longer than this Validate email address Check this box if you want Agent to validate all email address fields e g To Cc Bcc before sending messages Uncheck this box if you need to enter non standard addresses Note Agent does not verify that the email address exists It simply checks the format to make sure it is a valid Internet email address Require that local addresses be in Address Book Local addresses are handy for sending email to people in your own domain such as a company s computer network But Agent can t necessarily distinguish between a local address and the name of an Address Book entry To help Agent check this box and Agent will warn you if it can t find a local address in the Address Book Then you can either correct the address if it s misspelled or tell Agent to assume that it s a local address If you uncheck this box Agent assumes an address is local if it doesn t include the character and it is not in the address book Most of the time you ll probably want to leave this option checked If you ever want to force Agent to a
2. Precede each Adds the specified text to the beginning of each message message with saved Header Fields to Include Select the header fields you want included in the header of the printed items The options are described here 57 Chapter 4 Choose this option to have Agent do this All fields Saves all the header information with the message bodies Selected fields Saves selected header elements e g To From Newsgroups Subject Date etc along with the message bodies You can enter whatever fields you like No fields Body only Saves only the message bodies without any header information If you want to re import messages into Agent make sure you use these three options for exporting Save raw message Unix message file All fields Retrieving News Messages In Chapter 2 you learned about retrieving an initial sampling of news messages to see which groups interest you This section will give you more details about retrieving news messages and explain some of the commands Agent provides to help you manage your list of messages Retrieving Message Headers in Newsgroups To add The Online menu and your toolbar offer the following options for retrieving e that new message headers currently on i the toolbar e Get New Headers in Subscribed Groups see page e Get New Headers in Selected Groups 58 e Get All Headers in Selected Groups e Sample Headers From Selected Groups E Choose the
3. 1 A simple watch filter and a wild card Highlight a message header about blimps e g How Does a Blimp Fly Bring up the Add Usenet Filter dialog box and complete the following fields as shown Filter Expression subject blimp 79 80 Chapter 4 Watch Action Retrieve Body immediately Important Be sure to enter the generic format blimp all in lower case letters Filters are case sensitive Thus the entry Blimp only matches headers containing Blimp with an initial capital letter while the generic format blimp matches all instances of the word e g blimp Blimp BLIMP or Blimp To catch all plurals as well you need to add a wildcard character to your expression So subject blimp will retrieve headers containing all the singular forms of blimp shown above as well as the plurals e g blimps Blimps BLIMPS or BlimpS Note If you just enter blimps only the plural forms of the word will be used for matching A filter to restrict the size of messages In addition to the criteria in example 1 if you only want to see messages about blimps that are 100 lines or less you should modify the expression using the and operator and a line range argument in your expression as shown subject blimp and 100 A filter to screen out unwanted authors Now say in addition to the above that you want to filter out any messages by an obnoxious author named Rocco You can modify the expression using the a
4. By default whenever you select a Reply or Forward option Agent will include the text of the original message in the Text portion of the Composition Window This is called quoting the original text However if you select a portion of the text in the original message Agent will include only this selected text in the new Composition Window When quoting text in a Reply or Forward operation Agent will strip everything after the last occurrence in the quoted text of or there s a space at the end of the second item Agent does this so you won t quote long signatures quoting instead only the text of the message See p 191 Signature Delimiter for more information on this feature including information on how to deactivate the feature You ll find that the Composition windows for these different message types are quite similar Below is a new Usenet message Composition window Agent No Subject K File Edit Online Post Message Options Window Help ole fey E Newsgroups alt sports baseball sd padres Subject Grand Stam Tuesday night 000 Email To E E Attachments Text Did you see how far that ball carried Iit had to have carried at least 450 feet What a bomb Now if we can just maintain this momentum we have a very good chance of winning the West And here s what the Composition window looks like for a new email message Fields Composing and Sending Messages
5. E Copy to clipboard Prompt for action be IV Force web browser to open a single Window These options are described as follows 1 Double click to launch Checking this box allows you to launch a URL in a message by double clicking the URL If you uncheck this box double clicking just selects the text i e it does not launch the URL or copy the text to the clipboard Note There are a variety of formats for URLs Even if Agent does not seem to recognize a URL with an uncommon format you can still launch it see below by dragging the mouse across the URL to select it then right clicking the selection and choosing Launch URL from the context menu that appears 2 Copy to clipboard Check this box to have Agent copy the URL to the clipboard at the same time that it launches the URL Note This option only applies when you launch a URL 3 Force web browser to open a single Window Checking this box forces your web browser e g Netscape or Internet Explorer to use its Agent and Other Applications current window for displaying URLs sent to it by Agent even if the browser is normally configured to open a second window Technical Note This option forces the argument passed via the WWW_OpenURL command to be 1 OxFFFFFFFF no matter what the registry says it should be So if you re a Netscape user and this is checked you shouldn t have to make any other changes to Agent to cause Netscape to load only
6. 128 Composing and Sending Messages according to the type of system the recipient is using This section highlights the different settings Agent provides for controlling how the text in composed messages appears For more details about how message text is viewed see Chapter 4 All About Messages and Chapter 8 Customizing Agent Composition Options Agent is pre configured so that you can compose and send messages seamlessly with a minimum amount of effort Normally all you need to do is compose your message and press the Send Now button In certain situations however you might want to modify Agent s default posting preferences if you know that the program being used by the recipient requires specific adjustments to view a message properly Here s what to do To specify different posting preferences Select the Options Posting Preferences General tab Below are the default settings that will display Posting Preferences A Signatures Introductions Spelling l M word wrap quoted printable messages Line Length fro characters IV Validate email addresses ee Follow up crosspost action M Require that local addresses be in Address Book 7 Prompt for action Me V Saving message also Closes composition window Quoting I Include original text in follow ups and replies Prefix for Quoted Lines p r Subject for forwarded messages Quoted lte subject Unquoted lte subject Verbatim lte subject
7. 4 Agent Congratulations hockey champ E Eile Edit Online Post Message Options Window Help iS eye ER ES Ta lon Berke zl fal Subject Congratulations hockey champ Ce IV Use Default Attachments Test Your team not only made it to the division finals but you won convincingly Good job It s a pity the season has to end The nice part is that we ll be able to celebrate now Oh and Jon what are you going to do now that you ve won the title Don t tell me You re going to Offline There are a number of different fields you can use in the Composition window other than the default fields To Newsgroups Subject so that your message is targeted exactly the way you want it to be To show all available fields on the Composition window Press 5 or you can use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl D or the Message A Fields option Use the method that s easiest for you Below is the Fields list that displays in the middle of the Composition window and a description of each type of field To set or choose the value for any field highlight the field then enter the desired value in the Value for lt field gt entry box Note Check the Use Defaults box if you wish to use the default value that has been defined on the Group Properties gt Post tab Checking this box can be helpful if you change the value for a field and later decide to revert back to its default value 115 Chapter 5 1
8. MIME Types For details The MIME standard defines attachments to be of specific types according about Agent s to their use Casual users of Agent need not be concerned with the various preconfigured types and what they mean as Agent will handle things automatically for MIME types you To work with MIME types in Agent select the Options General see the online help Preferences gt MIME Types tab Launching an Attachment Simply retrieving an attachment may not be enough to examine its contents If the attachment is a spreadsheet you ll need to read the file using your spreadsheet application If it s a picture you ll need to use a viewer The process of using an application to view the file attachment is called launching the attachment By default Agent will use your Windows registry settings to determine which application should be launched for this attachment After retrieving a message with an attachment if you look in the body pane you ll see the icon for the application which will be used You can override the Windows settings by using the Options General Preferences MIME Types tab General Preferences E Navigation Message List Languages Confirmations Newsre MIME Types URLs URL Types Type Subtype Extensions Application ap E stream a gif Paint 5 shop Pro Image bolpeg Paint Shop Pro Image message rfc822 text enriched htm h n txt text Text Document Add Delete Settings
9. Menu option Navigate Zoom Window Keyboard Shortcut Z You can easily move the focus between the panes with either the mouse or the keyboard To move between panes with the mouse e When viewing all three panes simply click on the desired pane e When zoomed in on a pane click the tab for the pane you wish to view 33 Chapter 3 Groups Folders To move between panes with the keyboard e Press the Tab key to move from the Groups pane to the Message List pane to the Message pane e Press Shift Tab or Escape to move in the reverse order e Press the 1 2 or 3 keys to move from pane to pane Pressing 1 places the focus in the Groups pane 2 places the focus in the Message List pane and 3 places the focus in the Message pane Moving Between Messages Moving between messages is probably the single most common action you perform in Agent That s why Agent provides you so many different ways to do this Before delving into the detail it s worthwhile to understand Agent s approach to message navigation Agent s navigation commands are organized to allow you to move easily among message headers e g Skip to next unread or among message bodies e g Skip to the next unread message with a body Some users like to work primarily in the message list pane while others like to work directly in the message body pane Agent allows you to do either or both quite easily To facilitate this navigation Agent provides
10. r When to Compact Databases After Manual purges I When closing Agent Boripact only if Wasted Space iat least E percent 4 When dog saent Bronptt o connmatcn beroe pargma of eidele The options for compacting databases are described as follows 108 After Manual purges Select this option to compact the databases whenever you manually purge messages When closing Agent Select this option to compact the databases when you exit Agent Compact only if wasted Space is at least Before compacting a database Agent checks to see how much space would be saved by the compact operation This setting allows you to bypass the potentially time consuming operation if only a small amount of disk space savings as a percentage would be saved Enter the minimum amount of disk space savings as a percentage of the total size of the database that will cause Agent to perform an automatic compaction after either a manual purge and or an automatic purge during exit When closing Agent Prompt for confirmation When checked Agent asks for confirmation before purging and or compacting databases when you close a program When unchecked Agent will purge and or compact the databases without asking first All About Messages Printing Messages To define Print Setup settings Select File Print Setup to display a standard Print Setup dialog box where you specify your printer paper options and whether the page orienta
11. Customizing Agent When non zero Agent will show some detailed information about messages at the bottom of the Message pane In particular this shows the message s number as reported by the news server ShowBuild 0 When non zero Agent will display the build number in the title bar 193 Index 7 bit 8 bit format 136 address book 122 30 adding a new address 124 converters 130 creating an entry from a message 124 expanding addresses 125 129 finding an address 126 importing addresses 130 opening 122 picking addresses 113 126 28 using mailing lists 125 validating addresses 128 addresses adding a new address 124 expanding 125 129 finding 126 importing 130 local 129 132 picking 126 28 validating 128 132 Agent ini 190 93 APOP 24 attachments 130 adding 114 130 digests 159 60 encoding and decoding 150 executable attachments 191 formats supported in Agent 150 launching 151 message index 152 message sections 152 multipart 150 retrieving 153 56 retrieving multipart attachments 155 saving 152 156 57 sending 157 59 viewing as text 156 authorization 17 news server 17 bcc field 118 buttons on the Composition window 183 canceling Usenet messages 141 catching up in groups 60 cc field 118 checking for mail 25 42 44 63 checking message status 139 checking spelling 134 35 colors 185 compacting databases 108 composing messages attaching a file 130 checking sp
12. In the message body if a text section has a content description the description appears in a title box above the section Otherwise text sections are preceded by a single horizontal line You can use the keys Alt UpArrow and Alt DownArrow to navigate between the sections Message Index Agent s message index allows you to see all sections of a message ina single dialog box It shows you the type disposition size encoding method and file status of each section and it also displays the icon of the application that will be used when launching the section You can view the index for any message by highlighting the message and selecting Message Index or by typing Ctrl I Here s an example 152 Using Attachments Message Index Es Subject Clouds Author honorius lt honorius mbox vol it gt Date 5 10 97 12 15 AM Index Description Message toultipart mixed Bod text plain nupi qif image gif Description Type image gif Disposition Inline Saved As Not saved Length 24 0K bytes Encoding base64 Errors Close Help Retrieving Messages with Attachments There really is nothing special to do when retrieving messages that might contain attachments Email attachments are retrieved automatically as the email is received When working with newsgroups simply get headers from the groups in which you re interested Then scan the message list and retrieve the bodies of the messages that interest you To co
13. a Write the main body text of the message Using Attachments b Add any nsert in text body attachments in the main body in the order in which these attachments appear in the Attachments dialog c Add the signature if any d Add all other attachments i e all attachments which are not Insert in text body in the order in which they appear in the Attachments dialog box On the Attachments dialog box you can use the Up and Down buttons to change the ordering of the attachments Note Even if Insert in text body attachments are interspersed with other attachments all Insert in text body attachments are inserted as a group followed by all other attachments Message Digests A digest is a group of messages with bodies which are combined into a single MIME message of type multipart digest Often newsletters are sent this way assembling their various parts into a single message Sending a Digest To send a digest 1 2 In the Message List pane select the messages to include in the digest Select Post Forward Verbatim If you already have a Composition window open the Forward Verbatim dialog box appears Just press the Append to selected message button to attach the selected messages to the Composition window If you don t already have a Composition window open Agent will automatically open one and attach the messages to it Note In the Subject field of the Composition window Agent uses the subject of the first
14. s how they work Get Selected Message Bodies retrieves the bodies for one or more messages you have selected in the Message List pane Get Marked Message Bodies retrieves the bodies of messages the you have marked for later retrieval This is particularly useful when using Agent in offline mode See Chapter 3 for an example of an offline session In addition you can retrieve bodies for all new messages when retrieving headers Use the Group Properties Retrieve tab and check the box Retrieve bodies for all new messages 59 Chapter 4 Catching Up in Groups If you ve been away from Agent for an extended period and want to start reading only current messages without worrying about having to read messages posted while you were gone Agent s catch up feature is for you Agent will make it appear that you ve retrieved all the messages in the selected groups up to the catch up time even though you haven t really retrieved or read any of these messages To catch up with a group s messages Select Online Catch Up With Selected Groups This option queries the server to find the highest message number but it doesn t retrieve any headers That way the next time you get new headers you ll only get messages posted since you did the catch up You may also catch up by sampling a limited number of the latest messages Select Online gt Sample Headers Watching Threads Certain threads of discussion may be qu
15. the color for message body text Quoted Text the color for quoted text in a message s body URLs the color for URLs Customizing Agent for Different Languages 186 Some of the groups of interest to you may be home to conversation threads in languages other than English If the language has an available dictionary on Agent s ftp site you can install the dictionary for spellchecking messages you compose in that language In addition to the language dictionary you may need to install a unique font so that the text of retrieved messages is viewed correctly English for example uses the Latin character set while Russian and Japanese use entirely different characters sets requiring alternate fonts In Agent you can specify the character set on a per group or per message basis To configure Agent for international fonts 1 Install the font into your Windows system see your Windows documentation for details 2 Place the language s character set mapping csm file in your Agent working directory For example you might download the Russian character set koi8 csm from the Agent ftp site into your Agent directory c agent 3 Configure Agent s preferences as follows a Select the Options General Preferences Languages tab Customizing Agent General Preferences x MIME Types o us UPL Types Navigation Message List Languages Confirmations Newsre Languages Add French German Rename De
16. 21 sender field 119 sending attachments 157 59 sending messages 114 136 39 7 bit 8 bit format 136 canceling Usenet messages 141 checking status 139 filing messages in folders 140 forwarding 115 message types 114 new messages 114 posting queued messages 46 preferences for individual messages 137 quoted printable format 136 quoted printable vs 7 bit 8 bit 136 replying 115 re sending 140 setting format preferences 136 using MAPI 142 Index servers mail POP 24 mail SMTP 16 news NNTP 16 setting message preferences 131 setting up a connection 48 shortcuts 171 showing buttons on the Composition window 183 showing message details 188 signatures 119 21 creating 120 default 121 delimiter 191 inserting 119 stripping 116 191 single key navigation 37 size of toolbar buttons 178 sorting messages 29 89 SPA Secure Password Authentication 25 spam 84 spell checking 134 35 dictionaries 135 status bar 30 41 67 181 190 indicators 32 subscribing to groups 22 summary field 119 system requirements 16 bit Agent 12 32 bit Agent 12 PC 12 tasks 41 threads 29 displaying 90 expanding and collapsing 37 expanding automatically 38 ignoring 31 43 45 61 watching 31 43 45 60 three pane layout 18 27 changing the layout 180 groups folders pane 28 message body pane 29 message list pane 29 moving between panes 33 resizing panes 181 time zones 16 191
17. For electronically downloaded copies of Agent copy the registration key sent to you via email after purchasing Agent and paste it into Agent s registration dialog box see the example below Then press OK Fort Agent Registration Eg E Thank you for purchasing Fort Agent To enable the program enter your registration key CCTGW8CK SMCBSAOW TV2UBETY NJ5FLUBS XC4T6EBY ABSLTLY Press Ctrl to paste the key from the clipboard Cancel Help For shrink wrapped copies of Agent enter your name the name of your organization optional and the serial number found on the shrink wrapped package shown as follows Then press OK Getting Started Fort Agent Registration E E Thank you for purchasing Fort Agent Please supply the following information Your Name ane Doe Your Organization optional Acme Inc Serial Number fi 4771368 Cancel Help After registering your copy of Agent the Agent Setup dialog box appears Evene to Fort Agent Before you can start using Agent you need to supply the following information If you are using Netscape News Xpress Trumpet News or Wir press this button to get the information directly from the other program Use Information From Another Program News NNTP Server news server forum net Mail SMTP Server mail hub acmeinc com Email Address fidoe acmeinc com Full Name optional L ane Dod Exit Help Note
18. Images al 00000281 dat al 00005e9b dat a Filters idx temp el 00000281 ids 00005c3b idx Groups da fa 00000027 dat al 00001264 dat BB Aa32 384 Groupe a 00000027 ids a 00001264 ids Agent a Grpdat bal zl 000001dd dat f 000045f1 dat a Exe zip Grpidx bak el 000001 dd ids a 000045 idx a Filters dat grpprops d A Fiename Files of type al Files DI Cancel Help IV Update retrieved message counts What to Do With Extinct Groups IV Mark messages read only D Keep all extinct groups Delete extinct groups that are Empty IV Update List of subscribed groups c I gt Add New Groups Delete Al extinct groups Specify the name and location of the file to import Then select the desired options described below e Update retrieved message counts Check this box if you want Agent to update the count of retrieved messages and their unread states when a newsrc file is imported Agent s list of retrieved messages is updated so that it includes the list of messages in the newsrc file as well as the messages currently stored in Agent s database for each group So messages that may have not been included in the newsrc because they were marked unread but which have already been retrieved are 174 Agent and Other Applications included in Agent s updated list of retrieved messages All existing messages listed in the newsrc file are marked read and all existing mes
19. New when the Address Book window is open e For authors of an existing message highlight the message written by the author then select Message Add Author to the Address Book The 121 Chapter 5 address from the message will automatically populate the Address field If the email address includes the author s name Agent will use that to fill in the Name field You can optionally enter comments In both instances the New Address dialog box will appear Below is an example of the dialog box when it is completed Name Mark Happel Addresses mhappel acme com Check Addresses Comments Software Developer Field Text Cancel Help Creating Mailing Lists The New Addresses dialog box can also be used to create a mailing list A mailing list is addressed to the name you give to the mailing list rather than to an entire listing of the recipients This saves space and at the same time maintains the privacy of the recipients Here s how this works 1 Name Enter a name for this mailing list e g Multiple recipients of list 122 Composing and Sending Messages 2 Addresses Enter the email address of every recipient in the mailing list separated by a comma or carriage return 3 Field Text Enter a valid email address in Field Text Based on the example you might enter the following Multiple recipients of list lt multilists acmeinc com gt This is what recipients will see in the To field on t
20. a z means match any character that is not a lower case letter Finally the plus sign means there must be one or more of the preceding characters in the field A Final Example How To Optimize Agent For Use At Two Sites This example shows how you can combine preferences for retrieving email see p 63 with email filters to fine tune your use of Agent at work and at home Say you have a single POP box and you use Agent as your email program both at work and at home Since you only have a single address you receive both personal and professional email into the same POP box and you might receive either type of mail at either location on any day of the week You d like to get your work email at work and your personal email at home First check the Leave messages on server and the Until retrieved at both of my sites options on the Options Inbound Email Checking Mail tab This way you ll get your professional and personal messages both at work at home and Agent will automatically remove them from the server when they ve been received at both sites Now tell Agent to selectively retrieve certain kinds of messages in one location but not the other For example say you receive a newsletter that is related to your work and you re never interested in receiving it at home On your copy of Agent at work create an email watch filter that retrieves the message files it in a folder of your choice then removes the message from the serv
21. control these setting by using the menu options and preference dialogs described in this manual However not all settings are available through menus and dialogs and can only be changed by altering the file directly using the text editor of your choice When you open Agent ini in a text editor you ll notice that the settings are organized in functional categories indicated by square brackets e g Address Online Toolbars This helps you to find quickly the exact setting you wish to modify You should of course make a backup of the Agent ini file before making any changes to it This will save you the trouble of having to reset all your Agent preferences just in case anything goes wrong And whenever you edit Agent ini make sure you turn off any automatic word wrapping in your editor Some of the lines in Agent ini are quite long and wrapping them would make them multi line in which case they will no longer work correctly In this section some of the more useful settings which are not available through menus or dialogs are described in detail To learn what each setting in Agent ini means and where in the program you can find that setting you can refer to Agent s Online Help The topic INI is at or near the top of the search index In the AGENT INI help topic you can click on each of the functional categories to jump directly to the settings in that area If the setting is on a dialog box in Agent you can jump from
22. defined 118 displaying 189 191 in expressions 78 79 100 when printing messages 110 when saving messages 57 196 file attachments See attachments filing mail automatically 67 filing messages in folders 42 45 53 56 when sending messages 140 filter examples 86 filter expression language 75 79 filter expressions 70 72 filtering messages See message filters finding groups 19 finding messages 98 103 find find next 98 global search 99 103 focus 29 folders copying and moving messages 54 creating 53 drag and drop method 54 Manage Folder Menus dialog 55 viewing 54 Folders menu 179 80 follow up to field 119 fonts 97 184 international 186 Fort Customer Support 7 ftp site 130 135 web site 6 forwarding messages 115 from field 119 Getting Help 6 Customer Support 7 Fort s web site 6 newsgroups 7 global search 99 103 GMT time 191 group properties 39 for all groups 39 for selected groups 40 groups catching up 60 finding 19 new 30 properties 39 refreshing 18 sampling messages in 20 selecting 40 subscribing 22 30 viewing 23 28 groups folders pane 28 header fields displaying 189 191 hiding message details 188 icons 30 32 expand collapse thread 31 for attachments 155 Groups Folders pane 30 message body 31 Message List pane 31 Outbox 140 unread mail 67 ignoring threads 31 43 45 61 importing addresses 130 Insert key 32 installa
23. responses to the message Number of Lines The number of lines in the message Message Body The body of the message has been retrieved When these icons are white they indicate bodies of retrieved messages with plain text Yellow indicates that the messages have attachments Green indicates that all attachments have been saved for the messages All Messages SH Email Message Body Not Available The message has been deleted from your news server and is no longer available for retrieval Watch Thread Agent will automatically retrieve the bodies of new responses to the message when retrieving new message headers Ignore Thread New responses to the message will be marked read automatically Mark for Retrieval The body of the message will be retrieved the next time you select Retrieved Marked Messages from the Online menu Keep Message The message you have selected to keep cannot be deleted either manually or by Agent s automatic purging function Message Pane Title Bar Indicators oer ton Re Agent Message Status Indicators The Message Pane title bar Mark Sidell shows the status of a message header e g the message has 7 been retrieved or the message is being watched Also shown 2 2 3 are the message s subject and author as well as the date and 31 Chapter 3 Status Bar Indicators ee Connecting to server Task Description Lets you know what task Agent is cur
24. searches for a window title beginning with Connected to If you are running a non English version of Windows 95 or NT 3 5 you can enter the window s correct title here Start Dial Up monitor on first connection attempt This option is only visible if you are running Windows NT 4 0 In Windows NT 4 0 Agent launches the Dial Up Networking Monitor on the first connection attempt You will see the monitor icon on the task menu system tray Agent doesn t attempt to close the monitor when it hangs up nor does it re launch the monitor on subsequent connection attempts should you close the monitor manually Uncheck this box if you don t want Agent to launch the monitor 51 52 Chapter 3 CHAPTER 4 All About Messages Once you start using Agent on a regular basis you ll quickly find that the messages for your subscribed groups will begin to pile up At some point you re bound to think How do keep track of it all There are a number of options in Agent that help you to manage and view your messages more efficiently So to that end this chapter was created to focus specifically on issues concerning messages We ve broken this chapter into these major areas Organizing Messages Retrieving News Messages Retrieving Email Messages Message Filters Viewing Messages Finding Messages Keeping Messages ID Printing Messages Organizing Messages What would our offices be like if there were no file folders Chaos is
25. typical session 44 Online Help 6 online mode 41 configuring 46 typical session 42 organization field 119 Outbox 139 41 icons 140 opening 139 re sending messages from 141 overwriting text 32 pasting text as quoted 134 picking addresses 113 126 28 POP servers 24 using APOP 24 posting messages See sending messages posting queued messages 46 printing messages 110 11 properties for all groups 39 properties for selected groups 40 purging messages 103 7 preventing 107 what to purge 105 when to purge 104 quoted printable format 136 quoted text 133 134 quoting text in messages 116 refreshing the groups list 18 registration 13 electronic 14 shrinkwrap 14 regular expressions 81 84 Release Notes 6 Remote Access Services RAS 49 replying to mail 42 replying to messages 115 reply to field 119 retrieving attachments 153 56 retrieving mail 23 with POP 24 with SMTP 25 retrieving mail messages 63 67 retrieving marked messages 44 59 retrieving message bodies 22 59 retrieving message headers in selected groups 42 in subscribed groups 44 retrieving multipart attachments 155 retrieving news messages 58 63 ROT13 97 sampling messages 20 saving attachments 152 156 57 saving messages to a file 56 58 header fields 57 scroll bars 30 scroll lock key 32 scroll margins 182 selecting an address 126 28 selecting multiple groups 40 selecting multiple headers
26. 199 Index timeout parameters 192 title bar 28 to field 119 toolbars 28 177 78 unread mail icon 67 unread messages 30 32 URLs in Agent 165 71 and Internet Explorer 171 and Netscape 171 172 copying to the clipboard 168 displaying 166 183 Internet Explorer s Favorites list 171 interpreting URLs 169 launching 168 URL types 165 using Windows shortcuts 171 working with web browsers 169 using multiple copies of Agent 172 UUEncode UUDecode 150 validating addresses 128 view filters See views viewing folders 54 groups 23 28 message bodies 22 29 messages 89 98 subscribed groups 23 200 views 92 advanced 94 creating 93 96 currently selected view 31 examples 96 selecting 92 simple views 93 watching threads 31 43 45 60 window display 180 82 Agent s main window 181 windows in Agent 32 address book 122 composition window 116 showing buttons 183 email filters 68 74 Outbox 139 Usenet filters 68 74 Windows registry 170 Windows shortcuts 171 Winsock loading 25 47 unloading 65 word wrapping 97 132 138 188 working offline 41 working online 41 zooming in and out 29 33
27. 82 bit Agent only Highlight the URL in a message and select Edit gt Add URL to Favorites or use the URL context menu On the Add URL to Favorites dialog that displays press Save to add the URL to the list See the following example 171 Chapter 7 Saver ar si a aE New Forura San Diogo Stez Slat Pages 5 FBS Onine Welcome mew wortdoriee rl dascber_ndex hin rs Lim Carcel Dein Using the Add URL to Favorites dialog box you can insert the URL anywhere in your Favorites hierarchy Anytime voure in Agent and you want to see the contents of the Favorites folder simply select Window gt Open Favorites Folder Create shortcuts to email or news messages 32 bit Agent only Such shortcuts will activate Agent directly For example if you have Agent set to be the default email program you will follow these steps 1 Right click a mail to link in Internet Explorer and select Copy Shortcut 2 Right click anywhere on your Windows desktop and select Paste Shortcut A shortcut will be created on our desktop showing Agent s Email icon 3 Double click the Email icon and Agent will be invoked showing a Composition window with the mail to link in the To field Note to Netscape Users The shortcut feature described above will work in Netscape if you ve installed Internet Explorer on your system What if you use multiple copies of Agent 172 Agent s URL related features work smoothly for people who
28. Daylight Saving Time 16 bit Agent only 32 bit Agent gets the time settings from Windows Check this box if you live where Daylight Saving Time is observed between April and October During these months Agent automatically compensates for the time difference Retrieving a Complete List of Groups 16 As soon as you ve finished entering the required information on the Agent Setup dialog box and have pressed OK a confirmation box pops up asking whether you want to go online to retrieve all the available newsgroups Agent Setup CH The next step in setting up Agent is to go online and get a complete K list of newsgroups available from your server This operation could take several minutes if your server carries many newsgroups so be patient Go online now Getting Started If you don t require authorization to log into your news server press Yes and Agent will get a list of all newsgroups available from your service provider Since there are thousands of groups available on the Internet this may take several minutes If your news server requires authorization to log in you must supply the appropriate authorization information Note that most newservers don t require authorization If you re not sure please check with your Internet service provider To set up authorization press No on the above dialog and follow these instructions To define news server authorization Select Options User and System Profile Us
29. EXE file to activate the installation wizard In Windows 95 select Run from the Start menu enter the path of the SETUP EXE file e g d setup exe in the Open field and press OK Windows 3 x select Run from the File menu enter the path of the SETUP EXE file e g a setup exe in the Command Line entry box and press OK The installation wizard that appears will guide you through the setup process Simply follow the instructions on the screen At any time you can cancel the process or navigate back through the series of screens to change any of your previous entries or selected options Registering Agent Before you can use Agent you must initialize the program by entering a unique registration number and the names of your mail and news servers Additionally if your news server requires a user name or password to log in or if you re using either a Dial Up Networking DUN or Remote Access Services RAS dialer you must configure Agent for these features as well 14 Chapter 2 To register Agent 1 Run Agent Windows 95 Click the Start button select Programs then select the Agent flyout menu and click the Agent icon Windows 3 x In Program Manager open the Agent program group and double click the Agent icon Read the Licensing Agreement in downloaded versions only Click the Agree button to proceed Register your copy of Agent You are required register your software before you can operate Agent
30. If you ve installed a new version over an existing version the Agent Setup dialog box will not appear When upgrading from Free Agent you re automatically upgraded your current setup information is preserved and the dialog box does not appear 15 Chapter 2 To configure for receiving email see p 23 If you ve already been using another Internet software program simply press Use Information From Another Program and Agent will automatically fill in the information for you If you don t use one of the programs listed or if you encounter problems when getting the information from another program you ll need to enter the information manually as described below If you re not sure about any of the details please contact your Internet service provider for assistance 1 News NNTP Server the name of your news server or its IP address 2 Mail SMTP Server the name of your email server or its IP address 3 Email Address your full email address 4 Full Name Optional your full name This name will be included with your email address in the messages you send It s helpful to include your full name if your email address doesn t contain your name Also some newsreaders display full names if available rather than email addresses 5 Time Zone 16 bit Agent only Select the time zone in which you are located Agent uses the time zone to convert the dates of messages to your own local time 6 Automatically adjust for
31. Ignore thread This command helps you avoid messages of no interest to you Any responses in ignored threads are marked read Menu option Message Ignore Thread Keyboard shortcut Keep a message This command flags messages you want to keep indefinitely This prevents it from being removed during automatic purging Menu option Message Keep Keyboard shortcut K File message in a folder Copy to Folder or Move to Folder These buttons can be added to your default toolbar as described on page 177 Message Copy to Folder or Message Move to Folder Keyboard shortcut Alt M C lt file number gt or Alt M V lt file number gt Compose new Usenet and email messages These options open a Composition window Menu options Post New Usenet Message or Post gt New Email Message Keyboard shortcuts P Ctrl M 45 Chapter 3 3 8 Go online and Post queued messages This button can be added to your default toolbar as described on page 177 Menu option Oolme Post Usenet and Email Messages Keyboard shortcut Alt O P 9 Go offline Configuring for Online Offline Behavior 46 The settings that affect Agent s online and offline behavior are defined on the Options User and System Profile Online tab User and System Profile xi User System Online Dial Up Use Online Defaults Times to retry after server refuses connection fo Pause between retries fo seconds T Unload winsock hang up bet
32. New Folder button to create a new folder Do not leave on server f you have checked the global option Leave on server on the Checking Mail tab of the Inbound Email dialog Chapter 4 10 Options menu you can override the global option for the filter you re creating by checking this box This is helpful for particular messages that you always want to remove from the server You will find this option to be useful too when you are receiving email at two sites e g at work and at home Priority Enter the priority for the filter between O lowest and 1000 highest If a message matches the expression for more than one filter the filter with the highest priority will be applied Disable filter Check this box to temporarily disable the filter Expire this filter after Check this box if you want the filter to be automatically deleted after either a fixed number of days after the filter was created enter the number of days or a fixed number of days after the filter last was used enter the number of days and check the Of Inactivity box Apply filters to folder immediately Check this box to apply all filters to the selected folder as soon as you close the dialog box Check This message only if restrict the filter activity to the selected message This checkbox only appears if you are creating the filter from an existing message Managing Your List of Filters 74 As you begin to create filters for news and
33. Otherwise the field is displayed only if it s actually contained in the message Ifa Base news or email parameter is empty then no fields are displayed when Show All Header Fields is inactive If an All news or email parameter is empty then all fields are displayed when Show All Header Fields is activated Attachment Executables exe bat com cmd This setting controls the executable applications recognized by Agent For these file types Agent will display a warning before attempting to launch files of this type protecting you from possible computer virus contamination Message GMT Dates 1 When non zero Agent will post all news and email messages in GMT format rather than your local timezone ShowAllFields 0 When non zero Agent will allow editing of the Control and Approved message fields used for posting to moderated newsgroups SignatureDelimiter This setting tells Agent which characters mark the beginning of a signature When Agent sees the final occurrence of this string of characters in text to be quoted all text after this delimiting text is stripped from the quoted text To deactivate this feature place a right parenthesis just after the first quotation mark in the string For example 191 Chapter 8 192 SignatureDelimiter Timing Parameters in this section allow you to control how long before a timeout message is displayed in Agent If you think the server is drop
34. Receive Files tab you ll be selecting the joined message If you did not configure the group for automatic joining then you must manually decode the attachment See the procedure for manually decoding an attachment below Retrieve and or view the attachment by selecting File Launch Attachment Alternatively double clicking the attachment will launch it if you have checked the option Double clicking launches attachments on the Group Properties Receive Files tab Using Attachments To help you distinguish messages with attachments from those without attachments Agent color codes the icons in the message list pane The envelope indicates email and the page indicates news messages e B white Messages with plain text e E yellow Messages with attachments e B green Messages for which all attachments have been saved You ll notice that a message with an attachment is generally much larger than a simple text message In the Message List pane you ll see the number of lines in the message If you retrieve the message body the Message pane will tell you the size of the attachments in bytes Retrieving Multipart Attachments By default Agent is configured to automatically detect multipart attachments and join them together into a single message For example if Agent comes across a two part message it will join the two parts and place 2 in the subject to indicate that a two part message was combined Note If all part
35. WAV file only if new retrieved messages are marked unread Checking this box is useful if you ve created message filters that automatically mark certain messages read when they are retrieved In such cases you may not want Agent to beep or play a WAV file to notify you that there is new mail When you receive email the status bar will display the number of messages unread marked read and deleted Agent will display the results of the most recent email retrieval as well as the accumulated counts since you last read 66 All About Messages an unread email Why would you want to know the accumulated counts If you have Agent set to automatically retrieve email every lt n gt minutes you many not check your email for several retrieval cycles Accumulated counts keep track of all email received since the last time you read your mail The accumulated counts will be reset the first time you read an unread email message Whenever you receive unread email the Agent program icon changes indicating that you have received mail However Agent will not show this New Email icon if no new email is unread that is if all email retrieved was marked read or deleted Filing Inbound Email Automatically When you first configure Agent to retrieve email you define a folder into which email will automatically be filed As you start to receive more email with Agent you certainly will want to create more folders and have Agent put messages in the
36. alone if this looks like gibberish to you However the Usenet uses specific naming conventions to help make things a bit more clear The following table describes some of the more common Usenet naming conventions Welcome to Agent Computer related subjects such as the group comp infosystems Miscellaneous topics jobs items for sale anything that doesn t conveniently fit into another group such as the group misc invest canada Information about newsgroups themselves including information about finding and using newsgroups such as news groups reviews Recreational topics hobbies sports movies and the arts such as the group rec humor Scientific topics discussions about a vast variety of scientific research such as the group sci space shuitle A wide range of social issues such as discussions about different types of societies and subcultures as well as sociopolitical subjects such as the group soc culture berber Debate about politics religion and anything else that s controversial such as the group talk politics china Alternative subjects ranging from the serious computers and psychology to the bizarre and unconventional occult and alternative lifestyles Here s just a sample of what you will find in the world of newsgroups Discussions on British comedy from Monty Python alt comedy british Be plait Adder Anything and everything about Nashville from music to blooming dogwood tr
37. as Text Sometimes you may receive a message as an attachment when it s really just text and all you want to do is read the text Usually this happens when someone sends the text incorrectly or when another program formats information in such a way that it is sent as an attachment In either case the solution is simple On the Options General Preferences MIME types tab simply check the boxes Display when Inline and Display when attachment for each MIME type appropriate Agent will immediately display the text of your message Saving Attachments Agent allows for a lot of flexibility in deciding when and how attachments are saved You can have Agent save attachments automatically or you can save attachments manually Saving attachments automatically 156 You can set up Agent to save attachments automatically while retrieving bodies or receiving email by checking Save attachments automatically on the Group Properties Receive Files tab This approach is convenient if you know you ll want to save all attachments as files but downloading will be slower since Agent must save each attachment to a file and save it in the message at least temporarily in case an encoding error is detected Using Attachments Saving attachments manually An alternate approach is to leave attachments in the message and save them manually This method has the advantage of making downloads somewhat faster and not cluttering your disk with files that you m
38. as the format for Usenet and email text To override the default format for individual messages 1 While in the Composition window select Message Properties to open the Message Properties dialog box 2 Select the language for the message if it is other than the default and check the box Override default settings as shown in the example below Loose Ahate E mnis diaii ema Wreck siachneni Henane in aubiect SEN tw cies aks leprbesto angle atechments onl Quoted printabhe PAIME M Senet le ot preface ON sector zem a aQ E Leet PME for rond SCH headers EE Le t E e eg e SS 3 Select the desired format for the message body either Zbit 8bit or Quoted printable MIME Word wrapping preferences One of the advantages of quoted printable is that lines of text can be any length If you ve set your preference as quoted printable Agent treats the message text as one long line of text It inserts invisible line breaks where necessary so that the lines always appear correctly within the window in which the message is viewed A message text in 7bit 8bit format wraps at the line length specified in Agent s Posting Preferences To set the line length at which message text is automatically wrapped Select the Options Posting Preferences General tab In the Line Length entry box specify the maximum number of characters per line Note that only unquoted lines are wrapped Quoted lines for ex
39. case you may want to use what are called regular expressions Use Regular Expressions Only When Necessary Because of the extra computation required to evaluate regular expressions it is recommend that you use them only when necessary especially in Usenet and email filters where the time required to evaluate filters can significantly affect online performance If all you need to do is match words then it is much faster to use Agent s simpler word matching syntax For example the following word based filter subject this is a test is much faster than this regular expression filter subject this is a test In general you should find that you need to use regular expressions only if you need to e match punctuation characters that are not normally treated as words e match text that appears inside of words How to Include Regular Expressions in Filter Expressions Anywhere a sequence of words to be matched can appear in a filter expression you can include a regular expression enclosed in curly braces Here s an example of a regular expression combined with a sequence of words to be matched as well subject this is a test and 0 9 This example matches any subject containing the phrase this is a test AND a regular expression consisting of any sequence of one or more digits Rules for Writing Regular Expressions 81 Chapter 4 Atoms The simplest regular expression is called an atom An atom ca
40. email messages you will more than likely want to review the filters you ve created perhaps edit them even delete them if you have not set your filters up for automatic deletion You can do all these things from the Usenet Filters and Email Filters windows To view your existing filters 1 2 Select Window gt Open Usenet Filters or Window gt Open Email Filters Select the way you want to view your filters To do this open the Select View dialog You can open this dialog by choosing Filter gt Select View or by clicking header bar for the window Note that the current view selection criteria are displayed in the header bar To Add Change or Delete Filters From the Usenet Filter or Email Filter window you can do the following Each option is available from the Filter menu or from a toolbar button All About Messages Add a New Filter this is how you create a filter from scratch as described earlier on p 68 Add a Copy of a Filter the Add Filter dialog will appear and you can make any changes you want to an existing filter and save the changes as a new filter Edit a Filter the Edit Filter dialog will appear and you can make any changes you want to the filter then save the filter with these changes Delete a Filter the filter will be removed Selecting Filter Confirm Deletes will instruct Agent to get your approval whenever you try to delete a filter Agent s Expression Language When creating Usenet an
41. filter to apply to all groups or select Group lt newsgroup gt if you want the filter to apply only to the current group Priority Enter the priority for the filter between 0 lowest and 1000 highest If a message matches the expression for more than one filter the filter with the highest priority will be applied Disable filter Check this box to temporarily disable the filter Expire this filter after Check this box if you want the filter to be automatically deleted after either a fixed number of days after the filter was created enter the number of days or a fixed number of days after the filter last was used enter the number of days and check the Of Inactivity box Apply filters to group immediately Check this box to apply all filters to the selected group as soon as you close the dialog box Check This message only to restrict application of the filter to the selected message This checkbox only appears if you are creating the filter from an existing message 71 72 Chapter 4 The Add Email Filter Dialog Add Email Filter x Filter Expression Any Sender tom gold acmeinc con a Paste Field Lower Case Kill Action Watch Action C Delete C Retrieve Mark read Watch thread C Ignore thread T Keep File in folder Inbox S T Do not leave on server New Folder Priority 400 IT Disable filter IV Expire this filter after E days I of inactivity IV Apply filters to fold
42. for image gif Extensions aif Application Browse ji spia inme Paint Shop Pro Image Ucht spia matacnment 151 Chapter 6 To override the Windows default settings 1 Highlight the MIME type for which you want to change the application 2 Make sure all extensions for this type are listed in the Extensions box 3 Enter the pathname of the new application in the Application box or use the Browse button to find the application 4 Click OK Saving an Attachment An attachment is part of a message in Agent You can detach and save each attachment as a file When saving the attachment you can specify whether Agent retains the attachment in the message or removes it Message Sections The MIME standard allows a message to have several sections and the sections can be of different types Each attachment you place in a message is a separate section Each section can have its own disposition i e the way it is inserted in the message The disposition options are e Attachment the section is appended to the message Typically this is how you want to send an attachment e Inline the section remains a separate attachment however it may be viewed within Agent rather than through a separate program Note Agent will only display inline text attachments To view image attachments you must first configure a viewer e Text insertion the section is inserted as text directly into the message
43. i e the view applies to all groups or to all folders If you don t see the exact view you want you can create your own 91 92 Chapter 4 Note Sometimes a view may not display all messages in a thread For example you may set your view so you see only unread messages and some messages in a thread are read If you want to see everything in the thread highlight the thread and use the command Navigate Show Full Thread This is a temporary command showing the full thread only as long as you remain in the current Message List pane using this view To select views on the fly use any of the following methods e Open the Group View Messages flyout and select a view e On the Message List pane header left click the binoculars W icon and the Select View dialog box appears from which you can select a view e Hu the V key and the Select View dialog box appears from which you can select a view Select View ES Views Unread Messages Unread Messages With Bodies Messages With Bodies Cancel Help Manage Views To create a custom view use either of the following methods e Open the Group View Messages flyout and select Manage Views e Inthe Groups Folders pane right click a group or folder and a context menu will appear On the context menu open the View Messages flyout and select Manage Views All About Messages View amp Uread Messages Uknread Messages With Bodies Messages With amp Bodie
44. in the color specified for quoted text on the Colors tab of the Display Preferences dialog box 3 Show dividers between sections Check this box to insert a horizontal line between the different sections of message bodies For example if you ve enabled Show All Header Fields on the Message menu there will be a divider between the header fields and the body of the message 4 How to display URLs You can choose the attributes that you want to apply to URLs including specifying a new color for URLs and whether URLs are underlined or become highlighted when they are entered in the Composition window 5 Show Buttons on composition window Check this box to show the Send Now Send Later Save All Fields Cancel and Help buttons directly as part of the Composition window By default these buttons are not on the Composition Window toolbar 183 Chapter 8 Selecting the Options Display Preferences Fonts tab allows you to change the fonts in Agent s messages and browsers STT Preferences Main Window Browsers Messages Fonts Colors Arial Bold Spt Fonts for the Language English American Variable Pitch Body MS Sans Serif 8pt Fixed Pitch Body Courier New 8pt Message List MS Sans Serif 8pt Use the variable pitch body font Message List Subject MS Sans Serif Bold Spt Use the bold version of the message list font Printer Arial 10pt I Use the variable pitch body font for Headers Your op
45. is used to reply to the selected email message Agent automatically inserts the address and the subject prefaced by an RE to show that it s a reply Toolbar button Keyboard option R Reply to All is used to post a reply to each of the recipients of the original message eh Toolbar button Keyboard option Shift R Forward Quoted is used to create an email message which contains the text of the currently selected message Agent automatically inserts the lines of original text preceded by the quoted text marker e g gt as well as the subject preceded by fwd so the recipient will know that it s a forwarded message Toolbar button Keyboard option Alt P W Forward Unquoted is used to create a new email message which contains the text of the currently selected message Unlike Forward Quoted though the text is not preceded by the quoted text marker Agent automatically inserts the subject preceded by fwd so that the recipient will know that it s a forwarded message Toolbar button Keyboard option Alt P N Forward Verbatim is used to create a new email message in which the selected messages are attached to it Agent automatically inserts the subject of the first of the selected messages Toolbar button Keyboard option Alt P V Note For any of the Forward options you can change the fwd indicator in the Subject field on the Options Posting Preferences General tab 113 Chapter 5 114
46. last program unloads it If you have a dial up connection to the Internet the winsock DLL also controls when your system dials and hangs up the phone Most winsock DLLs wait to begin dialing the phone until the first program tries to access another host for example when Agent tries to access your news server 47 Chapter 3 Thus even if a program loads the DLL immediately upon startup the DLL won t dial the phone until the program actually tries to perform some online operation When the DLL hangs up the phone depends on the kind of DLL Most 16 bit DLLs don t hang up the phone until the last program unloads the DLL from memory Thus even if all programs have finished performing online operations these DLLs will keep the connection active until all programs have actually unloaded the DLL On the other hand the Microsoft 32 bit DLL used in Windows 95 and NT for Dial Up Networking hangs up the phone as soon as the last program finishes all online operations even though the DLL is still loaded in memory Most Internet client programs load the winsock DLL immediately upon program startup and keep it loaded until you close the program This works well for 32 bit programs using the Microsoft DLL But from the previous explanation you can see that it doesn t work very well for 16 bit programs since the only way to for the these DLLs to hang up the phone is to close all clients thereby unloading the DLL from memory Agent on the o
47. manually editing the match expression using the Paste Field button is just faster Note that many times spam mail is not directly addressed to you that is it does not have your actual address as the value in the To field One handy way to eliminate this type of spam is to create a kill filter that will match any message that does NOT contain your actual address Here s an example for a user named Jane Doe not any recipient janedoe abc com 85 Chapter 4 This will work for most spam However you may find that your own mail system inserts an Apparently To field into messages that are missing a To or Cc field The any recipient filter matches the Apparently To field If you d prefer to have a filter that does not match that either try the following example not to janedoe abc com and not cc janedoe abc com For messages from senders you know and want to receive messages from in the future press Ctrl W to create a watch filter containing those individuals addresses for example from tsmith acme com or hank lloyd zsu edu When you create either a kill or watch filter you can check the Apply filters to folder immediately option to cause Agent to reroute all matching messages immediately If you aren t sure that you want to reroute all matching messages in the folder you can check This message only As you define more kill and watch filters you will find that Agent will get better at automatically routing your email
48. messages and you can create an address book for your most frequently used email addresses You can even tell Agent to use a MAPI system to send mail if you like Support for MIME Agent supports the widely accepted message transferal protocol called MIME allowing you the greatest flexibility in sending messages and attachments File attachments With Agent you can send and receive a wide variety of attachment types in email and Usenet messages Agent will automatically join large multi part attachments to reduce clutter Online Offline Capability Being able to work online or offline allows you to balance economic considerations versus the desire for convenience If economy is a prime consideration using the offline mode minimizes your online time by connecting to the server only long enough to retrieve new headers You can then read the messages offline at your leisure If convenience is more important the online mode retains Agent s server connection so that you never have to wait to reestablish the connection during an Agent session Easy Browsing Agent makes it easy to quickly sample a newsgroup For example to find out what alt usenet kooks is about you can sample the group s most recent messages then either subscribe to that group to get more messages or leave it behind and move on to other groups Configurable Multi Pane Windows Agent s window environment is divided into three panes Groups Message List and Messag
49. not word wrapped lines as displayed on the screen Paste Field press this button to open a Paste Field dialog box to paste text from the message that is currently open in the associated Browser window History press this button to open a dialog box that lists up to twenty of the most recently used search expressions for pasting Lower Case press this button to make the text in the Search For entry box all lower case This allows you to match all instances of your entry during a search Specify where you want Agent to look Search in Selected groups and folders only check this box to have Agent search only the groups and folders that are currently selected highlighted in the associated Browser window Note You can move back and forth between the Browser window and this dialog Thus you can open a Global Search dialog box and then return to the Browser window to select different groups to search Search in All Groups in view check this box to have Agent search all newsgroups that are visible in the Browser window For example if you have Subscribed Groups selected Agent will search all subscribed groups Search in All folders in view check this box to have Agent search all folders that are visible in the Browser window Search in Visible messages only check this box to have Agent search only those messages currently being displayed in whatever message views you have selected for the Browser window Note Groups an
50. of the selected messages Select Message Properties to open the Message Properties dialog box Check the Override box then make sure the Attachments Format is MIME and the option Send attached messages as a Digest is checked If the you want to add more messages to the digest you can return to the message list and select additional messages choose Post gt Forward Verbatim and append the messages to the existing outbound message When sending the message Agent places the digest at the end of the message after all other attachments 159 Chapter 6 Receiving and Bursting a Digest Receiving a digest is as simple as receiving any other message All sections of the digest are contained in a single message To see what s contained in the digest open the Message Index either by selecting Message ode or press Ctrl I From the index you can see at a glance a description of each section in the digest Highlight a section of interest then use the Go to option to view the text of that section If you like Agent will create a separate message for each part of the digest a process known as bursting the digest To burst a digest Check the option Burst digests into separate messages on the Group Properties Receive Files tab see page 154 The next time you receive an attached digest the digest will be broken into separate messages Note After bursting a digest Agent retains the complete original message so that you
51. one copy of itself 4 How to interpret aname domain URL Select the way in which you want Agent to interpret URLs detected in a message Because there is potential ambiguity between an email address and a news message ID you need to tell Agent how to resolve the ambiguity when encountered By default Agent attempts to distinguish between the two i e it makes an educated guess But you have the following options e Prompt for action where Agent will always ask you how to proceed e Assume the URL is an email address e Assume the URL is a message ID e Make an educated guess Technical details are in the online help Launching message URLs poses a special problem for Agent The message ID can refer to any news message whether it s in the current group other groups or folders or even on the host news server You need to tell Agent where it should look On the Options General Preferences URLs tab the Search for message URLs in section allows you to specify your preferences Search for message URLs in C Current Group lV Folders Ce Subscribed groups MV News Server All groups IV Prompt before going online e Select which set of groups in which you want Agent to search the message URL 169 Chapter 7 170 e Check the Folders box to have Agent search your folders for the message e Check the News Server box to have Agent search for the message on your News Server If you check the Prompt before going onli
52. or folder This option ignores the Search in group folder options and only searches the currently open group or folder On completion Agent causes the associated Browser window to display only the matching messages When it does this it changes the message view title on the Message List pane to Search Results The search results are retained until you change the message view or you move to a different group or folder Stop press this button to stop the search in progress Cancel Close press this button to have Agent close this dialog box View the Search Results Results this listbox displays the group or folder names and the subject for each matching message It is updated incrementally while the search progresses The window can display up to 8000 messages If the search exceeds that number Agent stops and displays an error message Jump press this button to jump to the message selected in the Results list If a search is still active the search window is minimized If no search is active this dialog box closes Here are some instances when you might want to use Jump 101 Chapter 4 e When you re just looking for something and want to position on the message and leave the Global Search dialog up and with focus e When you want to read the message but come back to the Results list when you re done reading To position on the message and switch focus to the Browser window use Shift Jump This will minimize the Glo
53. press CTRL 3 Agent will encode the highlighted text Once encoded as ROT13 text the message cannot be read without first decoding it To decode a ROT13 message 1 Highlight the encoded text 2 Select Edit gt Apply ROT13 or press CTRL 3 When you decode text in a message you have retrieved the decoding only affects your display If you return to this message later you will again see the encoded original text Encoding text in a message you re creating affects the actual text If you post the message other people will see it with the text encoded Finding Messages As you work with Agent you likely will begin to accumulate a large number of both news and email messages There will be times when you need to find a specific message or several messages about a certain topic or from a certain author Agent provides tools to help with just such a need 97 Find Find Next Chapter 4 When working in a single group or folder use the Find function to search for messages whose subject or author fields contain a particular text string To find a message matching a simple text string a Global Search Often a simple find operation isn t enough You may want to search the body of a message for a text string or you may want to search for messages across several groups or folders In such cases you want to use Agent s global search feature 98 Set Agent s focus to the Message List pane of the group
54. selected groups Note Throughout this manual the convention for indicating group properties is Group Properties lt tab gt Be aware that this can refer to properties for selected groups Group Properties lt tab gt or for all groups Group Default Properties lt tab gt whichever fits your need Setting Default Properties for All Groups Select Group Default Properties to display the Default Properties for All Groups dialog box You ll see a number of tabs containing different types of group properties For example a default behavior on the Mark Read tab shown as follows is When retrieving new message headers Mark all existing messages read This means that by default for every group in which you retrieve new message headers all existing messages are marked read Default Properties for All Groups RB Crossposts Post Send Files Receive Files Directory Language Mark Read What to Purge When to Purge Retrieve Filters m When retrieving new message headers ee C Do not mark any existing messages read Mark all existing messages read Mark only messages without bodies read gt When retrieving marked message bodies C Do Not mark any existing messages read Mark all existing messages read Mark only messages without bodies read Cancel Help 39 Chapter 3 Setting Properties for Selected Groups Following the same example what if for some groups you don t want to
55. the desired folder Note By default Agent will move a message when you drag and drop it To copy the message instead press and hold the Ctrl key You ll see a sign in the folder while you re dragging the message which indicates that you re copying not moving it 4 Once the cursor is directly on top of the desired folder release the mouse button and the message will be dropped into that folder To copy or move a message into a folder Highlight the message or messages to be filed choose one of these equivalent methods to open either the Copy to Folder or the Move to Folder flyout menu For details on creating toolbar buttons see p 177 All About Messages Menu options Select Message Copy to Folder or Message Move to Folder gt lt folder name gt Context menu Rightclick the message header or body to open its context menu and select Copy to Folder or Move to Folder gt lt folder name gt Keyboard shortcuts Alt M C opens the Copy to Folder flyout menu Alt M V opens the Move to Folder flyout menu If you don t see the desired destination folder on the flyout menu you can select AN Folders at the bottom of the flyout This displays a dialog box that lists all your folders Copy Messages to Folder E Folders Agent Information Business Correspondence Friends Inbox Internet Service Records Manage Menu OK Cancel Help L ol Cancel He To add one of these folders to the flyout menu jus
56. the following table This table is a general reference Some of these terms are explained elsewhere in the User Guide The numbers and text in the following tables refer to what you see in the example picture of Agent on page 28 Groups Folders Pane Icons el mme Groups Counter located on the Groups Folders pane title bar 5 23737 The number of groups displayed in the pane followed by the total number of groups in the Groups list Unread Counter preceding each group name The number of messages in the group you have not read Subscribed Group preceding subscribed groups To switch Fal between subscribing and unsubscribing press the Subscribe toolbar button select the Subscribe option on the Group menu or type Ctrl S Mark for Retrieval One or more messages in the group are marked for retrieval New Group preceding new groups To get all groups added to Ee your news server since the last time you retrieved groups select Get New Groups from the Online menu Agent Fundamentals Message List Pane Icons el om View located in the Message List pane title bar The currently EE view Click the binoculars to select another view Retrieving The body of the message is currently being retrieved Expand Thread Click this icon to show the message s responses oo Collapse Thread Click this icon to hide the messages responses o Number of Responses For a collapsed thread this is the number of 2
57. this button to open the standard DUN wizard dialog box where you can create a new connection entry Not available in Windows NT User Name Password Enter the user name and password to be used for the connection If you want Agent to prompt for the password each time you connect leave the Password field blank and check the Prompt before connecting box above Windows 95 A separate user name and password are stored for each connection in the DUN database Changing the entries here changes the DUN entries Windows NT There is no facility for accessing the DUN user name and password For this reason Agent stores a single user name and password for use by all connections Close dial up connection after going offline Ir this option is checked Agent will disconnect the dial up connection after going offline but only if Agent opened the connection If Agent did not open the connection then Agent will not close it Title of Connection Status Window This option is only visible if you are running Windows 95 or Windows NT 3 5 Use this option if you are running a non English version of Windows 95 or NT 3 5 When the Windows 95 DUN dialer or NT 3 5 RAS dialer completes a connection it displays a window in the middle of the screen showing the connection status When Agent is configured to open a DUN connection automatically after the connection has been established Agent searches for the DUN window and minimizes it By default Agent
58. use multiple copies of Agent You can have a single copy of Agent as both your news and email service or neither or you can have a different copy of Agent for each You can configure Agent to work just the way you want Agent will configure itself so that two users can share the same computer with separate Agent databases and have URL launching work correctly For Agent and Other Applications example if a husband and wife share a computer when the husband launches a URL from his web browser Agent will be initialized with the husband s database Likewise Agent will launch with the wife s database when she s using the computer This feature only works under Windows 95 or Windows NT and requires e Aunique login account ID for each user e AGENT EXE be stored in a common directory with Agent databases in separate working directories Using a Newsrc File A newsrc file is a text file used by Unix systems and by some other Windows based newsreaders to record the list of newsgroups available to and used by an individual The newsrc file records the total list of groups which groups have been subscribed to and the range of messages that have been retrieved and read for each group Agent stores this same group information in its own database using a proprietary format As long as you use a single version of Agent always on the same machine there s no need to worry about using a newsrc file However if you use Agent at home whil
59. vs Offline Agent s User Interface Three Pane Main Browser Window Most of the time you ll be working in Agent s Main Browser window which by default is divided into the three panes shown as follows This section describes all of the components of the three pane window design in detail You will learn what kind of information is contained in these three panes and also the meaning of all the different icons that you ll encounter as you begin to use Agent 27 Chapter 3 Menu Bar Toolbar Pane Title Bar Groups Folders Pane Pane in Focus Message Pane Status Bar See Toolbars on page 177 28 SES alt binaries clip art I File Edit Online Post Navigate Group Message Options Window Help All Groups 5 123737 alt tv qummi bears 2 Agent is cool alt usenet offline reader 2 Agent support 14 Jon Berke 844 Agent Dev Team Idee al 8 4 Where to find Agent 10 Newsreaders other than Agent Index gt gt tech support could you possibly need Mark for Retrieval Robin you have the picture Agent is very slick and eagy to use Watch Thread should know wrote it Hope you enjoy the prograrn We are including new features all the time Ifyou have any suggestions about what would make Agent even better Keep e Gs p Connecting to server Delete Body Message List Pane Context Menu Scroll Bar Ignore Thread gt gt Wow with a program as simple and easy to use ag Age
60. 16 From Deft ehm com jee doe Keywords D at Acme Soltwere Inc Ogrisimn Oak Recte To Dat Val lor Boor M Use Delo Smas Delaul nore Fang Drak Leave in Dub zs Tat ET w LEE Bcc A list of email addresses Separated by commas of people to receive a copy of the message without the primary recipients the ones listed in the To and Cc fields knowledge If you enter a value for this field when posting a message it will cause Agent to also post an email message to the specified recipients in the To field Cc A list of email addresses Separated by commas of people to receive a copy of the message If you enter a value for this field when posting a message it will cause Agent to also post an email message to the specified recipients in the To field Distribution Usenet messages only This field controls how widely the message is distributed For example a distribution of california might limit the distribution of the message to news servers residing in California To make the distribution work correctly requires the cooperation of the Internet Service Providers ISPs who manage news servers and it has never been widely adopted You might want to consult with your ISP about how it might be used at their site If multiple areas are listed they must be separated by commas similar to the Newsgroups field User subscriptions are still controlled by the Newsgroups field but now in addition to
61. 39 Setting Properties for Selected Groups 40 MUETIAFASKING eriin aa aAa a AN a A T 41 WORKING ONLINE VS OFFLINE genge a A R R EE A ANEETA 41 Onine Mode eine aiaa N A R A Ea 42 OMNES MOMS aa a a RA RA REE A TEE 44 Configuring for Online Offline Behavior sssesssssssssresssssisnirrrrtssssrrrrrnrstsssnrrnnnsssssstnnnn 46 Setting Up Your CONNEC EE 48 CHAPTER 4 ALL ABOUT MESSAGEG cccccccsececeeeseeeeeeeeeeeeeeeseeeeeeseaeeseeseeeeeeseeseeeeeees 53 ORGANIZING MESSAGES errs 53 Filing Messages in Folders cccccccccccceeee cette ee eeeccceee sees eeeeeccaaaeeeeeeeeeeecccaaeeeeeeeeeeeeneaaaes 53 Saving Messages to File ccecccceeeeeeeee cess aaaeee eee eeeeeeeaaaeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaeeeeeeeseeeecaaaeeeeeeeeneaes 56 RETRIEVING NEWS MESSAGES ANEN 58 Retrieving Message Headers in Newsgroups sssssssseeriissssssssrrrrsssssrrirrnrnsssssrrnnnnnsssret 58 Retrieving Message Bodies ssessssseeeessesssenrrrtssssrrennnttssorrtnnnntsretnrennnnssseennennnnnssent 59 Belle Be E ue Ire 60 Wat nng RBE 60 ele Oil EE 60 Managing Crosspostings cess eter ee eeecaaeeeeeeeeeedeeeaaaeeeeeeeeeeeeedaaeeeeeeeentees 61 RETRIEVING EMAIL MEsasaorEs ENEE 63 Ghecking tor Mall Geesse EE ete anata eta a a anteaters eee eee 63 When New Email Arrives cccccccccceeeeee cere en eeccceee sete eect eecaaeeeeee eee neccaaeeeeeeeeeteedaaeeeeeeees 66 Filing Inbound Email Automatically ccccccccccccteeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeccee
62. 53 56 filters 67 89 finding 98 103 fonts 97 184 forwarding 115 international fonts 186 keeping 31 43 45 103 9 languages 186 marking for retrieval 30 31 37 44 197 Index marking read 36 message index 152 posting queued messages 46 printing 110 11 properties 137 157 159 purging 103 7 raw 57 189 replying to 115 re sending 140 retrieving bodies 22 retrieving headers in selected groups 42 retrieving headers in subscribed groups 22 44 retrieving marked messages 44 sampling 20 saving 114 saving to a file 56 58 sending 114 showing details 188 sorting 29 89 viewing 89 98 word wrapping 97 MIME 150 MIME types 151 multipart attachments 150 retrieving 155 multiple selection 21 40 multi tasking 41 navigating 33 38 and retrieving messages 36 moving between messages 34 moving between panes 33 moving to next or previous message 34 retrieving next unread message 37 retrieving next unread message in a thread 37 single key navigation 37 skipping to next unread group 36 skipping to next unread message 35 skipping to next unread message in a thread 35 skipping to next unread message with body 35 skipping vs viewing 34 Netscape 171 172 new groups 30 198 news NNTP server 16 news server authorization 17 newsgroups defined 4 examples 5 newsrc files 173 75 automatic import and export 175 exporting 173 importing 174 offline mode 41 configuring 46
63. 7bit 8bit formatting If you know that the message recipient s system is MIME capable that s the ideal situation MIME is the internationally recognized standard for transferring data Quoted printable MIME has a few distinct advantages over 7bit 8bit formatting e Quoted printable prevents transferal problems It uses only 7 bits to encode 8 bit characters which helps to ensure that information won t be lost when messages are transferred via 7 bit gateways e Quoted printable correctly encodes non ASCII characters such as accents and other characters used in different languages e Quoted printable allows lines of text to be arbitrarily long It automatically inserts invisible line breaks where necessary to keep the physical line lengths within the viewer s prescribed limits To set your general preferences for formatting 1 Select the Options General Preferences Languages tab General Preferences x MIME Types URLs URL Types Navigation Message List Languages Confirmations Newsre Languages Berane German Rename Italian Delete r Settings for English MIME Charset Codepage Character Sets atin 150 8859 1 1252 Spell Checker None v Usenet Text 7bit Bbit v I MIME Headers Email Text Quoted printable MIME 7 IV MIME Headers Composing and Sending Messages 2 For each language in the Languages list select either Zbit 8bit or Quoted printable MIME
64. AGENT News amp Mail Reader User s Guide Version 1 5 FORTE This Agent documentation and the software described in it are copyrighted with all rights reserved Under the copyright laws neither the documentation nor the software may be copied photocopied reproduced translated or reduced to any electronic medium or machine readable form in whole or in part without the written consent of Fort Advanced Management Software Inc Fort except in the manner described in this manual Fort does not warrant that the Agent software package will function properly in every hardware software environment Agent may not work in combination with modified versions of the operating system in conjunction with certain memory resident programs with certain print spooling or file facility programs or with certain printers supplied by independent manufacturers Although Fort has tested the software and reviewed the documentation FORTE MAKES NO WARRANTY OR REPRESENTATION EITHER EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WITH RESPECT TO THIS SOFTWARE OR DOCUMENTATION THEIR QUALITY PERFORMANCE MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AS A RESULT THIS SOFTWARE AND DOCUMENTATION ARE LICENSED AS IS AND YOU THE LICENSEE ARE ASSUMING THE ENTIRE RISK AS TO THEIR QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE IN NO EVENT WILL FORTE BE LIABLE FOR DIRECT INDIRECT SPECIAL INCIDENTAL OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES ARISING OUT OF THE USE OR INABILITY TO USE THE SOFTWA
65. Address Book With the click of your mouse you can open Agent s Address Book where you can list all of your frequently used email addresses This saves you 119 Chapter 5 from having to remember the details of email addresses Just use a name or alias in place of the address and Agent will fill in the details for you To open the Agent Address Book Select Window Open Address Book and the Address Book window will display xj Agent Address Book F Eile Edit Online Post Address Options Window Help Addresses Alan Watkins cl awatkins acmeinc com Barbara Thompson Chip Ball Chris Beck Chuck Knuff Dave Chin Donna Schmitt Fred Brutschy George Mitchell Ginny Brown Henry Chin Jeanne Willoughby Jim LaManna Comments Jim Powers Alan s work email Joel Johnstone John Wintersteen Jon Berke Judy Carpenter Julie Murdoch Kim Gomez Kit Kuzell Lance Boehm F Maile Batchelor FieldTet p Alan Watkins This Address Book Window contains e Alist of names or aliases that you can use when composing messages e The true email address associated with the currently highlighted name e Comments optional describing the currently highlighted name e An optional Field Text field for use with mailing lists See page 123 To create and manipulate the names in the address book select from the options in the Address menu or the toolbar buttons Using the Address menu 120 You can either select Ad
66. Agent temp Browse Define a kill filter for this group Use a Skip filter searching for 99 This will prevent most non binary messages from being retrieved as it will skip any messages containing fewer than 100 lines You may want to sort the group by size with the smallest messages at the top Group Sort Messages by gt Size This can be useful if you have a slow connection so you focus on the messages that can be retrieved most quickly Define a view that does not show incomplete multipart messages and activate this view Group View Messages Manage Views Go online and get new headers for this group Scan through the headers select the messages you are interested in and retrieve message bodies for these messages Note that steps 4 5 and 6 should have made it easy for you to scan through the message list From the top of the group message list hit the B key and cycle through the messages that have bodies For each one double click the header or press Enter to view the attachment Note if a message has more than one attachment open up the message index and launch each part individually Using Attachments 10 If you want to save the attachment simply hit the A key or right click on the message and select Save All Attachments 163 CHAPTER 7 Agent and Other Applications Agent is a fully integrated part of your Internet suite of products allowing you to directly invoke the app
67. EEA aa 122 Finding an ele 123 Selecting an Addr S Sania aa aaa aaa aa ADEE E AEEA Aaa aaa 124 elle Ee EE 126 Address Gene 127 Importing Adresses 127 ATTACHMENTS EE 128 MORE ABOUM KEE 128 ell ele Eu te Bee EE 129 Pasting Text as Quoted amisna niana cette eee et a a aaa EEE aa Aaa Aaa 131 el Ne EE 132 MORE ABOUT SENDING ENEE 133 Setting Format Preferences for Sending ccceeceeeeeeeeeeeeceneeeeeeeeeeeeecaeeeeeeeeeeeneaaaes 133 Checking a Messages Status cccceeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaeeeee eee eeeeeeaaaeeeeeeeeeegeeaaaaeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaes 136 Re sending Meseages cece ee eeee ea aaee teen ee teeeeaaaeeeee eee eeeeaaaaaeeeeeeeeegeeaaaaeeeeeeeneae 138 Canceling Usenet Messages 138 lee 139 CHAPTER 6 USING ATTACHMENTS cccccccesseeeseeeeeeeeesaneeeeeeeeeeeeesaaeeeseneeeeeeesanesesenees 149 SOME BASIC GONGEPT Sic eege eeschtes 149 Encoding and RR ue BEE 150 leie Ela gn Let NEE 150 MIMI Sege ee eebe 151 Table of Contents Launching an Attachment 151 e tele GE LE AE 152 E E Le 152 Message INGOX EE 152 RETRIEVING MESSAGES WITH ATTIACHMENTS titr ttttsttttrrnnttsssrtrnnnnttsnrennnn 153 Basic Rethieval ProCeSS inosia adia aa ada aa oara taaa a aa a A n ATATA REGE 154 Retrieving Multipart Attachments 155 Viewing an Attachment as Text 156 SAVING ATTACHMENTS veirin stengt eeeeee enge deg aaa deeg 156 Saving attachments automatically 0 0 0 eee ceesee ee eeeeeeeeeeeneeeeeesaeeeesesaeeeeeeenaeeeeeenaeees 156 Saving atta
68. Jatt usenet offine reader forte agent Subject Re How Do 1 Email To ha E Attachments Text 4 Enter the message text In the Textbox type the body of your message 5 Add any attachments Press the button and use the Attachments dialog box to attach the file e g a GIF image to your message 6 Send the message You have the following options B e Send Now K Ctrl N or Message Send Now e Send Later Gd Ctrl L Message Send Later Note To save the message without sending it either press E type Ctrl S or select Message Save Types of Messages You Can Send 112 There are eight types of messages you can send To open each type of Composition window select the option on the Post menu the toolbar button or the keyboard shortcut whichever is easiest New Usenet Message is used to create a new message to post in the currently selected newsgroup Agent automatically inserts the newsgroup name into the Newsgroups field Toolbar button Keyboard option P Composing and Sending Messages Follow Up Usenet Message is used to create a response to the currently selected news message Agent automatically inserts the group to which you re posting the response and the subject prefaced by Re to show that it s a response Toolbar button Keyboard option F New Email Message is used to create a new email message Toolbar button Keyboard option Ctrl M Reply via Email
69. RE OR DOCUMENTATION even if advised of the possibility of such damages In particular Fort shall have no liability for any programs or data stored or used with Agent including the costs of recovering such programs or data Copyright 1995 1997 Fort Advanced Management Software Inc 2141 Palomar Airport Road Suite 200 Carlsbad California U S A 92009 1424 760 431 6400 All Rights Reserved Printed in the United States Agent and Free Agent are trademarks and Fort is a registered trademark of Fort Advanced Management Software Inc All brand names and product names used in this documentation are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners Table of Contents Contents CHAPTER 1 WELCOME TO AGENTT cccccsceseeccseseeeccssseeeceeuseeseeesseeeneuseesenuseeseeeueeesnaas 1 AGENT FEATURES te fe tcc tenes celle de de Coda iole elec ae tea ae ae Ate EE 2 ABOUT EMAIL AND NEWSGROUPS nssseisessseessssinunineninttii utiuti enant u nnt anA EAEE EAER AEEA E EREEREER EEEn nnna nanen 4 Si un UE A NEWSgroUpS sutera a nEaN 4 HOWTO GETHELP E 6 ABOUT THIS USER le 7 GONVENTIONS ainia E cattle seeuesise scale 7 le Ee EE 8 CHAPTER 2 GETTING STARTED u cccccccccseesceecseseeecceeseeseeeuseeeeeueeeeneuueusesenseesneeusensnees 11 INSTALIMING AGENT EE 11 EEGEN ee EE EE 12 16 Bit Agent Requirement 0c eee ccneee eee e eet eeeecaaeee teen ee teneaaaeeeeeeeettnncaaeeeeeeeeetnee 12 32 Bit Agent Heouirement
70. Spacing fe characters Quoted Text Markers BR IV Show dividers between sections Main Window Browsers Fonts Colors How to display URLs IM Highlight in a different color MV Underline IV Highlight in Composition window T Show Buttons on composition window By default Agent enables the following attributes for URLs in the section How to Display URLs You have the option to disable any of these 166 Agent and Other Applications 1 Highlight in different color Check this box for Agent to display URLs in a different color than normal text Note To set the URL color use the URL option on the Display Preferences Colors tab 2 Underline Check this box for Agent to display URLs with an underline Uncheck the box to remove the underline 3 Highlight in Composition Window Check this for Agent to highlight URLs while you re composing a message Note To optimize speed in composing messages you might choose to turn off this option To control which types of URLs are highlighted Select the Options General Preferences URL Types tab General Preferences x Navigation Message List Languages Confirmations Newsre MIME Types URLs URL Types URL l http Hypertext Transfer Protocol How to launch the URL IV Enable highlighting and launching SC Use Windows registry settings kb Share settings with the http protocol Use Custom settings below I Remove URL p
71. a word that comes to mind Like a good filing system in an office Agent offers electronic folders so you can better organize your messages Filing Messages in Folders Using folders to organize your messages is one of the simplest and most intuitive tasks in Agent To Create a folder 1 Select Group New Folder 2 Enter a name for the folder and press OK 53 Chapter 4 See Filing Inbound Email Automatically on page 67 54 The new folder will appear in the Groups Folders pane below the list of newsgroups To view folders From the Group Show Groups and Folders flyout menu choose the desired view for the Groups Folders pane Three of the four available choices display your folders e All Groups and Folders e Subscribed Groups and Folders e Folders A check mark indicates the view that is currently in effect Filing options you can use e The drag and drop method e Using the Copy to Folder or Move to Folder menus e Setting up Agent to automatically file inbound email Note You cannot file messages without bodies into folders To drag and drop a message into a folder 1 View all three panes in your Browser window i e make sure the Navigate Zoom Window option is unchecked 2 Highlight the message in the Message List pane You can select more than one message dragging them all at once 3 Click anywhere on the highlighted message and while holding down the mouse button drag the message to
72. al Change the message e g enter a different recipient 3 Press Send Now or Send Later to re send the message Agent will display a message saying the message has already been sent and asks if you want to send it again Press OK to re send Note that you will only have the new copy of the sent message replacing the original message in the Outbox Canceling Usenet Messages 138 There may be a time when you will want to cancel a message that you posted to a newsgroup realizing that it should never have been sent Agent allows you to cancel any Usenet messages you have posted but not those posted by other people Optional Change the message as required eg change the recipient Using MAPI Composing and Sending Messages Using Agent s cancel option a request is posted to your news server to delete the selected message This same request is also passed along to other Internet news servers so that they can delete the message as well To cancel a message 1 Highlight the message header you want to cancel 2 Select Poet Cancel Message Crossposted messages only need to be canceled from one of the crossposted groups 3 Inthe Compose Usenet Message window press Send Now or Send Later to transmit the message to your news server You should not make any other changes to the message After sending the cancel request the message will continue to appear in Agent until it is automatically purged or you delete
73. al tab Then check the option Require that local addresses be in Address Book Agent will then warn you whenever you ve entered an address without the character and Agent could not find it in the Address Book Unchecking this option forces Agent to assume that the entry is a local address To check the validity of an address Any of the actions below will trigger this process e Press the Send or Send Later buttons on the Composition window if the Validate email addresses box is checked e Select Message Check Addresses when a Composition window is open e Save an entry in the Address Book Window e Select Address Check Addresses when an Address Book window is open e Press the OK button on the Add Address dialog box e Press the Check Addresses button on the Add Address dialog box Address Expansion When Agent prepares to send a message it scans the contents of the To Cc and Bcc fields to produce a complete list of recipients with fully expanded addresses For each name from the Address Book that Agent finds it substitutes the true address found for that name Agent checks for circular references in an address book If an entry is found a second time Agent simply will skip over it Importing Addresses If you have an address book in another program Agent can import these addresses so you don t need to manually re enter them in Agent The addresses must be converted and saved to a file that Agent can then im
74. aler is referred to as Dial Up Networking DUN In Windows NT the automatic dialer is referred to as Remote Access Services RAS With built in support for DUN Agent can automatically establish a dial up connection when going online and automatically hang up the connection when going offline This support allows Agent to integrate smoothly with the Windows 95 and Windows NT dialers greatly enhancing the ease with which you can go online and offline To define DUN settings Select Options User and System Profile Dial Up and the following dialog box will display User and System Profile Eg User System Online Dialup IV Open dial up connection before going online IT Prompt Before connecting IV If another connection is already open use it instead Connection Super Server PPP zl Properties New connection User Name ES Password bs IV Close Dial up connection after going offline IV Prompt before disconnecting Title of Connection Status Window Connected to Cancel Help Complete the settings on the Dial Up tab as follows 49 50 Chapter 3 Open dial up connection before going online H you check this option Agent will establish the specified dial up connection each time it goes online Prompt before connecting H you check this option Agent will display the following dialog box before establishing the connection If you don t check this option Agent will proceed Note One rea
75. all newsgroups when you exit Agent Note If neither of the above options is checked Agent will not automatically purge messages However you can purge messages manually from the by opening the Group Purge Newsgroups flyout menu and selecting the desired set of groups e When closing Agent Prompt for confirmation When checked Agent asks for confirmation before purging and or compacting databases when you close Agent When unchecked Agent will purge and or compact the databases without asking To tell Agent what to purge Open the Group Properties What to Purge tab to view the settings below All About Messages Default Properties for All Groups Ea Crossposts Post Send Files Receive Files Directory Language Mark Read When to Purge Retrieve Filters Configure Agent s Hard Disk Usage Low Medium High m Purge Read Messages Without Bodies When message is no longer available D E days with Bodies when message is older than z E days Purge Unread Messages Without Bodies when message is no longer available D E days With Bodies when message is older than x E days IV Always get complete list of server s available messages The options on the What to Purge tab are described as follows 1 Minimal Low Medium High Press the button that corresponds to the amount of hard disk usage you expect with Agent on a normal basis Since this can be compli
76. allows you to word wrap retrieved message bodies with lines too long to fit in the display window Here s how text in messages will appear when the Word Wrap function is enabled or disabled e Enabled Word Wrap All text in the message will be visible no matter how small the display window This allows you to see all of the message but may make it hard to determine the original format of the message e Disabled Word Wrap The message text will appear in its original format but you may have to use the horizontal scroll bar to see all of it To enable or disable the word wrap feature Select Message Word Wrap When a check appears by the command it is enabled and the text in very long messages will wrap to conform to the size of your window Select the command again to disable it 188 Customizing Agent Showing or Hiding Details in Messages The details or header fields about a retrieved message body e g author location and server can be displayed at the top of the message or can conveniently be hidden to make it easier to read the message text To show and hide header fields Choose from one of the following equivalent methods to show the header fields Then repeat that action to hide the header details again Toolbar button To customize your toolbar with this button see page 177 Menu option Message Show All Header Fields Keyboard shortcut H Note The Show All Header Fields option will not hide h
77. ample when replying to or forwarding a message are not wrapped when sent regardless of the setting on this tab 135 Chapter 5 JN Weretwrae quotedrriniable messages Line Lena Fr chyacters W Yadah emal addiessae Pa entices E T Regis thet local sdderses be nAddiess Book Pongan sl AM Saning message abo Chases compeetion vandow AS eg mmm Zem ev gg ai pe To word wrap messages Choose from one of the following options for wrapping the text of a message you re composing Toolbar button ES Menu option Message Word Wrap Keyboard shortcut Alt M O The text in the Composition window will be wrapped to fit the size of the window This wrapping is for your display only When the message is sent each line is wrapped at the value defined in the Posting Preferences dialog box If the screen is wide enough you ll see the message as it will be sent If the screen is not wide enough and you want to see what the message will look like when sent turn off word wrapping in the composition window Checking a Messages Status The Outbox is a temporary place where messages are kept until they are sent The composition commands Send Later and Save store messages in the Outbox Also by default the Send Now command stores outbound message in the Outbox In all cases you can use the Outbox to check a message s status after sending However it is recommended that you keep successfully sent messages in folders rather th
78. an the Outbox See below for how to do this To Open the Outbox 136 Composing and Sending Messages Select Window Open Outbox The Outbox window shows a record of all saved pending and sent messages and their status see example below X Agent Outbox _ x EI File Edit Online Post Message Options Window Help laj x Subject TT New Version of Agent idunn sottsolutions com 12 17 96 9 26 AM Greetings tperez symcor com 12 17 96 1 29 PM Your music is still hip mvyvilson motown com 12 19 96 1 20 PM How to Deal with Grumpy Old Men tsmith mer com 01 04 97 8 15 AM ae A problem occurred when this message was sent Double click the message to make sure all the fields were completed correctly red sad face Then press the Send Now or Send Later button to re send the message The message was successfully sent This icon may never yellow happy face appear in the Outbox folder if you ve set up Agent to automatically route specific messages to specific folders The message is queued for uploading Le you pressed the Send Later button after creating a message To send the message now select Online Post Messages and Emails The message is in the process of being sent To file a sent message in a folder You can move messages manually or recommended have Agent automatically route messages to the folder of your choice when they are successfully sent By filing messages in folders you can use the features
79. and how to purge or remove messages after a certain period of time Chapter 5 Composing and Sending Messages includes information on how to compose a message how to create a signature how to include attachments how to specify preferences for composing and sending messages and how to tell Agent to use MAPI to send messages Chapter 6 Using Attachments describes how to attach files e g GIF image files to messages you compose You ll also see how easy it is to view or save attachments in messages that you receive Welcome to Agent Chapter 7 Agent and Other Applications describes how to launch URLs from Agent in your web browser how to make Agent your web browser s primary newsgroup and mail service and how to import and export newsrc files Chapter 8 Customizing Agent describes how to customize Agent s toolbars Folders menu window layout and the appearance of message headers and the text in message bodies CHAPTER 2 Getting Started This chapter helps you to get up and running with Agent You will install Agent retrieve the list of all the available newsgroups subscribe to groups that interest you retrieve message headers and check for email Installing Agent is effortless with Agent s Installation Wizard In minutes you ll be retrieving thousands of newsgroups and can begin to be a fully active participant in news discussions and Internet communications Here s how the chapter is organized Installing Age
80. and there will be fewer uncategorized messages that you have to deal with More Filter Examples 86 People create filters for a variety of different reasons What follows is a sampling different expressions you might want to refer to when creating your own filters To isolate and remove unwanted messages More than likely you receive unwanted messages of all sorts from get rich quick schemes to offensive or sensitive subjects Here are several examples of expressions used to kill this type of message 1 To improve performance you might want to combine a number of types of spam you wish to eliminate in one filter As other key words that offend you pop up you can always add them to the expression Note that in the example below the vertical bars are equivalent to the operator or subject money sex porn xxx To prevent Agent from retrieving message headers that start with characters such as lt etc usually spam use a filter like this subject a z All About Messages Since regular expressions in Agent are case insensitive unless preceded by the operator This expression allow subjects which start with upper case letters or those which start with lower case letters or those which start with a quotation mark Here s how it works The first means match if the string is at the beginning of a line The second character inside the brackets me
81. ans not these characters i e match any character that is not any upper or lower case letter or quotation mark To filter on a particular word 1 To match anything ending in right followed by a space or the end of the field you can use the following expression right This will match birthright or forthright or just right but not righteous 2 To match right anywhere in the subject you can use the following expression right This will match righteous or forthright or just right To eliminate header only files with little or no body 1 2 Note that the lower range is 1 rather than 0 This is because some news servers fail to add a line count to messages causing all messages to have a count of zero To prevent retrieving headers that use ALL CAPS Create a filter that matches subjects with all capital letters Use the filter to either delete all matching messages or place them in a trash folder subject a z Remember that regular expressions in Agent are case insensitive unless preceded by the operator The operator is needed here so that the filter will exclude subjects which have upper case letters but no lower case letters as well as those with no letters at all Here s how this expression works The equals sign means must match entire field In other words the field must consist entirely of characters that are not lower case letters The 87 Chapter 4 expression
82. appropriate dialog box To create a filter from scratch 1 If the filter will apply to a specific group make sure the group is highlighted Select Window Open Email Filters or Window Open Usenet Filters Open the Add Filter dialog box using one of the following equivalent methods ur Toolbar button for kill filters or ES for watch filters All About Messages Menu option Pilier AO Kill Filter or Eiter Add Watch Filter Keyboard shortcut Ctrl K for kill filters or Ctrl W for watch filters 4 Complete the settings in the Add Filter dialog box see the next section The Add Filter Dialog Box Depending on the type of filter you want to create Usenet or email the appropriate dialog will be opened You ll notice that these dialogs are quite similar yet have some important differences Here are the details of each dialog The Add Usenet Filter Dialog Add Usenet Filter EN Filter Expression Author lance forteinc com a Paste Subject Paste Author Lower Case Address only D Kill Action Watch Action C Delete Retrieve body immediately Mark read Mark For later retrieval Ignore thread watch thread T Keep Scope Global Group alt usenet offline reader forte agent Priority lem IT Disable filter IV Expire this filter after E days JM of inactivity i ii TC This message only Cancel Help If you re creating a kill filter the default setting in the Kil
83. ard to future versions We knows what you might come up with Finished retrieving new headers Online 0720 Subscribe to Groups that Interest You 22 After sampling some messages if you want to follow the group on a regular basis you can subscribe to the group Subscribing does not cost you anything and no one else knows about it It s all internal to your copy of Agent and is simply a convenient way to organize your groups so you can easily see the groups you use TTT To subscribe to the group either press Group Subscribe or type Ctrl S on the toolbar select In subsequent Agent sessions either press on the toolbar or select Online Get New Headers in Subscribed Groups to retrieve all headers in subscribed groups Getting Started To view only your subscribed groups click the title bar of the Groups pane until you see Subscribed Groups or select Group Show Groups and Folders Subscribed Groups and Folders Retrieving Email for the First Time See the Agent When installing Agent you entered a profile of the SMTP mail server used Setup dialog for sending email Now you need to set up Agent to retrieve mail box on page 19 To set up Agent to receive email Select Options Inbound Email to open the New Folder dialog New Folder Eg To receive email you must create a folder to receive inbound messages You can use the name Inbox or enter a different name Folder Name Inbox The Ne
84. ay choose not to save There are two ways to save attachments manually e Select one or more messages then select File Save All Attachments Each attachment is saved with its filename as it appears in the Message Index dialog box To ensure that Agent joins all the parts of multipart attachments when saving the message the option Join multipart messages when saving or launching attachments Group Properties Receive Files tab must be checked e Select a message then select Message Index The Message Index dialog box will display see p 152 allowing you to view the message s index and to save or launch individual sections Sending An Attachment Attaching files to messages with Agent is easy Follow the steps below 1 Create a new message either news or email 2 Check the format of your message attachment You can control the format for the attachments in your message while in the Composition window by selecting Message Properties to open the Message Properties dialog box Under the Attachments heading select either UUEncoded or MIME from the Format list Message Properties ES Legege Attachments Qeenide delak settings F Include atiechment flenane in subject janpbe lo ongo alactermnt onh ger ai D Seed Tos as polya ON zech r EE p I Send tached messages as a Diges ee ell 157 Chapter 6 158 You can also control the default options for attachments on the Group Properties S
85. bal Search dialog e When you find what you re looking for and are probably done with the search In this case Agent positions itself on the found message in the Browser window and closes the Global Search dialog View All pressing this button causes the Browser window to display a view of all matching messages for the group containing the message selected in the Results list If a search is still active the Global Search dialog is minimized If a search is not active Agent closes this window To keep the Global Search dialog open hold down the SHIFT key while pressing this button Ctrl double click is equivalent to pressing the View All button Clear View press this button to clear the search results view in the Browser window and revert to the original message view Another way to clear the search results is to simply re select the current message view in the Browser window This refreshes the view Tips for Global Searching Here are a few tips for using the Global Search for Message dialog box more efficiently 102 In the Browser window select a message containing a subject for which you want to search Open a Global Search dialog box and press the Paste Field button to paste the subject into the search expression Then press Find First and Find Next until you find a group or folder containing the subject Once the group or folder is found press Find All to display all matching messages in that group When doing the above
86. called a thread and can be collapsed to save space or expanded to view all the responses When a thread is expanded all responses are indented below the message and only the author is displayed since the subject is the same as the original message In the example shown on page 28 the Message List pane is the pane currently in focus indicated by the small solid triangle in the upper left corner of the pane s title bar Even though you can see all three panes at the same time only one pane can have the focus at a time Note that the information in the Message List pane is arranged in columns In the example shown on page 28 the far left column Thread is underlined indicating the pane is sorted by thread You can sort by author date size subject or thread by opening the Group Sort Messages by flyout menu or simply by clicking on the title bar of the column you want to sort Clicking the title bar for the first column on the left switches you between the Thread and Size sorts If you zoom the pane type z you ll see more of the columns These columns can easily be resized by dragging the column boundaries with your mouse Note however that the first column on the left Thread in the example cannot be made narrower When message headers are first retrieved they are of course unread Agent indicates this by showing unread messages using the color red When a message is read it s header becomes black By default eac
87. can e access the message in its original form in case something went wrong with the bursting e read any introductory text which might appear before the digest section e forward or save the entire original message Also when Agent bursts a digest it places all the messages in the same group or folder into which the original message is stored Email filters are not applied to the individual files as they are stored Note In order for Agent to burst a message or message section it has to be of type multipart digest A text message which happens to contain other messages is not a digest and thus won t be burst by Agent Example A Way to View Attachments 160 This chapter will conclude with an example illustrating how you might use Agent for viewing pictures found in any of the binary newsgroups e g alt binaries pictures cartoons You ll see how many of Agent s configuration options can be used to optimize viewing of attachments To tailor they way you view attachments to suit your needs Using Attachments 1 Make sure you have configured an application for viewing pictures Although this is not specifically an Agent function directions for doing this are in Agent s online help 2 Set properties for the group appropriately With the group selected choose the Group Properties Receive Files tab Then make sure these options are checked Detect UUEncoded files automatically Ignore fragments Join multipart mes
88. cated these four preset options can make all the detailed settings for you depending on your concern as to how much space Agent may take on your system After pressing a button you may check the other settings and change them to best meet your specific needs Purge Read Messages Without Bodies Select an option from the choice list to have Agent purge messages for which you did not retrieve bodies but which have been marked as read The options are On every purge When the message is older than you set the limit and When the message is no longer available on your server Purge Read Messages With Bodies Select an option from the choice list to have Agent purge messages for which you did retrieve bodies and which have been marked as read The options are On every purge On 105 Chapter 4 every purge delete body only When the message is older than you set the limit and Never 4 Purge Unread Messages Without Bodies Select an option from the choice list to have Agent purge messages whose bodies you have not retrieved and have not yet been marked read The options are On every purge When the message is older than you set the limit and When the message is no longer available on your server 5 Purge Unread Messages With Bodies Select an option from the choice list to have Agent purge messages you have retrieved but have not yet read The options are On every purge On every purge delete body only When the mes
89. chments manual 157 SENDING AN ATTACHMENT si cistcacececetecattvecstadtceriascadessdacednadduen ee rity aada E aA an Aa ETATEN 157 MESSAGE ES D nsdeg Egeter 159 Sendinga DIGEST ennaa a a a a a a aE TATAE ES 159 Receiving and Bursting a Dioest 160 EXAMPLE A WAY TO VIEW ATTACHMENTS 160 CHAPTER 7 AGENT AND OTHER APPLICATIONG 2 cceeeseeceeeeeeeeeeeeeseeeeeeeseees 165 URESINAGEN rs EE EE 165 Whare SURE ranees E cctevencratenatanataaatatathadtasehcussatatanatanetanatanatasdtccreuesecateadees 165 Melle REI 166 Eaunchingia UW CIE 168 Making Agent Your Default News Email Program 171 Using Shortcuts and Internet Explorer s Favorites Uert 171 What if you use multiple copies Of Agent eesseesssseeeesesesrrirrrrtssssnnirnnntssnsnnrrrnnsennnt 172 USING ANEWSRAG EIERE ENEE EE 173 Exporting a Newsrc File 173 Importing a Newsrc Ee 174 Automatic Import and Export of Newsrc File 175 CHAPTER 8 CUSTOMIZING AGENT ess 177 elei 177 FOLDERS IR E 179 WINDOW DISPLAY EE 180 Changing the Layout of the Panes ceceeeceeeee cece eee eeeeaaeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaeeeeeeseteeensaeeeeeees 180 Changing the Appearance and Behavior of Agent s Windows eesesseeeseeesssserereesesenees 181 MESSAGE DISPLAY rri asain 182 Changing the Appearance of Messages 182 Customizing Agent for Different Lanouages nn 186 Word Wrapping EE 188 Showing or Hiding Details in Messages 189 AGENTIN ana ra a a a a a ches Hagadgugueieiaanialeielgue
90. d by one occurrence of the letter b Thus it matches ab and b 0 9 0 9 matches one or more digits followed by a character followed by another sequence of one or more digits foo bar matches the sequence foo followed by zero or more occurrences of the sequence bar Thus it matches foo foobar foobarbar foobarbarbar etc too bar matches the sequence foo followed a sequence of zero or more occurrences of any character followed by the sequence bar In addition the requires that the match occur at the beginning of the field Alternative Matches You can specify alternative matches by combining sequences of atoms with the operator For example alb matches either the letter a or b 83 Chapter 4 foo bar matches either the sequence foo or the sequence bar Filter Operators Applied to Regular Expressions You can apply the filter operators match entire field and case sensitive to regular expressions in the same way that you can use them with word phrases If a regular expression is preceded by Agent must match the entire field For example the following filter subject begin end matches any subject that starts with the characters begin ends with the characters end and contains any characters in between As with word phrases when the operator is applied to a subject field Agent first removes any Re prefixes before performing t
91. d email filters or when performing global searches you can use Agent s expression language to tailor the criteria Agent uses when searching fora match Many times all you ll need to do is use one of the handy Paste buttons on the filter or global search dialog Other times though you ll want to form a very specific expression so Agent will know exactly what you re looking for Note You may want to jump ahead to the section Usenet Filter Examples p 79 or More Filter Examples p 86 to see what you can do using Agent s expression language Then you can come back to this section for specifics on constructing correct filter and search expressions Expressions consist of the following components e One or more terms word combinations on which to filter or search e Optional operators words with special meanings used to combine terms e Optional qualifiers symbols used to restrict the scope of filters or searches Agent s expression language is versatile You can either create solely word based expressions to get the best performance or you can also include regular expression phrases a more sophisticated expression form developed by UNIX users Although regular expressions are less straightforward than using simple word based expressions they re much more powerful Words Phrases and Case Sensitivity The simplest expression is a single word You can combine individual words to form phrases Finally you can us
92. d folders can have different views For the currently open group folder this means search whatever messages are currently visible in the group not just those that are selected by the view Keep in mind that it s possible for various events such as receiving new mail to cause messages to be temporarily added to a view Close when successful check this box to have Agent close this dialog box when it is currently in focus and Agent has finished a successful search When unchecked Agent leaves the window open so that it can All About Messages easily perform additional searches This option remains active while a search is in progress in case you change your mind Indicate how you want Agent to go about finding messages Find First press this button to find the first matching message and position the associated Browser window on it Find Next press this button to find the next matching message starting with the message after the message that currently has the focus in the associated Browser window Find Next Group press this button to find the first matching group starting with the group after the group containing the message that currently has the focus Use this button to quickly search for a particular group or folder Find All press this button to find all matching messages in all selected groups and folders Find All in Current Group Folder press this button to find all matching messages in the currently open group
93. d lines x Clear cache used to detect crossposted messages On this tab you can enable crosspost checking and select from a number of options to fine tune Agent s behavior These options are described as follows e Enable crosspost checking Check this box to enable crosspost checking in Agent This applies to all groups e Ifa message header has already been retrieved in one group Retrieve the header normally This disables crosspost checking globally but Agent will continue to maintain a list of headers used for checking Mark the header read Agent marks the crossposted message headers read in all groups except the first group in which the message is retrieved Skip the header do not retrieve it Agent skips crossposted messages in all groups except the first group for which the crossposted message has been retrieved 62 All About Messages Example If you retrieve headers for groups a b c d e and a message was posted to groups b d e then Agent would retrieve the header only for group b because that is the first group for which the header has been retrieved e Look for crossposted messages only when retrieving NEW headers When you check this box Agent does crosspost checking only when retrieving new headers If you leave this box unchecked Agent does crosspost checking whenever you retrieve headers such as sampling or retrieving all headers e Detect crossposted messages by This o
94. dentation a characters Maximum Follow Up Level je Reply Prefixes fre an M Sorting MV Date sorts descending most recent first IT Size sorts descending largest first The options in the Threading section are described in the following table Choose this to have Agent do this option Enable threading Include messages with the same subject under the same by subject thread even if the follow up message does not contain a valid reference to the original Note People frequently mispost responses This option helps match follow ups with the message to which they are responses Start a New Create a new thread when a follow up message s subject is thread when a different than the main message s subject follow up subject When this option is unchecked Agent attaches follow up changes messages to the original even if the thread s subject changes Expand thread if Expand the thread in the Message List pane so that the All About Messages necessary to current message is visible highlight current body pane message Choose this to have Agent do this option Initial thread Show the thread in the selected state whenever you open setting Agent e g all threads collapsed PR Show the selected thread state when you skip to an unread When skipping to message Two additional notes If you use one of the View unread follow ups navigation options and the current setting is Do not expand t
95. dress from Agent s menu bar the Address Book must be open or you can place the cursor in the Names section of the Address Book and click the right mouse button Composing and Sending Messages New Rename Delete Check Addresses F8 v Confirm Edits v Confirm Deletes Expand Addresses Select this option New o O create a new name and address Rename change an existing name remove the selected name and address from the Address Book Save any changes to a name or address reset the addresses and comments for the current entry if it was modified and you wish to return it to its original state without saving the changes To Cc Bec append the name of the selected entries to the Composition window Note Holding Shift while selecting this option tells Agent to add the entry s addresses instead of names Pressing Enter or double clicking a highlighted name is equivalent to selecting the To option Check Addresses have Agent check that syntax of an address entry to ensure that it s structure is valid Confirm Edits have Agent ask you each if you want to change or delete an Confirm Deletes address each time you attempt either of these actions Expand Addresses expand an address to its full address format when it is inserted into a Composition window via the Address Book window or Pick Addresses dialog box To add a new entry to the address book e For any address you use frequently select Address
96. e You may configure these panes to suit your own preferences Threading and Navigation Agent uses multi level threading indenting responses to messages under the initial message so you can follow a Welcome to Agent discussion without searching for the responses Agent provides a number of shortcuts for navigating efficiently through all your messages Ignore and Watch Commands Usenet receives so many messages that it can be a major task to find the ones that interest you To minimize the clutter Agent has Ignore and Watch options which allow you to skip or retrieve messages in specified threads Usenet Filters To further reduce the clutter in newsgroups Agent supports Usenet filters also known as Kill and Watch lists You may kill or watch messages with a specified subject author or message length Crosspost Management Agent allows you to filter out messages that have been posted to multiple newsgroups so that you don t end up reading the same message more than once Folders Organize information your way Create folders for any topic you want then simply drag selected messages with the mouse and drop them into the desired folder Also inbound email can be automatically filed into specified folders Sorting Agent makes it easy to quickly find specific messages by allowing you to sort messages in groups and folders Launching URLs All URLs in messages i e web addresses and email addresses appear as interac
97. e at work you use a Unix based newsreader or another copy of Agent you can use Agent s newsrc import export feature to keep your home and work newsreading in synch Exporting a Newsrc File Select File Newsrc Export You ll see the Export Newsrc File dialog box Do the following e Specify the filename and destination for the newsrc file Agent will create e f you want only your subscribed groups exported check the box Export subscribed groups only on the Export Newsrc dialog box When a newsrc file is exported Agent uses both its list of messages that have been retrieved and the unread state of retrieved messages to build the newsrc list of read messages as follows e The lowest range of messages already retrieved by Agent is extended down to the number 1 For example if the range of retrieved messages is 100 150 200 240 Agent extends the first range to yield 1 150 200 240 173 Chapter 7 Note This is done to prevent already retrieved messages from being marked unread if the same newsrc file is re imported e Retrieved but unread messages are removed from the list Importing a Newsrc File If you have placed a newsrc file in your Agent data directory either by exporting it from Agent or producing it from another application you can import the file and update your groups list in Agent Select File Newsrc I mport You ll see the Import Newsrc File dialog Import Newsrc File Look in ERD D Si cl i
98. e g author jsmith anyco com John Smith Note the Paste Subject and Paste Author buttons are active only if you create a filter directly from a selected message If you create a filter from scratch these buttons will not appear See the section Filter Expressions in this chapter for details on creating correct filter expressions Lower Case Press this button to convert all text in the Search For field to lower case This ensures that Agent will filter on all instances of the subject or author no matter whether the retrieved headers use upper case lower case or a mixture of the two Kill action Select the default Kill action for your filters The options are Delete Agent will not retrieve the header at all Mark read Agent will retrieve the header but mark it read Ignore thread Agent will retrieve the header but mark its thread Ignore and mark the message read All About Messages Watch action Select the default Watch action for your filters The options are a Retrieve body immediately Agent will retrieve the message body immediately a b Mark for later retrieval Agent will mark the message for later retrieval c Watch thread Agent will watch the entire thread ba and mark the message for later retrieval Keep Check this box if you want Agent to permanently keep any message retrieved when the filter action is anything other than delete Scope Select Global if you want the
99. e operators such as and and or to combine phrases into complex boolean expressions When matching a 75 76 Chapter 4 phrase Agent ignores all spaces and punctuation in both the filter expression and the message being tested Punctuation and whitespace are treated as a single space Thus the following expressions are identical Mark F Sidell lt m sidell forteinc com gt Mark F Sidell m sidell forteinc com Mark F Sidell m sidell forteinc com When words in the filter expression contain all lowercase letters matching is case insensitive However you can force an exact case sensitive match by capitalizing one or more letters in the word For example subject shell will match shell Shell sHell or SHELI found in message subjects To force a case sensitive match capitalize one or more letters in the word such as subject Shell This would only match Shell Operators in Expressions The three operators used to combine terms in an expression are and or and not which have the following special meanings and Agent must find all of the phrases separated by and in order to match the expression The character amp can be used in place of the operator and in any expression For example subject green apples and oranges matches a subject that contains both the phrase green apples and the word oranges or Agent needs only to find one of the words separated by or
100. e string indicates that it is a forwarded message You can change this to anything you like e g forwarded msg The subject token represents the subject of the original message Agent replaces subject with the actual original subject when you compose the new message In place of the subject you can use any valid field name and the value for that field will be inserted Pasting Text as Quoted There may be times when you are composing replies to a message and you would like to quote certain portions of the text from the original message With Agent you can accomplish this in two steps To paste text as quoted text 1 Select the portion of text that you want to insert as quoted text then copy the text using one of the following equivalent methods Toolbar button Composition window toolbar Menu option Edit Copy Keyboard shortcut Ctrl C 131 Chapter 5 2 Open a new Composition window and place the cursor in the Text box Then use one of the following equivalent methods for pasting the quoted text into the new message Toolbar button BY Composition window toolbar Menu option Edit Paste As Quote Keyboard shortcut Citrl Q Each line of the pasted text is prepended by the quoted text character defined on the Posting Preferences General tab Options menu For example gt Ask not what your country can do for you gt Ask what you can do for your country Spell Checking 132 Agent w
101. eader details that somebody else quoted and included in the message In that case it is part of the message body and will always be displayed In addition to header details at any time you have the option of viewing the raw message which simply means the original text of message bodies in an unformatted state For example if you want to view a retrieved message with a GIF image attachment in its raw state you would see all the header fields and the original encoded lines of the attachment unformatted You can tell Agent which header fields to display This is controlled through the file Agent ini described in the next section To view raw message details Choose from one of the following equivalent methods to view the message in its raw state Then repeat that action to view the message again in its formatted state Toolbar button NI To customize your toolbar with this button see page 177 Menu option Message Show Raw Message Keyboard shortcut Alt M S Important If Show Raw Message is selected Agent will not convert quoted printable messages to the correct format which may cause the message to be viewed incorrectly e g characters like 3D or 20 will appear in the message 189 Chapter 8 Agent ini 190 The Agent ini file contains all of the settings that control Agent s operations its behavior under different conditions and the way it displays information In general you can and should
102. eady retrieved Here are the steps you might follow for a typical session in online mode K 1 Check for new email This button can be added to your default toolbar as described on page 177 Menu option Online Check for new Email Keyboard shortcut Ctrl E 2 Read email messages and decide what to do As you read each message you can do any of the following e Post an email reply This button opens a Composition window Menu option Post Reply via Email Keyboard shortcut R e File the message in a folder Copy to Folder or Move to Folder These buttons can be added to your default toolbar as described on page 177 Menu option Massage Copy to Folder or Message Move to Folder Keyboard shortcut Alt M C lt file number gt or Alt M V lt file number gt 3 Get new Usenet message headers in selected groups When online it s easy to move from group to group so you can use this command for selected groups Of course you can get headers for your subscribed groups instead if you like Menu option Online Get New Headers in Selected Groups Keyboard shortcut Alt O H See Agent Fundamentals 4 Retrieve and read Usenet messages As you read there are several Retrieving things you might want to do Messages in ell Groups on e Post a follow up Usenet message page 58 s i This button opens a Composition window Menu command EECH Usenet Message Keyboard shortcut e Watch thread a This option helps y
103. ecify the percentage to expand or shrink the buttons The default size is 100 or 20x20 pixels A number greater than 100 expands the buttons and less than 100 shrinks the buttons Size changes are effective in increments of 5 3 Show Siatus Bar Select this option to display the Agent status bar at the bottom of the window 181 Chapter 8 4 Reposition on last message when restarting program Check this box if you want Agent to reposition itself on the message that was selected at the time you last closed Agent If you don t check this box when you open Agent the next time Agent positions itself on the first message in the Message List pane Select the Options Display Preferences Browsers tab to view options pertaining to all browser windows Display Preferences x Main Window Browsers Messages Fonts Colors Scroll Margins IR rows T Show Author s full email address 1 Scroll Margins Set this value to control how close the highlighted row in the Groups Folders pane or the Message List pane gets to the top or bottom of the screen When scrolling in these panes by using Up Arrow Down Arrow Page Up or Page Down you ll always see the number of rows specified 2 is the default above and below the row Agent jumps to except of course when you reach the top or bottom of the pane 2 Show Author s full email address Check this box to display email addresses and full names in the Author column Wh
104. ecoding binary information More recently methods associated with the MIME Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions standard have begun to replace UUEncode and UUDecode While there are certain advantages to using MIME over UUEncode UUDecode it really doesn t matter which you use as long as the person on the receiving end has an application which can process the information correctly Agent is such an application determining which encoding method has been used and performing the appropriate decoding operation to receive the attachment correctly As a general rule of thumb newsgroups still use UUEncode UUDecode for handling binary attachments while most email messages are now sent using MIME for attachments For reading messages Agent supports UUDecode Base64 and AppleDouble formats For sending messages Agent supports UUEncode and Base64 encoding Multipart Attachments See page 153 for details about receiving and sending multipart attachments 150 Binary files can be quite large often too large to be sent as part of a single message This means it s quite common in working with attachments that more than one message will be used to transmit a single attachment Typically the subject line of a message will tell you if the message is part of a multi part attachment For example you might see something like 1 2 or 2 2 to tell you that the message contains part 1 or part 2 of a 2 part attachment Using Attachments
105. eeeeeeeeeeeeaaeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaes 67 MESSAGE FILTERS Ee DEE EE 67 Creating a Message Elter 67 The Add Filter Dialog Box 69 Managing Your List of Filter 74 Agents Expression Language ninnu nnnnsennnnnnnnnnnt 75 Usenet Filter Examples A 79 Regular Exvpreseions eee aa aa a aa aaa a aa aa aaa iais 81 Example How To Filter Out Unwanted Email 84 M re Filter EXamMple Sininen aaea a E a aa eaa aaa aaa aa ea AaS 86 A Final Example How To Optimize Agent For Use At Two Sites c ccceeeceteeeeteeeeees 88 VIEWING MESSER ENEE EE 88 SOMINGIMESSAGES zaorit eee Eo EE begat eha ata A EA 89 Changing the Way Threads Display 89 Creating and Using Views In The Message List Pane 91 Changing How Message Bodies Display 96 Table of Contents Ile 97 Ree 97 PING RING EE 98 GlODal SSArch NEE 98 Tips for Global Searching edidit aaa lasndedasavadedhdadhvlcavasadedacesatedavatadeteecs 102 KEEPING MESSAGES Seoid des aeaaeae aaaea Eaa ea aa aaa aaa a dee ageet 103 fire iee Ee Ee 103 Preventing Agent from Purging Messages 106 Manually Deleting Messages eessosssseeeeesessrnerrntssserrernntsssentnnnnestsottrennnnsssernnennnnn 107 elle ue OR ELE 107 PRINTING Te 109 CHAPTER 5 COMPOSING AND SENDING MESSAGES ecccceesseeesseeeeeeeeeeeeeeeseeees 111 EDM ENEE reece pie eet er pe rae EE 111 Types of Messages You Can Gend 112 NIE 115 elle 117 ADDRESS ele 119 Using the Address men 120 Creating Mailing Lists Tursina a aaa a aE E A
106. ees nashville general Communicate in this once future world language with soc culture esperanto ther aficionados Chapter 1 How to Get Help If you have questions about Agent and you can t find the answer in this manual you have many other options for getting your questions answered This section describes each of the following options and exactly how to access them e Online Help e Internet Service Provider e World Wide Web e Newsgroups e Support Question Online Help Agent provides extensive Online Help which provides information on all aspects of Agent operation So if you can t find something here s what to do To access Agent s Online Help e Fora particular topic Select Help from Agent s menu bar to open the Help Contents page From the Contents page you may access help topics either by selecting How to or Search for Help on e Fora dialog box If you are viewing a dialog box and need help understanding what to do press the Help button on the dialog box and specific help for that dialog will be displayed To access the Release Notes From the Help menu in Agent select Release Notes You will see a listing of the most recent enhancements and changes that have been made to Agent Internet Service Provider If you have any difficulties accessing the Internet please contact your Internet service provider ISP World Wide Web For information about the latest Agent release and answers to
107. elect these groups and use the Group Properties Language tab 3 To use a different dictionary to check a message you re composing open the Message gt Properties dialog and select the desired language More About Sending This section takes you beyond the basics of sending a message as described in the Overview and explains various preferences and options available to you when sending messages Setting Format Preferences for Sending Agent allows you to specify the format for messages you re sending There are two formats in which you can send message text quoted printable and 7bit 8bit You can decide which format is most appropriate for your Usenet messages and email messages Quoted printable supports international characters e g accents via the mail transfer standard MIME Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions 7bit 8bit text encoding is the other type of text encoding commonly used when posting messages on the Usenet When sending messages to recipients with MIME capable systems quoted printable is the best way to format your messages You never have to worry about paragraphs being chopped off at odd places If you re sending messages to recipients with non MIME capability e g users of America Online or if you re posting to newsgroups 133 Chapter 5 134 where quoted printable isn t yet the accepted standard 7bit 8bit is the best format to use Advantages of quoted printable vs
108. elling 134 35 fields 117 19 options 131 34 overview 113 17 pasting text as quoted 134 pick address button 127 quoting text 133 saving 133 setting preferences 131 signatures 119 21 word wrapping 132 configuring for online offline behavior 46 connection setting up 48 context menus 30 copying URLs to the clipboard 168 creating folders 53 creating message filters 68 creating views 93 96 crossposting messages 61 custom views 93 Customer Support 7 195 Index customizing Agent 177 93 Agent ini 190 93 colors 185 fonts 184 international languages and fonts 186 message appearance 182 message display 182 89 quoted text markers 183 section dividers 183 tab spacing 183 toolbars 177 78 size of toolbar buttons 178 window display 180 82 word wrapping 188 customizing the Folders menu 179 80 Daylight Savings Time 16 default news email program 171 default signature 121 defining news and mail servers 16 deleting messages 108 Dial Up Networking 48 defining settings 49 dictionaries for spell checking 135 digests 159 60 bursting 160 sending 159 disposition of message sections 152 distribution field 118 email See mail encoding and decoding attachments 150 expanding addresses 129 expanding and collapsing threads 37 expanding threads automatically 38 expires field 118 Favorites list 171 field text 125 fields 117 19 automatic insertion from the Address Book 126 128
109. en this box is unchecked only the names are displayed Message Display Agent allows you to customize the message text that appears in the Message pane to suit your own needs and preferences Changing the Appearance of Messages 182 In the previous section you saw how two of the tabs on the Display Preferences dialog box are used to change the appearance and behavior of Agent s browser windows You can use the three remaining tabs on the Display Preferences dialog box to customize such things as how quoted text and URLs display what style and size of fonts are used and what colors are used for normal text quoted text and URLs Customizing Agent Select the Options Display Preferences Messages tab which is used to change the appearance of message bodies Display Preferences E Tab Spacing fe characters Quoted Text Markers p M Show dividers between sections Main Window Browsers Fonts Colors How to display URLs I Highlight in a different color IV Underline IV Highlight in Composition window I Show Buttons on composition window These are your options on the Messages tab 1 Tab Spacing Enter the length of tab stops in characters 2 Quoted Text Markers Enter the character s that will signify quoted text from a previous message Quoted text markers are commonly used to indicate what part of a message has been copied or carried over from another message Agent displays this text
110. end Files tab On this tab you can define the default format for both Usenet and email messages Using the same dialog or tab you can tell Agent how to handle large attachments As a rule of thumb Usenet message attachments longer than about 500K bytes should be sent as multiple messages to make sure all news servers can handle the attachment correctly However you should probably not break up email messages as some email programs may not be able to receive multipart attachments Attach the desired files In the Composition window press the Attachments button to display the Attachments dialog box Source CAHOMEWEANNE AGENTABMPS Splash bmp Placement attachment zl Description Picture of a mermaid Filename fSplashbmp Type of data Japplication octetstream Language Default English S Cancel Help Properties Using the Attachments dialog box you can add and delete attachments For each file attached to the message you can define placement disposition i e how it is attached give an optional description and specify its type which Agent will usually determine automatically Add a text message optional You can include a message along with the attachment The message appears before the attachment If you include a message Agent also includes your signature Send the message When you have finished creating a message and are ready to send it Agent will build the message in the following order
111. er Do this by checking the Do not leave on server option when you create the filter On your copy of Agent at home create an email kill filter for this same message using any field appropriate to recognize the message setting delete as the kill action Make sure you do not check the Do not leave on server option f you do you ll never get the message at work if you first see it at home Follow the same steps for other email personal or professional until you get the balance you want between what you receive at work and what you receive at home Viewing Messages If there is one certainty in life it s the fact that everyone has their own way of viewing things What works well for one may not for another Agent understands this and has built in features that allow you to change how Agent displays messages to best suit your tastes and needs 88 All About Messages Sorting Messages In the Message List pane you can sort messages by thread subject author date or size You can have a different sort for each group and whenever you start a new session Agent always remembers the last sort you used for each group To sort messages Below are equivalent options Choose the one that s easiest for you Menu option Select a sort type on the Group Sort Messages by flyout menu Mouse option In the Message List pane click the column header label identifying the sort e g Date Using the menu option you can select m
112. er On this tab complete the following settings as instructed below News Server Authorization IV Server requires authorization login User Name fidoe IV Remember Password between sessions Password 1 Server requires authorization login Check this box if your news server requires a special name and or password for logging in When checked Agent will automatically supply your user name when requested by the news server 2 User Name Enter the user name required by your news server when logging in 3 Remember Password between sessions Check this box if your news server requires a special password for logging in and you want Agent to automatically enter the password for you If you don t check this box you ll need to enter your password each time you log in to your news server 4 Password Enter the password required by your news server for logging in For security your password appears in asterisks Now that you ve set up news server authorization select Online gt Get New Groups to get the list of all newsgroups Chapter 2 At any time you can cancel the retrieval process by clicking the Stop Sign icon amp on the toolbar To get a complete list of groups at a later time you must select Online gt Refresh Groups List Agent lists the newsgroup names in the All Groups pane as shown below Note When you first retrieve groups all groups are marked with the New Group icon The next time you get new
113. er immediately IM This message only Cancel Help As mentioned above this dialog is very similar to the Add Usenet Filter dialog However you can use this dialog to instruct Agent to automatically file email messages in folders and to remove email messages from your POP server Note to define the default settings for email watch and kill filters use the Options gt Inbound Email gt Watch and Options Inbound Email Kill tabs Here are the options for using this dialog box 1 Filter Expression Enter the expression that tells Agent what to look for in determining if a message will match the filter If you re creating a filter from an existing email message Agent inserts the Any Sender field followed by the author of the selected message Note Any field name you enter is legal as well as the special names any sender and any recipient If you want to change the filter expression you can either manually enter the change see the section Agent s Expression Language on p 75 for details on how to do this or you can use the All About Messages following buttons to have Agent automatically insert the proper field in the proper format from the currently selected message a Paste Field Press this button to open the Paste Field dialog box From this dialog box select the field that you want pasted into the Filter Expression box Note the Paste Field button is active only if you create a
114. ers Subscribe to Group Cancel Help The following table describes the three basic functions you can perform using the View Empty Group dialog box Choose this option to have Agent do this Sample Message Headers Retrieve the specified number of most recent Number to sample headers in a group Retrieve all of the headers currently available Get All Message Headers for a group This can number in the thousands in some groups Subscribe to Group Add this group to the subscription list 20 2 Getting Started In this initial session enter the number of messages you want to sample in the field Number to sample You can leave this field set to the default which is 50 Press the Sample Message Headers button Agent will retrieve the specified number of most recent headers in selected group and will display the headers in the Message List pane shown below x Agent alt usenet offline reader forte agent SI Eile Edit Online Post Navigate Group Message Options Window Help IS SS Sie Is foe el es E All Groups 23772 Subject All Messages ab urban folklore 14 Re News Group Headers alt usage 1 How Do Cancel Unsent Messages alt usage english 12 Scheduling Agent alt usage english neologism 6 Sorting on Message List alt usage german 1 Filters how set up for various groups alt usenet 24 Best Win95 Newsreader alt usenet addict 5 can you start agent in a specific newsgroup alt usenet kooks 1 Emai
115. ers expressions automatically when creating filters based on existing messages For power users Agent s expression language is versatile and powertul allowing full control when defining criteria for matching One of the available kill actions or watch actions A priority between 0 lowest and 1000 highest Filters are evaluated in priority order If more than one filter matches a message the action of the filter with highest priority is carried out An optional expiration date expressed in the number of days the filter should be kept Agent automatically deletes expired filters helping you keep the number of filters from getting out of hand An enabled disabled flag This allows you to temporarily disable a filter without deleting it altogether You can also use the Filters tab on the Group Properties dialog to temporarily disable all filters for selected groups You can create filters based on existing messages or from scratch To create a filter based on a message 1 Highlight the message that will be the basis for your filter This can be either a Usenet message or an email message Open the Message Filters flyout menu Select Add Kill Filter or Add Watch Filter depending on the type of filter you want to create Complete the settings in the Add Filter dialog box see the next section Note that Agent knows whether you re creating a filter for a Usenet message or an email message and opens the
116. ew Attachments on page 160 The topics in this chapter are Some Basic Concepts Retrieving Messages With Attachments Saving Attachments Sending an Attachment Message Digests ID Example A Way to View Attachments Some Basic Concepts The first thing you should know is that for most users Agent will take care of attachments automatically for you You don t really need to know or do anything special to use this feature Refer to the sections Retrieving Messages with Attachments and Sending an Attachment in this chapter for simple steps you can follow 149 Chapter 6 If you want to dive into the details of working with attachments you should become familiar with some terms that are used Don t be intimidated by all this it s really pretty straightforward Encoding and Decoding See how to control the encoding format when sending messages on page 157 Email and news messages are transmitted across the Internet as text messages Unfortunately many of the files on your computer e g spreadsheets or pictures are not text files Before these files can sent they must be changed into a text representation This transformation of computer or binary information into text is called encoding Similarly when you receive an encoded message it must be changed back into binary information using a process called decoding UUEncode and UUDecode have been the most widely used methods of encoding and d
117. f you want to force Agent to do an exact match but also include re in the match for responses you can do something like the following subject re and apple This filter will match only subjects which contain exactly apple and which also contain re Expression Qualifiers In general Agent searches as much of the message as possible for the words or phrases in the expression How much of the message is searched depends on the type of search Usenet email or global search You can use expression qualifiers to limit the search to selected fields If a search expression contains no qualifiers the follow items are searched Usenet Filters The Subject and Author fields only and not the message body Email Filters All header fields and not the message body Global Search All header fields and the message body To limit the search to a particular message field use a qualifier prefix which is the name of the field to be searched followed by acolon For example subject testing searches just the subject field for the word testing while subject testing and from tom gold All About Messages searches just the subject field for the word testing and just the from field for the phrase tom gold Thus it matches only those messages for which the subject contains the word testing and the from field contains the phrase tom gold Usenet email and global search expressions all allow different qualifiers Usenet Fil
118. filter directly from a selected message If you create a filter from scratch this button will not appear See the section Filter Expressions in this chapter for details on creating correct filter expressions b Lower Case Press this button to convert all text in the Search For field to lower case This ensures that Agent will filter on all instances of the filter expression whether the retrieved headers use upper case lower case or a mixture of the two Kill action Select the default Kill action for your filters The options are a Delete Agent will delete the message not filing it in a folder b Mark read Agent will file the message in the specified folder marking it read c Ignore thread Agent file the message in the specified folder mark its thread Ignore and mark the message read Watch action Select the default Watch action for your filters The options are a Retrieve Agent will retrieve the message file it in the specified folder and mark it unread Watch thread Agent will file the message in the specified folder watch the entire thread amp and mark the message unread Keep Check this box if you want Agent to permanently keep any message retrieved when the filter action is anything other than delete File in Folder Select the folder into which you want a message that matches this filter to be filed If you don t want to use any of your existing folders click the
119. gh the list and select groups at random or you can use the Find function to find specific text When you find a group you want to follow you can subscribe to it This allows you to quickly return to that group each time you open Agent To use the Find function 1 Select Edit Find or use the accelerator Ctrl F and the Find dialog box will display Find What agent FindNext Cancel Hep 2 Enter the text that is part of the group name that you want to find For example to find the group alt usenet offline reader forte agent you might enter agent Press Find First to jump to the first occurrence of that text in the list If the first occurrence is not the group you want press Find Next or use the F3 key to find further occurrences of the text Chapter 2 Sample Message Headers from a Group Even though a group s name may sound interesting it would help to read a few messages in that group to see what the group is really like Agent allows you to sample messages from that group rather than retrieving all the group s messages to get a taste of the type of topics discussed To sample a group s message headers 1 Double click the name of the group in which you re interested Because itis an empty group Agent will display the View Empty Group dialog box View Empty Group EN You selected an empty group for viewing Please choose one of the following actions Number to sample 50 Get All Message Head
120. groups this icon will be removed from existing groups appearing only by the groups most recently retrieved Agent s Three Pane Layout 18 When Agent begins retrieving the complete list of groups for your server you ll get your first glimpse of Agent s Main Browser window x Agent 3b I File Edit Online Post Navigate Group Message Options Window Help a ped EE EES EE 3b 3b config 3b misc 3b tech 3b test 3do bad attitude 43 5col announce H DEE E Ofine 1070 EI Getting Started By default this window is divided into three panes H Each pane has a distinct function The upper left pane shows the list of groups the upper right pane shows the list of all messages in a selected group and the bottom pane shows the body or text of a highlighted message You can zoom into any of the three panes simply by clicking the cursor in the desired pane giving that pane the focus and hitting the z key For a full description of all the components of Agent s Main Browser window see Agent s User Interface in the next chapter Your First Session With Agent Now that all the groups have been retrieved you re ready to explore and work with Agent To help you get started we ve presented some simple steps for you to follow Find Groups that Interest You The first thing you need to do is to survey the long list of groups you ve retrieved and find the groups that interest you You can either scroll throu
121. h time you retrieve new headers in a group Agent marks the existing messages as read so the new messages will stand out You can control this behavior using the Group Properties Mark Read tab See p 39 for more details You can also use Group Mark Selected Groups Read or Group Mark Selected Groups Unread to change the read unread status of all messages in a group or Message Mark Read or Message Mark Unread to change the status of individual messages Message Pane The bottom pane is where the text or body of the message for the selected message header is displayed Scroll Bar You will find vertical scroll bars on the right side of the each pane that allow you to scroll through the information in the panes i e groups and folders message headers and body text In addition the 29 Chapter 3 Message pane has a horizontal scroll bar that allows you to scroll horizontally to view body text that may be out of view Status Bar The status bar below the Message pane displays information about Agent s current state such as whether Agent is online or offline Context Menu Agent supports context sensitive menus which means that if you click RightMouse when the cursor is in one of Agent s panes a menu of the most frequently used commands for that pane will appear Icons and Indicators 30 On the Agent Main Browser window shown previously you ll see a number of icons and indicators For a description of each see
122. he match The operator causes the entire regular expression to be case sensitive Otherwise regular expressions in Agent filters are case insensitive For example the filter subject A Z matches a subject containing a sequence of one or more CAPITAL LETTERS However the filter subject a z matches a subject containing a sequence of one or more letters in any combination of lower case or CAPITALS Example How To Filter Out Unwanted Email 84 Are you being inundated with unsolicited commercial email UCE and other offensive messages These types of messages commonly referred to as spam are a major annoyance to many users Here s a procedure you can use to help control the flood of unwanted email 1 Setup three folders as follows e Create one folder for email that you know you want to receive You might call it inbox Of course you could create multiple folders to further categorize messages that you want to save e Create a second folder for UCE spam You could call this folder trash Alternatively you could configure your filters to delete All About Messages spam immediately upon receipt The only problem with that approach is that you might inadvertently delete a message that you really wanted to keep e Create a third folder for mail that has not yet been categorized You could call this folder uncategorized or to be sorted 2 Next configure Agent s default email filter sett
123. he message they receive If you dont define any field text then all recipients will see the email addresses of all other recipients Field text allows you to hide the list of names so each recipient sees only what you have entered as field text Note The Field Text value should be a valid email address since it will appear in the message in a header field that is normally expected to contain a valid address Some email systems may reject your message if it contains a field with an invalid email address You may want to use the address to which recipients on your list should send replies For example My mailing list lt reply here my company com gt If you want to combine several address book mailing lists and show a single address in the To field you can specify the single address as the Field Text value for one of the address book entries and make all the others blank To make these address entries blank enter one or more spaces for the Field Text Agent replaces the entry with nothing Important If you are using the Expand Addresses feature in the address book when selecting your mailing list entry from the address book for use in a message Agent inserts all of the addresses from the list into the message and DOES NOT use the value for Field Text Agent will warn you when this is about to happen to verify that you really want to expand the addresses Finding an Address If you have a name in mind that is out of view o
124. he server indicates in its greeting message that it supports APOP Otherwise Agent will use the traditional POP login 5 Username Enter the name used to log in to the mail server in order to receive new messages E g gbrown 6 Remember password between sessions Check this box and type your password in step 5 to have Agent automatically enter your password when checking for new mail When this box is left unchecked Agent prompts you for your password the first time it checks for new mail during each session with Agent For more on this see p 47 For more details about this tab see page 63 Getting Started Password Enter your email account s password if you want Agent to automatically log onto your mail server when checking for new mail Note For security your password appears in asterisks Login with Secure Password Authentication This option is available only to 32 bit users If you are using a 16 bit system this setting is grayed Select this option if the Secure Password Authentication protocol or SPA is required to log in to the server Note When you select this option SPA will prompt you for credentials That is why the Username and Password are grayed Receive email with SMTP Select this option if your incoming email is delivered via SMTP Load Winsock on startup Check this box if you want to connect to your service provider immediately upon loading Agent This allows Agent to receive new ma
125. hen Expand active threads is used Also the View Next Unread Message Body option on the Navigate menu always expands the thread even if the message is the first message in the thread Follow Up Indent all follow up messages the specified number of spaces Indentation in characters from their parent in the Message List pane Maximum Show up to the specified maximum number of response Follow Up Level levels Any responses deeper than this appear at the most indented level Reply Prefixes This is a list of all the prefixes Agent will recognize Agent uses this prefix when processing message subjects There are times when Agent needs to identify and remove the reply prefix Re By convention most people use Re to signify a reply However other languages use different prefixes for the same purpose as He In this entry box enter any prefix not on the list that you want Agent to recognize Prefixes can be separated either by a space or comma Also when Agent searches for prefixes the match is case insensitive so it doesn t matter whether you enter prefixes in upper or lower case Note Agent always assumes that a reply prefix ends with a colon so you should not include colons in the prefix list Creating and Using Views In The Message List Pane Agent allows you to specify exactly the types of messages to be viewed in the Message List pane and in your folders e g Unread messages In either case the selection is global
126. hin Donna Schmitt Fred Brutschy George Mitchell Ginny Brown Henry Chin Alan Watkins Comments I Expand addresses Close Note Because the Pick Address button is right on the Composition window this is probably the easiest way to open the Pick Address dialog box but there are two other equivalent methods Menu option Message Pick Addresses Keyboard shortcut Ctrl K Use the options on the Pick Addresses dialog box as follows 1 Names Select the desired names from the Address Book that you want to insert in the address field Composition window Type the first few letters of a name to rapidly skip to that name 2 To Cc Bcc Press any of these three buttons to append the selected name s from the Names list to the To Cc or Bcc field on the message Composition window Holding Shift when you press the To Cc or Bcc button copies the addresses in these respective fields instead of the names 125 Chapter 5 Also double clicking a name is equivalent to pressing the To button 3 Find Press this button to bring up a Find dialog box to find a name which is out of view on the Names list This can be handy if you ve created a long list of names 4 Edit Press this button if you want to edit the selected name in the Names list The Address Book window will open positioned on the selected name From here you can edit the name using the options on the Address menu 5 Comments The desc
127. his box if Agent retrieves an email message that the server indicates has already been retrieved presumably at your other site Agent will mark the message read Leave email messages unretrieved if they are longer than the maximum number of lines specified When Agent encounters a message larger than the specified value Agent will retrieve the number of lines of the message as specified When this box is checked Agent will leave the message on the server and won t retrieve it again Uncheck this box to force Agent to retrieve the message the next time you check for new mail 65 Chapter 4 When New Email Arrives Use the Options Inbound Email Alerts tab to tell Agent how to notify you when new email arrives Inbound Email EN System Checking Mail Folder Kill Watch When New Email Arrives I Display message box M Play sound M Only if new messages were marked unread WAY file Browse Choose this option to have Agent do this Display message box Pop up a message when new mail is received Play sound Play a sound when mail is received If your PC is set up to play wav files you may specify the location of a WAV file to play If you check Play sound but leave WAV file blank Agent will play the Email Receive sound defined in the Sound module of your Windows Control Panel Only if new messages Check this box if you want Agent to beep were marked unread or play the specified
128. ible for submitting the message or email message to the network Normally this field is blank to indicate that the From field also names the submitting entity For example if Rennie Kent is visiting George Mitchell and wishes to use his computer to post an email message George would temporarily set his Sender field to his own email address and set the From field to Rennie s email address to indicate that the messages are being submitted by George on Rennie s behalf Summary Usenet messages only An optional summary description of the message To The email address and the optional full name of the person to whom the Usenet message or email message will be sent Signatures A signature is one or more lines of text that Agent automatically places at the bottom of news messages and email messages that you send When you create a new message you can select from a list of defined signatures to best fit the type of message you re composing For example you can define a personal signature and a different business signature You can define as many signatures as you wish We suggest you choose the most frequently used signature as the default To insert a signature into a message There are two ways to insert your signature into a message e Select the signature from the Signature dropdown list on the Composition Window Agent will automatically append the selected 117 Chapter 5 118 signature to the end of
129. ibutes apply To define more complex views select the Advanced view option When this option is selected a Boolean expression field appears where you can enter an argument that defines precisely what you want to show in your new view See the figure on the following page Using Boolean Expressions to Create Complex View Filters Earlier in this chapter you were introduced to boolean expressions as word based phrases that pose conditions These conditional phrases consist of two parts operands and operators When you enter an expression in the Boolean expression field see the following figure Agent uses that expression each time you retrieve new headers checking for that defined condition This condition then determines which messages will appear in the Message List pane View Add Unread Messages With Bodies Messages With amp Bodies Rename C Simple view Advanced view Boolean expression Jot tead and not ignore m Operands Operators Read Not Body Thread Watch amp And Ignore 10r Keep low high Mark Incomplete Expression operands The expression operands are conditions that can be tested They are e Read as in messages that have been read e Body as in message body All About Messages e Watch as in watch a thread e Ignore as in ignore a thread e Keep as in prevent a message from being deleted or purged e Mark as in mark a message for later retrieval e Incomplete as in mult
130. il whenever it is running and online even if you are using another Internet program When left unchecked Agent receives email only when it is online doing something else such as communicating with your news server or sending messages To manually check for email Once you ve entered your System Profile information you can immediately check for email by selecting Online Check for Email or using the keyboard shortcut Ctrl E Agent goes online and logs on to your POP server checking for mail and retrieving any messages in your mailbox To have Agent automatically check for email Click Options Inbound Email gt Checking Mail and check the first option Automatically check for email every Then enter how often you want Agent to check for mail When this box is checked Agent will automatically check for mail each time you start Agent then will check at the specified interval after that 25 CHAPTER 3 Agent Fundamentals The previous chapter led you step by step through the installation process including retrieval of the complete list of newsgroups available on your news server Once this has been done you will most likely never need to do that again Now you re ready to start using all of the features of Agent Before you jump in you should become familiar with some of the key concepts underlying the way Agent works Agent s User Interface Navigating in Agent Group Properties Multi Tasking YVOUQRY Working Online
131. ill check the spelling of any message you compose When you first install Agent the American English dictionary is used as your default spell checker However you may also download a number of alternate language dictionaries when you download Agent files from Fort s FTP to install the program for the first time The ftp address is ftp forteinc com pub dictionaries For each language there is a TLX file general dictionary and a CLX file custom dictionary to which you can add words not in the general dictionary Unzip the appropriate zip file in your Agent directory The choices are e engamer zip American English e engintl zip International English e french zip French e german zip German e italian zip Italian e spanish zip Spanish To spell check a message you ve composed Either select Message Spelling or press F7 To specify a different dictionary for spell checking Composing and Sending Messages 1 First make sure that the correct spell checker is defined for the selected language Select the Options General Preferences Languages tab On this tab select the language then select the spell checker for that language 2 Now make this language the default language If you want to use this language and its spell checker for all groups and anytime you compose an email message select this language on the Group Default Properties Language tab If you want to use this language only for selected groups s
132. in messages In short Agent is a highly flexible tool that fits the way you work In this chapter you will learn how to customize Toolbars Folders Menu Window Display Message Display YVOUQRY Agent Int Toolbars This is arguably one of the coolest features Agent offers because toolbar icons are both fun to look at and functional The ability to customize your toolbars is important because of how differently people work and how their personal preferences vary Toolbars can be designed for e Agent s main browser e The Outbox e The Composition window e The Address Book e The Usenet Filters window e The Email Filters window e Agent s Log 177 Chapter 8 To customize toolbars 1 Select the Options Menus and Toolbars Toolbars tab shown below Menus and Toolbars x Folder Menus Window Browser S Commands Adds the next URL in the text to the address book Toolbar a Online Get New Headers In Selected Groups Separator lt lt Delete Online Get Marked Message Bodies Online Get Selected Message Bodies Separator Separator gt gt Post New Usenet Message 2 From the Window list choose where you want to add a toolbar command From the Commande list choose the command you want to add 4 Inthe Toolbar list select where you want the command to appear and press the Add button The command is inserted in front of this selection On the toolbar the icon
133. in order to match the expression The character can be used in place of or in any expressions For example subject apples or juicy oranges matches a subject that contains either the word apples or the phrase juicy oranges not Agent must find no occurrences of the specified word or phrase The character can be used in place of or in any expressions For example the expression All About Messages subject apple and not pies matches all subjects that contain the word apple but do not contain the word pies You can have Agent treat any operator as normal text by placing quotes around the word e and or not This might be helpful if for instance the word and is an integral part of a subject in a filter you re adding For example to match the phrase this and that you can use any of the following expressions this and that this and that this and ia that SR Note When you use any of the Paste Field buttons quotes are automatically placed around any operators that are part of the field If you include more than one operator in an expression Agent evaluates them in the following order highest priority to lowest priority not and or You can change the precedence by using parentheses For example subject pink or rose and not author tsmith tells Agent to match any message for which the subject contains the word pink or match any message that conta
134. ings to use the three folders e On the Options Inbound Email Folder tab select the default folder to be your uncategorized folder This will cause all email that is not processed by any other filter to be placed there e On the Kill tab set File in Folder to your trash folder You will probably find that the other dialog settings are already appropriate e Onthe Watch tab set File in Folder to your inbox folder 3 When you first start receiving email all new messages will get filed in the uncategorized folder After you receive a batch of new messages scan through them to decide how you want messages from the same senders to be processed in the future 4 For spam messages press Cirl K to create a kill filter using the Add Email Filter dialog box The default filter settings will create a filter that will place all future messages from that sender in your trash folder By default the kill filter will match the sender s complete email address That will often be appropriate However you might want to modify the filter if you want to match any messages from that domain For example if you receive a message from great offer savetrees com you could choose to trash all future messages from any address at the savetrees com domain To modify the filter to match just the domain press the Paste Field button highlight the Any Sender Domain only entry and press OK Of course you could achieve the same result by
135. ins rose in any field for which the author does not contain the word tsmith But subject pink or rose and not author tsmith means match any message for which the subject contains the word pink or rose and the author does not contain the word tsmith In addition to and or or not the following operators are used in filter expressions The wildcard character asterisk when appended to a word in the filter expression matches any word in the message that begins with the word in the expression For example com matches command comment or any other word that begins with com 77 78 Chapter 4 l h To match a range of line counts enclose the lowest and highest numbers in the range separated by a comma in square brackets A in place of one of the numbers is a wildcard For example 10 matches all messages with no more than 10 lines and 15 matches all messages with at least 15 line The percent character means that the following term should be case sensitive An equal sign that precedes any term in an expression means that Agent must find an exact match of that term When the operator is applied to a subject field Agent first removes any Re prefixes before performing the match For example the filter subject testing matches both testing and Re testing But it does not match more testing since the operator requires an exact match of the entire field I
136. ions Toolbar button al Menu option Navigate View Next Unread Message Keyboard Shortcut CN To go to the next unread message in the current thread and retrieve it or mark it for retrieval Use any of the following options Toolbar button al Menu option Navigate View Next Unread Message in Thread Keyboard Shortcut Ctrl T Single Key Navigation You can use the spacebar to move from message to message similar to the way older Unix style newsreaders behave By default the spacebar performs a Skip to next unread message command the N command To change this behavior and have the spacebar view the next unread message with a body the Ctrl B command use Options General Preferences Navigation and check the Single Key Read views next unread message body option Expanding and Collapsing Threads Agent displays follow up messages indented under the original message 39 20 Filters how set up for various groups 21 Tom Gold 19 pls see addr my sig 37 38 Chapter 3 To save screen real estate these threads are initially shown collapsed so only the top most message is visible When a thread is collapsed the Expand Thread icon appears next to it To expand a thread do any of the following e Click the Expand Thread icon e Select the message and press the key e Press RightArrow To expand all threads in a group do either of the following e Press Shift key e Press Shift RightArr
137. ipart messages with missing parts Expression operators The expression operators that affect how the conditions are tested are listed below in order of priority Use the word or symbol whichever you prefer e not or the equivalent symbol e thread or the equivalent symbol e and or the equivalent symbol amp e or or the equivalent symbol e How boah While the not and and or operators are self explanatory thread specifies that if the condition that follows is true the complete thread containing the message that matched the condition should be displayed Also low high allows you to specify a range of lines in messages e g 50 specifies messages that are 50 lines or more Examples of simple expressions not read and body Agent will display all unread message with bodies not read and not incomplete Agent will display all unread messages that are complete read keep Agent will display all messages that are unread or kept Examples of advanced expressions You can also create advanced compound expressions using more than one phrase To establish precedence you can surround one of the phrases with parentheses which changes the order in which Agent will evaluate the phrase The following examples are compound expressions that use different operands and operators to create unique views not read or thread not read and watch Agent will display all unread messages Also fo
138. it Since some servers do not accept cancel requests you may want to verify that the posting was actually deleted To verify that the message was deleted 1 Highlight the message header you canceled 2 Delete the message s body by selecting Message Delete Body 3 Try to retrieve the message s body again by selecting Online Get Selected Message Bodies If the cancel request was accepted the Message Body Not Available icon DI will appear next to the message MAPI is a Windows standard defining how Windows programs send email You can set up Agent to send email using MAPI if you re using Agent for reading and composing messages but you want to use your corporate email system for sending messages To set up Agent to use MAPI 1 Select the Options User and System Profile System tab 139 Chapter 5 140 2 Select the option Send email messages with MAPI Note You must have a MAPI enabled mail system online for this option to be available Otherwise the option will be grayed Selecting the Send email messages with MAPI option causes the following things to happen Agent uses the MAPI Send Message window rather than the message Composition window Note The addresses and message body are initialized as appropriate but once the MAPI window has been opened Agent no longer has control over the message The sent message is saved in your MAPI email system not in Agent s Outbox or folders The Forward Verbatim optio
139. it TCP IP protocol support with a 32 bit Winsock Access to an NNTP news server Access to an SMTP mail server for posting email Access to a POP or SMTP mail server for receiving email Installation Methods You can install Agent in one of two ways 12 electronically by downloading the program from the Internet by purchasing a shrink wrapped version where the program is on diskettes or a CD ROM Getting Started To install Agent electronically 1 If you don t already have a copy of Agent you need to download Agent s installation EXE file into any directory You can access the EXE file from Fort s web site at http www forteinc com store getagent htm 2 Run the EXE file to activate the installation wizard In Windows 95 select Run from the Start menu enter the path of the EXE file in the Open entry box and press OK Windows 3 x select Run from the File menu enter the path of the EXE file in the Command Line entry box and press OK The installation wizard that appears will guide you through the setup process Simply follow the clearly documented instructions on the screen At any time you can cancel the process or backtrack through previous screens to change any of your entries or selected options To install Agent using a shrink wrapped copy 1 Insert the CD ROM or diskettes containing the program in the appropriate drive typically d drive for CD ROMs and a drive for diskettes 2 Run the SETUP
140. ite interesting and you may want to make sure that Agent always gets the bodies of the latest messages for this thread You can do this by using the Watch Threads option To watch threads Place your cursor on the thread you wish to follow and use one of the following equivalent methods Toolbar button Menu option Message Watch Thread Keyboard shortcut W The Watch Thread icon Pa will then precede that message and any responses to that message When you retrieve new headers Agent will automatically get the bodies of all responses to watched threads Ignoring Threads The gnore Thread option has the opposite effect of Watch Thread For any thread you definitely do not want to follow you can use Ignore Thread to 60 All About Messages tell Agent never to retrieve new messages for the selected threads This can reduce the number of new unread messages presented to you each time you get new message headers To ignore threads Place the cursor on the thread you wish to ignore and use any one of the following equivalent methods Toolbar button Menu option Message gnore Thread Keyboard shortcut The gnore Thread icon will then precede that message and any responses to that message When you retrieve new headers Agent will automatically mark these messages as read even those retrieved in later sessions Important Be sure to keep at least one header in a watched or ignored thread in order for this feat
141. l amp Usenet Messages ak usenet manifesloes alt usenet offline reader 2 Re How to align unaligned columns 1 A couple questions 12 Re Spelilcheck alt usenet reposts el 89 Re How to make Agent 1 01 default news and mail progr The People at Forte are Super Harry Hines 6 23 97 2 36 PM 14lines Press ENTER to retrieve message Press M to mark the message for later retrieval Finished retrieving new headers Online 0720 Retrieve and Read Message Bodies In the Message List pane scan the sampled message headers i e subjects and select highlight the headers with subjects that interest you To select multiple headers For successive headers Click the first header and drag the mouse down the list of successive headers or click the first header you want then hold down the Shift key and select the last message For non contiguous headers Click the first header and then hold the Ctrl button while you click on the other desired headers 21 Chapter 2 To retrieve selected message bodies Select Online gt Get Selected Message Bodies or press Enter If you only selected one header you can also double click it to retrieve the body which appears in the Message pane for you to read When Agent retrieves multiple bodies it displays the body for the first selected header To view each successive body use the option Navigate Skip to Next Unread Message Body
142. l Action section will appear In the example above you see the default setting in the Watch Action section In fact when defining filters the only difference between a 69 70 Chapter 4 watch and a kill filter is the initial appearance of the dialog box options You can start creating a watch filter and change it to a kill filter or vice versa Note to define the default settings for Usenet watch and kill filters use the Group Properties Filters tab Here are the options for using this dialog box 1 Filter Expression Enter the expression that tells Agent what to look for in determining if a message will match the filter If you re creating a filter from an existing news message Agent automatically inserts the selected message s subject for a watch filter or author for a kill filter into this field If you want to change the filter expression you can either manually enter the subject or author on which you want to filter or you can use the following buttons to have Agent automatically insert the subject or author of the currently selected message a b Paste Subject Press this button to add a subject filter Paste Author Press this button to add an author filter Below this button is a drop down list where you can choose exactly how the author information will be entered Your choices are e Name only e g author John Smith or e Address only e g author jsmith anyco com or e Entire field
143. lay color underlining highlighting Word wrapping Agent also has a Word Wrap option on the Message menu that allows you to optimize the way message bodies are viewed Using this option is particularly helpful when you receive messages with very long lines that do not fit on your screen Agent will automatically wrap the text in such messages so that all of the text is visible in the display window Message details You have the option in Agent to show or hide all the finer details about a retrieved message e g author subject date total lines You can also view a message in its formatted or unformatted raw state Changing fonts Agent allows you to specify message text to suit your own needs and preferences You select the display fonts using the Options Display Preferences Fonts tab 96 All About Messages ROT13 Text When viewing a message body you might see text that looks like gibberish see example on next page When you see something like V ir gelrq gb gtxaybng SERR NTRAG sebz gurve JJJ cntr chances are that the text has been encoded with a scheme called ROT13 To better illustrate the point the phrase Hello World encoded with ROT13 looks like this Uryyb Jbeyq ROT13 encoded text cannot be read without first decoding it Agent supports both ROT13 encoding and decoding Here s what you do To encode a ROT13 message 1 Highlight the text to encode 2 Select Edit gt Apply ROT13 or
144. lete Italian rm Settings for English Name Character Sets IFRS Spell Checker l None e Usenet Text Es Sbit zl C MIME Headers Email Text Quoted printable MIME 7 IV MIME Headers b Press the Add button to bring up the Add Language dialog box and add the language e g Spanish to the list of languages see below Add Language x Name Spanish Based on English E OK Cancel Help Note For fonts that use Non Latin1 character sets e g Russian Japanese Norwegian and Swedish you need to use variable pitch fonts in the Message List and Message panes To do this use the Variable Pitch Body button and check the two options Use variable pitch body font and Use variable pitch body font for Headers 4 Find and subscribe to the newsgroups using the font you installed 5 Define Group Properties for the selected groups as follows a Inthe Groups pane select the desired newsgroups 187 Chapter 8 b Select the Group Properties Languages tab c Set two options check the Override default settings box and select the language associated with the newsgroups see below Properties for Selected Groups ES Mark Read What to Purge When to Purge Retrieve Filters Crossposts Post Send Files Receive Files Directory Language IV Override default settings Language English SS English English International Spanish Word Wrapping Agent
145. lication of your choice to process Internet URLs In addition from Internet Explorer and Netscape you can use Agent as your email and news program Finally you can use Agent hand in hand with other newsreaders or with other copies of Agent through the use of a standard newsrc file This chapter is broken into the following areas 7 URLs in Agent 7 Using a Newsrc File URLs in Agent What is a URL A URL Uniform Resource Locator is an address used to locate a resource on the Internet The format of the URL depends on the type of resource Here are some examples URL Type of address http www forteinc com World Wide Web address agent info forteinc com email address ftp forteinc com FTP address Here are the URL types that Agent recognizes 165 Chapter 7 file File news Usenet News ftp File Transfer Protocol nntp Usenet News gopher Gopher snews Secure Usenet News http Hypertext Transfer telnet Telnet Protocol https Secure Hypertext wais Wide Area Information Transfer Protocol Servers mailto Email Address Displaying URLs Agent highlights all URLs it encounters in header fields in message text even in the Composition window as your create messages By default URLs appear green and underlined but you can modify the style of highlighting to suit your own taste To control the style of highlighting used Select the Options Display Preferences Messages tab Display Preferences E Tab
146. m or manually disconnect by unchecking after the Online command on the Online menu If you intend to read messages online you might want Agent to go offline after a few minutes of inactivity This gives you time to read messages but doesn t leave Agent online too long If you intend to read messages offline you probably want Agent to go offline immediately 0 seconds of inactivity Select this option to have Agent load winsock dll on program Load Winsock on Program startup and leave it loaded until you close Agent Note Startup Always check this box if you are using Dial Up Networking DUN or Remote Access Server RAS See the additional technical information below Select the action you want Agent to perform when you are offline and attempt to view a message for which you do not Viewing Unretrieved have the body If you want to operate in online mode you Messages When Offline should select Go online and Retrieve the message s body If you want to operate in offline mode you should select Mark the message for later retrieval Additional technical information about Load Winsock on Startup The winsock DLL is a system file that provides access to the Internet for Agent and other Internet client programs Each client that uses the DLL must first load the DLL into memory and also must unload the DLL when finished with it If more than one program loads the DLL simultaneously it remains loaded in memory until the
147. mark existing messages read when you get new headers It s quite simple Select the group s to which this will apply then choose Group Properties and the Properties for Selected Groups dialog box appears Default Properties for All Groups x Crossposts Post Send Files Receive Files Directory Language Mark Read What to Purge When to Purge Retrieve Filters When retrieving new message headers C Do not mark any existing messages read Mark all existing messages read Mark only messages without bodies read m When retrieving marked message bodies C Do Not mark any existing messages read ZS Mark all existing messages read Mark only messages without bodies read Cancel Help The Properties for Selected Groups dialog box mirrors all the tabs and the options on the Default Properties for All Groups dialog box For this example check the Override Default Settings box on the Mark Read tab and select the option Do not mark any existing messages read When you select more than one group then select Properties for Selected Groups the check boxes and options in the dialog can be in one of three states e initially all options will be grayed and may appear checked or unchecked This is because the settings may be different among the various groups selected e Click the Override Default Settings box and it will become or remain unchecked Clicking OK at this point will reset all
148. most appropriate folder for each message The next section will show you how to do this using Agent s easy to use yet powerful message filtering feature By default any mail that is not routed automatically by a filter will be filed in the folder you created when first configuring for email If you want to change this default folder use the Options Inbound Email Folder tab and either select an existing folder from the drop down list or create a new folder by pressing the New Folder button Message Filters Agent provides a powerful and flexible set of features to allow you to get just the messages you want ridding yourself of the nuisance of unwanted messages while getting all the details of messages which are of interest to you Using filters for news messages can be extremely important if you regularly retrieve headers from extremely active groups some of which can generate literally hundreds of headers each day Without such a broad filtering mechanism your Message List could rapidly become unmanageable Similarly using filters for email messages allows you to avoid unsolicited commercial email spam while retrieving and filing automatically the messages you want Creating a Message Filter Usenet and email message filters consist of the following components 67 68 Chapter 4 A filter expression specifying the criteria Agent should use when matching filters with messages For the casual users Agent will supply filt
149. n be any of the following Any character that doesn t otherwise have special meaning For example the letter a is an atom that matches a or A in the field being tested The dot character A dot matches any character The carat character which matches the beginning of the field being tested The dollar sign character which matches the end of the field The backslash character followed by any character You can use backslash to quote characters that otherwise have special meaning For example to match the literal character you would write Without the backslash the would match any character not just A more complex regular expression enclosed in parentheses A range of characters enclosed in square brackets A range is defined according to the following rules a A range may be a simple list of characters For example the range qwerty matches a single occurrence of any of the characters q w e r t ory b Arange may be acharacter range specified as x z For example the range 0 9 matches a single occurrence of any character in the range 0 through 9 c More complex ranges may be built with the previous two rules For example the range a z0 9 matches any letter or digit Remember that Agent s regular expressions are normally case insensitive That s why you don t need to include A Z in the range d Ifa range begins with a character it matches any cha
150. n is disabled Your signature is not appended to email messages Instead you must use whatever signature mechanism is provided by your MAPI system On the Group Properties Post tab the Copy follow up messages to author via email options is disabled There is no facility for sending a message as both a news message and an email message For example Agent ignores the To Cc and Bcc fields in news messages Agent will not send any pending email messages that may have been stored in your Outbox prior to enabling MAPI email You should be sure to send any pending messages via SMTP prior to enabling MAPI email CHAPTER 6 Using Attachments There may be times when you need to send or receive information that cannot be contained in a simple text message For example you might want to view a picture or hear a sound that has been posted to a newsgroup Or you may want to send a word processor file or spreadsheet file to a colleague or friend To do this you need to use file attachments In this chapter well discuss how Agent allows you to send and receive attachments streamlining things for the casual user while allowing the power user full control when handling attachments This section will cover the major points in using file attachments Refer to Agent s Online Help for full details For those of you who want a quick overview of how to view attachments you may want to jump ahead to the section Example A Way to Vi
151. n the Names list you can jump directly to the name by using the Find option Select Edit gt Find and the Find Address dialog box will appear 123 Chapter 5 Find Address Find What Mark Sidell Look in M Names I Addresses T Comments FindNext Cancel Hep Depending on what you wish to find you can search on any one of the components found in the Address Book Window including Name Address and Comments For example if wish to find the primary travel agent used by your company but do not know the name or address you would simply check the Comments box and enter travel agent in the Find What entry box Now press the Find First button and Agent will jump to the first occurrence of travel agent Note For multiple occurrences press the Find Next button until you arrive at the desired name Selecting an Address 124 When composing new messages you can select one or more names from the Address Book to automatically insert into any one of the following address fields on the Composition window To Cc Bcc The procedure for picking addresses is simple Here s how it works To pick addresses Press the Pick Addresses button m on the Composition window which displays the Pick Addresses dialog box All the names listed are those that have been defined in the Address Book window Composing and Sending Messages Pick Addresses Names Barbara Thompson Chip Ball Chris Beck Chuck Knuff Dave C
152. nd and not operators and the name of the author subject blimp and 100 and not author rocco A filter to filter on a second subject If you also want to learn about airships as well as blimps using the previous criteria you might want to modify the expression using the or operator and parentheses to establish precedence subject blimp or airship and 100 and not author rocco A filter that reduces clutter In addition to the previous criteria you can tell Agent not to retrieve anything else by creating a kill filter with a lower priority level The settings for the new kill filter should be as follows Filter Expression subject all headers will be evaluated Kill Action Delete Scope Group alt aviation methods Priority 100 Make this value lower than the watch filter That way Agent first retrieves the messages about blimps All About Messages because the watch filter has higher priority then this filter tells Agent to skip everything else Try creating a couple of filters yourself You can use these examples as a template or you can be a little more adventurous and create something completely different based on the basic principles you ve just learned Regular Expressions The previous examples illustrate what are called word based expressions for Agent filters While these are both powerful and easy to use sometimes you can t use them to get the precise behavior you might want In this
153. ne box Agent will ask you if you want to proceed before going online You can define specific launch behavior for each type of URL using the Options General Preferences URL Types tab By default Agent will use your Windows registry association settings to determine which application to use but you can override this behavior directly by selecting one of the other options in the How to Launch URLs section of the URL Types tab How to launch the URL Use Windows registry settings C Use Custom settings below Send URL ta Agent Use Windows regisiry settings This setting is only available in the Windows 95 and Windows NT 4 0 version of Agent This is the default setting that allows Agent to work in harmony with the Windows 95 and Windows NT 4 0 system Use Custom settings below Checking this option activates the Custom Settings section on the URL Types tab You may use this setting in cases where you are using an application such as Netscape that requires different settings than the defaults If you enter net scape exe as the application for example Agent activates the other custom settings automatically checking the Use DDE option and inserting Netscape as the application fe UseDDE DDE Message 41 OFFFFFFFF no Zeeche Nelanape Joxe Wa OpenURL Appicsion OC nstscape exe Brows Method Request Send URL to Agent This option is normally not available grayed out It is only available when y
154. nread Message Keyboard Shortcut N Use any of the following options to skip to the next unread message with a body Toolbar button Menu option Navigate gt Skip to Next Unread Message Body Keyboard Shortcut B By default if the next unread message is in a different group pressing N or B opens that group or folder and selects the first unread message If you would prefer to jump to the Groups Folders pane instead to tell more easily when you re done with a group or folder on the Options General Preferences Navigation tab uncheck Skipping to next unread message jumps to first unread message in next group To skip to the next unread message in a thread A thread is a series of related messages grouped together For example when people post responses to a question in a group the question and all responses together are called a thread Use any of the following options Toolbar button Menu option Navigate Skip to Next Unread Message in Thread 35 Chapter 3 Keyboard Shortcut T This action is handy because when you reach the last follow up message Agent stops navigating telling you that the thread is over To skip to the next unread group or folder Use any of the following options Toolbar button Menu option Navigate Skip to Next Unread Group Keyboard Shortcut S By default this action marks all the unread messages in the current group or folder as read before skipping to the next one It
155. nt Retrieving a Complete List of Groups Agent s Three pane Layout Your First Session With Agent YVOUQRY Retrieving Email for the First Time Installing Agent There are two versions of Agent available 16 bit and 32 bit The 16 bit version is commonly used on PCs that are running Windows 3 1 or greater as the operating environment The 32 bit version is designed to run on newer more powerful PCs that use a Windows 95 or Windows NT operating environment Agent will not run using Win32S with Windows 3 1 Agent s 32 bit version supports e Multitasking allowing you to do several tasks at the same time e Long file names more than eight characters e Dial Up Networking Windows 95 and Remote Access Services Windows NT Chapter 2 PC Requirements Before you install Agent you should make sure that your PC meets the following requirements IBM PC or compatible minimum 386SX processor or higher A minimum of 4 MB RAM although we recommend 16 MB RAM for Windows 95 users and 8 MB RAM for Windows 3 x users A minimum of 8 MB of free disk space for installation 16 Bit Agent Requirements Windows 3 1 or greater or Windows NT 3 5 or greater A TCP IP driver that supports Winsock 1 1 applications Access to an NNTP news server Access to an SMTP mail server for sending email Access to a POP or SMTP mail server for receiving email 32 Bit Agent Requirements Windows 95 or Windows NT 3 5 or greater 32 b
156. nt what ki Here s a description of each component Menu Bar The menu bar is where all of Agent s option menus are listed To access a menu click on the menu name or else press Alt and the letter in the menu name which is underlined e g for the File menu press Alt F Toolbar The toolbar buttons below the menu bar provide quick access to some of the most common commands in Agent You can customize this toolbar so that it contain the commands you use most To see what each button means move the cursor onto the button and a brief description will appear Note If a button is unavailable for use at a particular time it will be dim Pane Title Bar The title bar above each pane provides you with information about the contents of that pane e g which groups are shown in the Groups pane and what the current view is in the Message List pane Groups Folders Pane This pane lists newsgroups and folders By repeatedly clicking the pane s title bar or by choosing the appropriate option from the Group gt Show Groups and Folders you can view all groups and folders only subscribed groups and folders only new groups or only folders See Expanding and Collapsing Threads on page 37 Agent Fundamentals Message List Pane This pane is where the message headers in the selected group or folder are displayed For each header the subject date time and author of the message are displayed A message with responses is
157. ntrol how Agent retrieves attachments use the Group Properties Receive Files tab 153 Chapter 6 Default Properties for All Groups x Mark Read What to Purge When to Purge Retrieve Filters Crossposts Post Send Files Receive Files Directory Language IT Save attachments automatically If a Filename already exists Save with a different name z If a decoding Error occurs Save and leave in message z T After saving an attachment remove it from the message I Use the Message subject for name of first attachment in message IV Detect Uuencoded files automatically I Ignore fragments I Join multipart messages when retrieving headers I Join multipart messages when saving or launching attachments I When launching an attachment first save it as a file IT Double clicking launches attachments M Burst digests into separate messages Filename Conversions Retain original filename if possible x Cancel Help For common use you ll want these boxes checked on the Receive Files tab Detect Uuencoded files automatically Join multipart messages when retrieving headers Ignore fragments Refer to the Online Help for complete details for all options Basic Retrieval Process 154 To retrieve and launch an attachment in a newsgroup 1 2 Get new headers for the newsgroup Select any message in the message list Note If you checked Join multipart messages automatically on the Group Properties
158. o close the dialog box and cancel all of your changes 5 Default Signature Select the signature you wish to use by default Select None if you do not want to have a default signature When you post a message or send an email Agent automatically uses your default signature You can choose a different signature to be the default for each group or override the signature used for a specific message using the Signature list in the Composition window Note Changing the default signature also changes the signature setting on the Group Properties Post tab 6 Text Enter any text that you want to appear with the currently selected name in the Names list If you want a separator to appear between the rest of the message and the signature you need to include it here A common convention on the Internet is to begin your signature with a line containing two dashes followed by a space as shown below lt put one space here no brackets gt Mark Prince Fort Support 7 Use Existing File f you want to share a signature file from another program enter the name of the file containing the signature After entering a valid filename the dialog will display the contents of the file in the Text field step 6 Note Any changes you make to the signature in this dialog box will be saved to the file so changes here also affect any other programs using the same file 8 Browse Press this button to browse for a signature file
159. of folders sorting printing views and resending copies of messages which are not available in the Outbox To copy or move the message into a folder open the Message Copy to Folder or Message Move to Folder flyout menu and choose a folder If you copied the message to a folder it will now appear in the Outbox and in the 137 Chapter 5 selected folder If you moved the message into a folder it will no longer appear in the Outbox but will now appear in the selected folder To have Agent automatically file your sent messages select the desired folder from the File sent Messages in folder list on the Group Properties Post tab You can also file a composed message simply by showing all fields on the Composition window and selecting the desired folder from the Filing drop down list Re sending Messages As described above messages you send can be saved in the Outbox or ina folder Re sending messages depends on where they were filed To re send email from a folder Make sure the sent message was filed in a folder not the Outbox Highlight the message from the folder listed in Message List pane Choose Post Neu Copy of Message Hr Sp NS Press Send Now or Send Later to transmit the message In the folder you will have both the copy of the original message and the new copy of the message just sent To re send email from the Outbox 1 With the message selected in the Outbox choose Message Open 2 Option
160. omatic purging options discussed in the previous topic you can always manually delete message headers and message bodies To delete a message Highlight the headers you want to delete and use one of the following options NW Toolbar button Ka Menu options Message Delete Keyboard shortcut Del Note You can t manually delete a kept message To delete a message body With the focus in the Message pane use one of the following options Toolbar button Menu options Message Delete Body Keyboard shortcut Ctrl Del Compacting Databases You can compact your databases either manually or automatically to remove the space you may accumulate after purging or deleting messages Note In general you probably do not need to compact your databases automatically Compacting after changing purge settings should be sufficient To manually compact the database files Select File Compact Databases Agent scans the databases to determine how much disk space can be saved A message will tell you what you ll save and you can decide whether or not to proceed To automatically compress the database files Open the Group Properties When to Purge tab to view the settings below 107 Chapter 4 Default Properties for All Groups E Crossposts Post Send Fil iles Directory Lanquage Mark Read What to Purge Retrieve Filters gt When to Purge IV When Retrieving new headers I When Closing Agent
161. one that accomplishes what you want to do described as follows Get New Headers in Subscribed Groups retrieves new headers that have been added since you last retrieved headers in your subscribed groups All About Messages Get New Headers in Selected Groups retrieves the new headers that have been added since you last retrieved headers in each of the selected groups Get All Headers in Selected Groups retrieves all headers from the selected groups including headers that may have been purged in previous sessions Sample Headers From Selected Groups Agent retrieves a limited number of the most recent headers in the selected groups You can either retrieve a specified number of headers or for a specified number of days Note Because you retrieve the most recent headers when using the sample headers feature immediately after you retrieve a sampling no new headers will be retrieved by either Online gt Get New Headers in Subscribed Groups or Online Get New Headers in Selected Groups If you want to retrieve messages prior to those that you just sampled either increase the sample size and sample headers again or use the option Online Get All Headers in Selected Groups Retrieving Message Bodies Agent provides several ways to retrieve the bodies of messages that are of interest to you Two of these methods are available from the Online menu or from the toolbar e Get Selected Message Bodies e Get Marked Message Bodies Here
162. or folder where you want to find the message You can do this by selecting any message in the list Select Edit Find or enter Ctrl F When the Find Message dialog appears enter any part of the subject or author for which you want to search Click the Find First button to find the first message in the list containing the text you entered Press Find Next to find the first message below the currently selected message which contains the desired text in the subject or author field In either case the dialog box will disappear and you will be positioned on the found message If the found message is not the one you want select Find Next or enter F3 to find the next message containing the text you entered To perform a global search for messages in Agent select Edit Global Search or enter Ctrl G The Global Search For Messages dialog will appear All About Messages Done Global Search For Message Bisi x Search For Search In Paste Field IV Selected groups and folders only T All Groups in view T All folders in view History IV Visible messages only Close When successful Lower Case Eind First Find Next Find Next Group Stop Find All Find Al in Current Group Folder Done Results Found 14 of 406 tec sport volleyball Re The first FIVB World Championships at UCLA tec sport volleyball Re The first FIYB World Championships at UC rec sport volleyball UT UCLA vball resul
163. or the accelerator B JAgent alt usenet offline reader forte agent Ele Edt Online Post Navigate Group Message Options Window Help Bis SiS DEES SS Sree RI see MLE Al Groups 23772 oj Thread Subject All Messages alt urban folklore a 14 Re News Group Headers alt usage E Lol How Do Cancel Unsent Messages alt usage english 12 Scheduling Agent ah usage english neologism 6 Sorting on Message List alt usage german Lu Filters how set up for various groups alt usenet 24 Best Win35 Newsreader alt usenet addict 5 can you start agent in a specific newsgroup alt usenet kooks 1 Email amp Usenet Messages altusenet manifestoes Lesen aalt People at Forte are Super ae alt usenet offline reader 27 Re How to align unaligned columns A E LIA couple questions a usenel recovery 12 Re Spelicheck alt usenet reposts e 89 Re How to make Agent 1 01 default news and mail progr The People at Forte are Super Harry Hines 6 23 97 2 36 PM The people at Fort are super and are doing such a great jab considering that they are a small software company and that some of the larger software companies are copying many of their ideas Ireally enjoy the way Fort put their news reader just a mouse click away in the Microsoft Internet Explorer 3xx I m sure it wasnt easy Kudos to the development team that made this software possible This user greatly appreciates you Looking forw
164. ose that layout e Contents of Panes For the layout above these buttons show all of the ways you can organize the Group pane Message List pane and Message pane To distinguish the three types of panes the text on the buttons has been color coded Black text indicates the Group pane 180 Customizing Agent Red text indicates the Message List pane Blue text indicates the Message pane Click a button to choose that content arrangement Once you ve made your selections and have closed the dialog box the window will reflect your selections To resize the panes Simply drag the border between the two panes To save your new arrangement as the default Select Options Save as Default Window Layout Whenever you start Agent or open a new browser window Window Open New Browsen this layout will be used The Save as Default Window Layout command saves the pane layout pane sizing and information on whether or not the pane is zoomed Changing the Appearance and Behavior of Agent s Windows Select the Options Display Preferences Main Window tab Display Preferences x Browsers Messages Fonts Colors IV Show Tool Bar Size of buttons 100 percent of nominal size MV Show Status Bar IV Reposition on last message when restarting program The Main Window tab options are described as follows 1 Show Toolbar Select this option to display the Agent toolbar directly below the menu bar 2 Size of buttons Sp
165. ose this option to have Agent do this Unload winsock hang up between checks or Leave winsock loaded between checks Leave messages on server Note This option is useful when you retrieve messages from the same email account with more than one computer See p 88 for a way to optimize Agent use at two sites Until retrieved at both of my sites If a message has already been retrieved mark it read Skip messages longer than Maximum lines to sample Many winsock drivers automatically hang up a modem when no programs are using any driver anymore If your winsock has this feature you can use these options to control whether Agent unloads the winsock driver between checks for email thereby causing the driver to hang up the modem Keep messages on your mail server after retrieving them Normally Agent deletes messages from the server as they are retrieved Note Once a message has been retrieved and left on the server Agent will not retrieve the message again If you subsequently uncheck this box Agent will delete all the old messages from the server the next time you check for new email This option is grayed unless you select Leave messages on server above Check this box if you are retrieving messages at two sites and want Agent to leave your messages on your server until they have been retrieved at both sites This option is to help people who receive email at two sites When you check t
166. ou have selected nntp Usenet News from the URL dropdown list at the top of the URL Types tab Agent and Other Applications Making Agent Your Default News Email Program You can easily configure your system so that Agent is used whenever you encounter a news message or an email address in your web browser To make Agent your default news email program Use the Make Agent the web browser service for options on the Options General Preferences URLs tab Agent will update your system registry so that anytime you launch a news message and or an email message from your Internet Explorer or Netscape browser Agent will be launched e f you select an email address Agent will bring up a Composition window with the email address in the To field e lf you select a message ID Agent will find the message and bring up the message pane with this message following the search instructions you specified on the URLs tab See page 169 For Internet Explorer 3 0 and above Select View Options Programs Agent will be one of the choices for News and Email Select Agent For Netscape 3 0 and above you don t need to do anything else However because of limitations in Netscape Agent can respond to URLs passed from Netscape only if Agent is already running Using Shortcuts and Internet Explorer s Favorites List If you ve installed Microsoft s Internet Explorer you can do the following Add URLs to Internet Explorer s Favorites list
167. ou spot messages of interest Agent automatically retrieves the bodies of responses in watched threads each time you get new headers in that group Menu command Message Watch Thread Keyboard shortcut W e Ignore thread This option helps you avoid messages of no interest to you Any responses in ignored threads are marked read so you don t read them Menu command Message Ignore Thread Keyboard shortcut Een e Keep a message details see This command flags messages you want to keep indefinitely This page 106 prevents it from being removed during automatic purging Menu command Message Keep Keyboard shortcut K For details about filing messages In e File message in a folder Copy to Folder or Move to Folder These Ges buttons can be added to your default toolbar as described on page 177 Menu command Message Copy to Folder or Message Move to Folder Keyboard shortcut Alt M C lt file number gt or Alt M V lt file number gt 43 Chapter 3 Offline Mode 44 A typical session using Agent while in offline mode might be as follows Remember that the goal of offline work is to minimize connection time What you ll want to do is get information in stages spending time doing detailed reading while not connected Note You can use Agent to automatically go online and then offline when performing these options see the next section A 1 Check for new email This button can be added to your default toolbar as described on
168. ow If this doesn t work make sure the Num Lock is disabled When a thread is expanded the Collapse Thread icon appears next to it To collapse a thread do any of the following e Click the Collapse Thread icon e Select the message and press the key e Press LeftArrow To collapse all threads in a group do either of the following e Hold down the Shift key while pressing the key e Press Shift LeftArrow If this doesn t work make sure the Num Lock is disabled Agent can also automatically expand threads for you By default Agent expands threads when you skip to them Note Agent will automatically expand the thread when you skip to it only if you have already retrieved the body of the original message To prevent Agent from expanding threads when you skip to them uncheck the box Automatically expand threads containing new messages on the Options General Preferences Navigation tab If you always want all threads expanded uncheck the Show threads initially collapsed also on the Options General Preferences Navigation tab For more details about expanding threads consult Agent s Online Help Agent Fundamentals Group Properties A powerful feature of Agent is the ability to assign very specific behaviors either globally or on a per group basis Whenever group properties are described in this User Guide it is important to note that you can assign any of these behaviors either to all groups or only to
169. page 177 Menu option Online Check for New Email Keyboard shortcut Ctrl E 2 Get new Usenet message headers from subscribed groups Menu option Online Get New Headers in Subscribed Groups Keyboard shortcut Alt O N 3 Go offline 4 Read through the headers and mark them for later retrieval H This option queues messages you want to retrieve so that you only need to go online once to retrieve them Menu option Message Mark for Retrieval Keyboard shortcut M 5 Go online and retrieve marked Usenet messages This option has Agent go online just long enough to retrieve the bodies for the marked messages from step 4 Menu option Message Get Marked message Bodies Keyboard shortcut Alt O M Go offline and read all messages at your leisure ae You may want to any of the following e Compose email and Usenet replies These options open a Composition window Menu options Post Reply via Email Post Follow Up Usenet Message Keyboard shortcuts R F For more details see page 106 Menu option Agent Fundamentals Note To be most efficient press the Send Later button LEU after composing each message then send them all at once at a later time See step 8 Watch thread This option helps you spot messages of interest Agent automatically retrieves the bodies of responses in watched threads each time you get new headers in that group Menu option Message Watch Thread Keyboard shortcut W
170. ping your connection or having lags in the download of headers then you can increase the amount of time Agent will wait before generating the error dialog box All times are in seconds GetHostByNameTimeout 30 This setting controls the timeout period for looking up the host s name ConnectTimeout 10 This setting controls the timeout period for connecting to the host ResponseTimeout 120 This setting controls the timeout period for waiting for a response from the host SendTimeout 60 This setting controls the timeout period for sending a command to the server This is the maximum time the program will wait during a blocked transmission not the total time allowed to send a message PostTimeout 60 This setting controls the timeout period for posting a message or email message This is the maximum time the program will wait during a blocked transmission not the total time allowed to send a message PostResponseTimeout 360 This setting controls how long Agent will wait for an acknowledgment from the server after posting a message or email message QuitResponseTimeout 30 This setting controls how many seconds Agent will wait for a Quit acknowledgment from the server Debugging ShowUID 0 When non zero Agent will show the group folder id s in the Groups pane This number is the base filename for each group s IDX and DAT files allowing you to find the actual files which correspond to a group or folder ShowArticleDetail 0
171. port To convert data use the conversion command for the existing type of address book See the ixt file for each converter for details Converters are available from the Fort ftp site ftp forteinc com pub converters To 127 Chapter 5 import addresses select File Addresses mport flyout and specify the path and name of the file containing the addresses you wish to import It s recommended that you use the txt extension for the lt output filename gt part of the conversion command Attachments There may be times when you wish to include a graphic file or other type of GE attachment with your message Agent makes it very easy for you attach any attachments type of file e g a GIF image to your message Here s how see Chapter 6 Using To attach a file when composing a message Attachments Press the Attachments button to display the Attachments dialog box Then press Add and specify the path and name of the file you want to attach as shown in the example below Attachments x Index Source CAHOMEWEANNE AGENT BMPS Splash bmp Placement attachment zl Description Picture of a mermaid 0000 Filename Splash bmp Type of data Japplication octet steam Language Default English y Cancel Help Properties More About Text With Agent you can adjust the text in your composed messages to ensure that the recipient views the body exactly as you intend it to be viewed
172. posing a simple text message or sending someone a WAV sound file as an attachment Agent makes sending messages a seamless operation This chapter is broken out into the following topics Overview Fields Signatures Address Book More About Text Dm More About Sending Overview There are several types of messages that you can compose in Agent Here s the basic procedure to follow when composing any one of these types 1 Open a Composition window for the type of message you want to For information compose e g new email message using either the toolbar button the about the types option on the Post menu or the associated keyboard shortcut of messages you can send see page 112 2 Enter an address For Usenet messages Agent automatically inserts the currently selected group in the Newsgroups field For email except follow ups you enter an address in the To field If the address you want is in your Agent Address Book just press Bl See Selecting the Pick Address button on the Composition window and select the an Address on page 124 address from the list 111 Chapter 5 3 Enter the message subject new messages only Enter a brief description describing what the message is about When composing replies Agent automatically inserts the subject for you prefaced by Re indicating that it s a reply see the example below K Eile Edit Online Post Message Options Window Help Newsgroups
173. ption controls the criteria Agent uses when checking for crossposted messages in all groups The two choices are Subject author date and lines and Message ID In general the former gives better crosspost detection e Clear cache used to detect crossposted messages Press this button to remove the list of most recent message headers Agent maintains this list as the basis for crosspost detection This data is in the file xpost dat in your Agent data directory Retrieving Email Messages In an earlier chapter you learned the basics about checking for email during a typical Agent session This section will provide more details on how you can optimize Agent for use as your email program Checking for Mail Use the Options Inbound Email Checking Mail tab to set your preferences for checking email 63 64 Chapter 4 Inbound Email Receiving Email with POP Options These options apply only to POP mail servers They tell Agent when to check for email and what it should do with the messages it finds The following table describes what each option does Choose this option to have Agent do this Automatically check for Automatically check for new email email every periodically Enter the number of minutes between checks Note Agent must be running in order to check for mail Check only when online Check for new mail only if you are already online with your service provider All About Messages Cho
174. r all unread messages in watched threads display the complete thread 95 Chapter 4 thread watch and keep amp not read and body Agent will display only unread messages in threads that are both watched and kept i e preceded by the Keep icon lignore amp read amp incomplete amp 50 Agent will display all messages that are not ignored that are unread that do not have incomplete body attachments and that are a minimum of 50 lines Note When you switch from a simple to advanced filter on the Manage Views dialog box Agent displays the boolean expression that is equivalent to the simple filter that was defined When you switch back Agent attempts to display the simple filter that is equivalent to the boolean expression But since expressions can define filters that cannot be defined in the simple way the resulting simple filter may not be an exact match Agent will warn you when you do this Changing How Message Bodies Display For more details see page 182 For more details see page 188 For more details see page 189 For more details see page 184 Display preferences You can use the Options Display Preferences Messages tab to modify the appearance of message bodies including e Tab spacing the number of characters tabbed text is indented e Quoted text markers the characters indicating quoted text ina message e Dividers between sections of a message body e How URLs disp
175. r example after purging a database file that is 1 4 megabytes in size the file will still take up 1 4 megabytes Even though the file may have been emptied of many messages the space allotted to the file remains exactly the same However as new messages are retrieved after the purge they fill in the space left in the file by the purging This keeps the file from getting larger at least until the previous maximum size is surpassed To reduce the size you must follow message purging with database compaction see page 107 To tell Agent when to purge messages Open the Group Properties When to Purge tab to view the settings below 103 Chapter 4 The compacting options are described on pages 107 104 Default Properties for All Groups ES Crossposts Post Send Files Receive Files Directory Language Retrieve Filters m When to Purge IV When Retrieving new headers T When Closing Agent When to Compact Databases IT After Manual purges T When closing Agent Ronipact onl if Wasted Space is atleast EY percent Je tee dosna saent Erompt tor confirmation before purana or The first two options on this dialog box tell Agent when to purge messages Select the one that best fits your needs e When Retrieving new headers Check this box to have Agent purge messages from a group when retrieving new headers for that group e When Closing Agent Check this box to have Agent purge
176. racter not in the specified range For example the range a z0 9 matches any character that is not a letter or a digit e To include the characters or inside a range as literals prefix them with a backslash For example the range matches any character that is not orl Controlling the Extent of an Atom s Match 82 All About Messages You can modify an atom by following it with special operators that control how much of the field the atom should match The special operators are This matches a sequence of zero or more matches of the atom For example the expression a matches zero or more occurrences of the letter a This matches a sequence of one or more matches of the atom For example the expression 0 9 matches one or more digits This matches zero or one occurrence of the atom For example ab c matches the letter a followed by the letter b followed by zero or more occurrences of the letter c Thus it matches ab abc abcc etc while abc matches zero or more occurrences of the sequence abc Thus it matches nothing or abc or abcabc or abcabcabc etc Concatenating Atoms You can concatenate atoms to form more complex sequences to be matched Here are some examples forte matches the sequence consisting of f followed by o followed by r followed by t followed by e a b matches zero or one occurrences of the letter a followe
177. refix when launching Send URL to Agent m Custom Settings Application l Browse I Use DDE DDE Message 21 OxFFFFFFFF Application Topic Method For each URL type in the drop down menu you can decide whether you want to enable URL launching If you uncheck the Enable Highlighting and Launching option for a particular URL type that type will no longer be highlighted by Agent Some other things to note 167 Chapter 7 e Whenever your cursor is positioned over a highlighted URL it will change to an arrow e f you right click while the cursor is over a URL you ll get an abbreviated context menu with options for handling the URL e f you select text then right click you ll get a context menu which includes options for handling URLs Launching a URL 168 When you double click on a highlighted URL Agent will invoke the application on your system used for handling that type of URL This is called launching a URL For example if you double click the URL http www forteinc com Agent will invoke your Web browser with focus on Fort s home page If you double click an email address Agent will open up an Agent Composition window with the selected URL in the To field You can customize launching behavior to suit your needs On the Options General Preferences URLs tab note the section Launching URLs Launching URLs ly poubleciclte launch How to interpret a name domain URL
178. rently performing Offline Offline or Online Status Let s you know if your current status is offline or online Task Status The task currently underway 6 8 Unread Status The number of unread messages currently viewed in the message list pane and the total number of messages read and unread in the view Scroll Lock Key Status For each pane in Agent there is a separate Scroll Lock status By repeatedly selecting the Scroll Lock key you can enable and disable the scroll lock for each individual pane When the scroll lock state is enabled you will see SCRL on the status bar Overwrite Text Status When editing a message in In the picture on p 28 the composition window you can type over characters this and the previous by switching from insert mode to overwrite mode two items are hidden by To do this place your cursor at the point where you the context menu want to begin overwriting text then press the Insert key until you see OVR on the far right side of the status bar Now you are ready to type over the text To return to the insert mode press the Insert key again OVR will disappear from the status bar and you will no longer type over existing characters when you enter new text Other Agent Windows 32 You can open more than one three pane Browser window Agent also has other windows described elsewhere in this User Guide to allow you to perform other tasks e g the Address Book and Usenet Filters
179. rieving headers in another See the Options User and System Profile Online tab for details Working Online vs Offline One of the beauties of working with Agent is that you can work either in online or offline mode depending on your individual needs e Online mode Use Agent online if connect time charges are nota major concern In online mode Agent remains connected to your news server SO you can retrieve messages any time without having to re connect e Offline mode Use Agent offline if online costs concern you In offline mode Agent connects to your news server only when it needs to perform an online task and then goes offline as soon as the task is completed What follows are the routine tasks you might perform in a typical Agent session either in online mode or in offline mode These are examples and 41 Chapter 3 Online Mode For more details see Retrieving Email Messages on page 63 For more details see Overview on page 111 For details see Filing Messages in Folders on page 53 42 your sessions may vary depending on the types of things you re trying to accomplish during a given session Keep in mind that even if your preferred method of working is online you still have all information available to you while offline This is because either online or offline Agent keeps all news and email messages locally on your hard drive You never have to go online to review messages you ve alr
180. ription for the highlighted name defined in the New Address dialog box This read only descriptor helps you verify that you ve found the right name To change it you can press the Edit button to jump to the Address Book window 6 Expand addresses This option applies to Usenet and email messages you are sending Check this box to cause Agent to insert the actual email address es for an address book entry rather than the name of the entry e g amya acmeinc com rather than Amy Anderson Address Validation 126 Agent has a validation feature allowing you to ensure that an email address you ve entered has used a valid format When validating an address Agent looks for these required address components e the characters that identify to whom the message is being sent e the symbol e the domain suffix e g a commercial company s name is followed by the extension com or a school s name is followed by the extension edu Here s an example mkaplan acme com There are times when using a local address is also valid If your service provider is set up to handle local addresses you can simply address a message to the person s name So instead of mkaplan acme com you can simply enter mkaplan as the addressee as long as Agent is also set up to recognize the local address as valid To help Agent tell a local address from an Address Book entry Composing and Sending Messages Select the Options Posting Preferences Gener
181. rkers At home people are beginning to access the Internet in greater numbers and to use email to communicate with friends and loved ones Agent has made sending and receiving email a snap You can compose and send email to individuals or to lists of people When receiving email you can tell Agent to automatically file messages from certain people or about certain subjects in designated folders You can even create an Address Book in which to keep your most frequently used email addresses Email addresses all share a common structure the user ID component the character and the server domain eg com for commercial firms or edu for educational institutions Here are two examples jdoe acmeinc com an address at a company and msmith csu edu an address at a university Newsgroups Newsgroups are electronic forums covering a wide spectrum of subjects In these forums people can share ideas and information You can read what other people think about a particular topic and you can join right in the discussion yourself if you wish If you ve never seen a list of newsgroups before you may very well be overwhelmed as you begin perusing the names in the groups list Many of the newsgroups are not named with any thought to clarity The cryptic abbreviations and acronyms used are bound to puzzle the novice For example can you tell what abg uucp waffle fidonet openbeta linux act hams or sfnet csc tiedotukset are about You re not
182. s Simple view C Advanced view Show only the following messages T Read M Unread T With Bodies T Without bodies I Watched T Not watched T Ignored Not ignored T Kept IT Notkept T Marked for retrieval T Not marked for retrieval T Incomplete multiparts T Not incomplete multiparts T Show complete Threads for matching messages You can use the Manage Views dialog box to create and add views to the list of defined views or to rename or delete existing views in the View list Agent is entirely flexible allowing you to create simple or complex views Here s how it works For a simple view 1 Make sure Simple View is selected Then press the Add button to bring up the Add dialog box and enter the name of your new custom view Note You can create a keyboard shortcut to the new view by adding the ampersand amp character before the desired shortcut character in the view name The amp tells Agent to underline the following character when the name appears on the View menu and make that character a keyboard shortcut Add View EN Name fiith bodies and not amp incomplete Cancel Help When you press OK on the Add View dialog the name is added to the Views list and is the current selection 93 Chapter 4 3 Now select all the message attributes that will apply to the view and press the OK button on the Manage Views dialog box Whenever you select this view in the future the selected attr
183. s AE 12 Installation MethOOSs 2 c2nirnOn tee A en EE stn a aa athe ak 12 REGISTERING AGEN Tittus Et 13 RETRIEVING A COMPLETE LisrorGpoupe ntin nnn ntra ninnunannu nra nne anne 16 AGENTS THREE SNE ANEN 18 YOUR FIRST SESSION WITH AGENT 0cccccccceeceseeceeeecesueeceueceeueuseueeeueuesueeseueueeaeueeaeueeaeeesaeeeenes 19 Find Groups that Interest vo 19 Sample Message Headers from a Group 20 Retrieve and Read Message Bodies 21 Subscribe to Groups that Interest vo 22 RETRIEVING EMAIE FOR THE FIRST TIME ett 23 CHAPTER 3 AGENT FUNDAMENTAL SG ccccsccceeccssseeeesesseeeceeseeeeeeeseeseenseeseeeueeeenees 27 AGENT S UercnplNTEREACE tuten teette etann eanne AEEA EE AR EEEE ER AKESE ER EEEE EER EEES Ennan nEn 27 Three Pane Main Browser Wimdow 27 ICONS ANG Ree e CN 30 Other Agent Windows 32 NAVIGATING IN AGENT saissesseesseeissrinennneniett ienten ttnt t tnet nunan A nAn A RAEE AEEA EER EEEE E EA EEEA EERE EERE E EREA anann Enna 33 Moving Between Panes A 33 Moving Between Messages eter eee eeeeccaaeeeeeeeeegeccaaeeeeeeeeeteeniaeeeeeeeentee 34 Table of Contents Navigating and Retrieving Usenet Messages at the Same Time 36 Gipgle keNatgatiet 22 37 Expanding and Collapsing Threade 37 GROUP PROPERTIES Ss ccr cicecsciztcereceventsakacicedecededisadaded dadtvadivasartsddacadadhsasaded sadtsapieusuasitaiee 39 Setting Default Properties for All Groups ccceeeceeceenee eee eeeeeeecceeeeeeeeteteectaeeeeeeeeeneee
184. s a convenient way to tell Agent that you ve read all the interesting messages in the current group To disable this behavior on the Options General Preferences Navigation tab uncheck Skipping to next unread group marks all messages in current group read To move to the next unread message with a body and display the body text use any of the following options Toolbar button Nal Menu option Navigate View Next Unread Message Body Keyboard Shortcut Ctrl B Navigating and Retrieving Usenet Messages at the Same Time 36 Since you need to retrieve a Usenet message s body before you can read it Agent allows you to skip to an unread message and retrieve it or mark it for retrieval in one step Note Whether Agent retrieves the message or marks it for later retrieval is controlled by the Viewing Unretrieved Messages When Offline options on the Options User and System Profile Online tab See the section Offline Mode on page 44 Agent Fundamentals When configured for offline use you generally mark all the desired messages for retrieval and then retrieve marked message bodies By default Agent skips to the next unread message performs the N action when you mark a message for retrieval You can turn this behavior off by unchecking the box Marking or ignoring a message skips to the next unread message on the Options General Preferences Navigation tab To retrieve the next unread message Use any of the following opt
185. s appear in the same order left to right as the commands on the Toolbar list You can change the order of the commands using the Up and Down buttons You can group similar types of icons separating the groups by a slight space To insert a space between one icon and another press the Separator button If you change your mind about an icon you can remove it from the toolbar by pressing the Delete button The deleted command reappears as a choice on the Commands list At any point you can revert back to Agent s default toolbar settings by pressing the Reset button Finally you can change the size of the icons on the Options Display Preferences Main Window tab Make sure that Show Tool Bar is selected Then specify the desired percentage to expand or shrink the buttons Size changes are effective in increments of 5 For example any percent from 101 105 will cause the buttons to expand by 5 to 105 178 Customizing Agent Folders Menu The Folders menu appears as a flyout menu from Message Copy to Folder and Message Move to Folder options idee Del Co older a Friends Move to Folder 2 Internet Service Records 3 Administration 4 Business 5 Inbox 6 Marketing Info 7 Miscellaneous 8 New Ideas 9 Technical News All Folders Ctrl Shift C Using the following procedure you can customize the Folder menu so that it lists one or more of the folders to which you frequen
186. s aren t available when you retrieve headers the Incomplete Attachment icon UV appears in the Message List pane The Message pane tells you what parts weren t available from the news server You ll find two settings for joining multipart messages on the Group Properties Receive Files tab The initial configuration shows both Join multipart messages options to be checked One reason you might choose to uncheck the option Join multipart messages when retrieving headers is if your news server s feed is so slow that sections of some multipart attachments are purged before all of the sections have arrived By disabling auto joining during header retrieval you can have Agent go ahead and retrieve the bodies for incomplete multi part messages and then you can join them later manually described in the following procedure To manually join a multipart attachment 155 Chapter 6 1 Select all the messages that contain the attachment by clicking on one message and then with the Control key pressed clicking on the remaining messages Select Message Join Sections Make sure the messages are in order If they aren t use the Up and Down buttons in the Join Sections dialog to order them in correctly 4 Launch or save the attachment by pressing the corresponding button If you are offline and have not yet retrieved the attachment s messages Agent will immediately go online to download and decode the attachment Viewing an Attachment
187. sage File Format Header Fields to Include UNIX message file All fields C Precede each message with Selected fields To Newsgroups Subject From Date Ce No separator between messages No fields Body only 56 All About Messages Agent only saves messages whose bodies have been retrieved If you select a collapsed thread Agent saves all messages in the thread This dialog box has the same fields as any standard Save As dialog box with the exception of the following options that are unique to Agent 1 Append to existing file Check this box to append the messages to an existing file If you uncheck this option and save the messages to an existing file Agent will erase the current contents of the file Save raw unformatted message Check this box if you only want the raw or unformatted message data to be saved to a file This means that you will save the message header details e g Path From Subject Date etc and the message text In addition any attachment in the message is saved as a series of lines of coded characters File Format Select the format for the messages being saved The options are described below Choose this to have Agent do this option Unix message file Save the messages in the standard Unix message format This allows you to import messages back into Agent No separator Does not include any additional text between the saved between messages Messages
188. sage is older than and Never 6 Always get complete list of server s available messages Check this box for Agent to retrieve a complete list of available messages whenever it gets new headers This option is useful but not required when you have selected the When the message is no longer available option in one of the previous steps It does however increase the time required to get new headers If you uncheck this box Agent will purge messages with numbers lower than the range of available messages reported by the news server Since there are often gaps in the available range of messages this setting may cause Agent to keep messages that are no longer available Preventing Agent from Purging Messages 106 Occasionally you will come across a message that you do not want Agent to automatically purge or that you don t want to accidentally delete To prevent Agent from purging a message Highlight the message header and use one of the following options Toolbar button Menu options Message Keep Keyboard shortcut K The Keep Message icon wil appear next to the message Agent cannot delete the message until you remove the icon To remove the Keep Message icon repeat one of the above options Once the Keep icon is removed Agent will purge the message according to the settings specified on the When and What to Purge tabs described previously All About Messages Manually Deleting Messages In addition to the aut
189. sages not listed in the newsrc file are marked unread but see the next item e Mark messages read only Check this box for Agent to use the newsrc ranges to mark existing messages read but not to mark any messages unread When you uncheck this box Agent also marks as unread any messages not listed in the newsrc range e Update list of subscribed groups Check this box if you want Agent to update the list of subscribed groups when a newsrc file is imported and include subscribed groups not in your current list of subscribed groups in Agent e Add new Groups Check this box if you want Agent to add new groups when a newsrc file is imported and contains groups not already in your database e What to Do With Extinct Groups Choose how you want extinct groups groups which are no longer available on your news server to be handled Automatic Import and Export of Newsrc Files You can configure Agent to automatically import a newsrc file on program startup and export a newsrc file on program exit Use the Options General Preferences Newsrc tab to preset the options Agent will use when importing and exporting The options are the same as those described above for manually importing and exporting newsrc files 175 CHAPTER 8 Customizing Agent You have a wide range of options for customizing Agent from designing toolbars and personalizing the Folders menus to customizing the layout of Agent s panes and even the look of text
190. sages when retrieving headers and Double clicking launches attachments as illustrated below Properties for Selected Groups x Mark Read What to Purge When to Purge Retrieve Filters Crossposts Post Send Files Receive Files Directory Language T Save attachments automatically If a Filename already exists Save with a different name 7 If a decoding Error occurs Save and leave in message x IT After saving an attachment remove it from the message T Use the Message subject for name of first attachment in message I Detect Uuencoded files automatically JM Ignore fragments Join multipart messages when retrieving headers T Join multipart messages when saving or launching attachments I When launching an attachment first save it as a file IV Double clicking launches attachments IT Burst digests into separate messages Filename Conversions applies to all groups and email Retain original filename if possible e 3 On the Group Properties Directory tab make sure you have specified the correct directory for saving attached files 161 Chapter 6 162 Properties for Selected Groups x Mark Read What to Purge When to Purge Retrieve Filters Crossposts Post Send Files Receive Files Directory Language I Override default settings Directory for saving attached files C Myattachmentd Browse Temporary directory for launching attached files all groups C
191. selected groups to the default settings for that tab e Click the Override Default Settings box again and all other boxes and options become active Set the options the way you want them and click OK for all selected groups to be given these attributes 40 Agent Fundamentals All group properties work this way Default properties apply to all groups until you override these properties for selected groups As you gain experience with Agent you ll probably find yourself taking great care fine tuning your group properties Multi Tasking Agent allows you to do several things simultaneously For example while downloading message headers in one group you can be reading messages in another group As you complete an activity e g marking messages for retrieval you may want to initiate an action e g retrieve marked messages before moving on to another activity If Agent is already performing an online task the action you initiate will be queued up and Agent will get to it when it finishes all other tasks in front of it Agent s status bar will tell you how many tasks are queued and also tells you which task it is currently working on You can tell Agent to consider certain types of tasks to have higher priority than others In particular you can tell Agent to retrieve the body of a message while Agent is already busy performing other online operations This makes it possible for you to begin reading new messages in one group while ret
192. skip and view commands When you skip to a message you move to that message but stay in the same pane generally the message list pane When you view a message you move to the message and view it in the message body pane retrieving the message if it has not yet been retrieved Keyboard shortcuts reflect this distinction To skip use the appropriate letter e g N to skip to the next unread message To view use Ctrl letter e g Ctrl N to view the next unread message Here are the details To move to the previous or next message e From the Message List pane you can use the up and down arrow keys to move between messages e From the Message pane or Message List pane choose Navigate Up to Previous Message or press U or Navigate Down to Next Message or press D 34 Agent Fundamentals e Either press the Backspace key type Alt LeftArrow or select Back Up from the Navigate menu to move to your previous highlighted message selection Agent allows you to backtrack up to 100 moves e f you ve retraced your steps with the Backspace command you can then track forward again through your previous selections by typing Shift Backspace or Alt RightArrow or by selecting Navigate Forward To skip to the next unread message Use any of the following options to skip to the next unread message regardless of whether or not you ve already retrieved its body Toolbar button m Menu option Navigate gt Skip to Next U
193. son you might want to select this option is for extra security You can then manually enter the password each time you connect rather than having Agent supply it automatically You can use this dialog box to change a connection user name password and or phone number If you check the Save Password box Agent saves the password and automatically enters it for you each time you attempt a new connection To start dialing press Yes To cancel the connection but still go online press No and to cancel the connection but not go online press Cancel Connection ISP1 PPP User Name fidoe Password i IV Save password Phone Number Leave blank to use connection s default number No Cancel Help If another connection is already open use it instead Check this option to have Agent use an open connection to your server if you already have one This is useful for users who may use more than one ISP With this box checked Agent will use the connection that is already open rather than attempting to establish the default connection which might be different Connection From the list highlight the name of the connection to be used The list contains all the DUN connections currently defined Agent Fundamentals Properties Press this button to edit the properties of the selected connection This displays the standard DUN connection properties dialog box Not available in Windows NT New connection Press
194. ss this button to change the font used when printing Use the variable pitch body font for Headers When this option is checked Agent uses the variable pitch body font for the body pane header and for the Subject field on the message composition window Otherwise it uses the default system font Note You only need to check this box if you ve selected a font that does not use the default Windows character set e g a Cyrillic font for Russian and you want the text in the different character set to be displayed correctly on the body pane header and or subject edit field Finally the Options Display Preferences Colors tab allows you to change the color of text and URLs that appear in message headers and bodies Display Preferences ES Main Window Browsers Messages Fonts E Browsers Normal Lines Unread Messages L D L Highlighted Unread Messages Ey r Messages Normal Text Quoted Text URLs O 185 Chapter 8 On the Colors tab you can change each setting to any one of the sixteen colors in the dropdown palette Here s what each setting represents Normal Lines the color for groups folders and read message headers Unread Messages the color for unread message headers in the Message List pane Highlighted Unread Messages the color for unread message headers when they are selected This is usually the inverse of the previous setting Normal Text
195. ssume that an address is a local address you can simply append to it e g gobrown Saving message also Closes Composition window When you check this option pressing the Save button on the Composition window also closes the window When unchecked pressing the Save button saves the message but does not close the Composition window Follow up crosspost action Tell Agent what to do each time you post a news message to more than one group Your choices are as follows e Post the reply to all newsgroups e Post the reply to selected newsgroups only e Prompt you each time you post a reply so that you can choose an action on a case by case basis 10 11 Composing and Sending Messages Include original text in follow ups and replies Check this box to include a copy of the original text in follow up messages and replies Prefix for quoted lines For follow up and reply messages enter the character s that precede quoted text as a distinguishing device Quoted This is the string that appears in the Subject field of your forwarded message if you select Post Forward Quoted Unquoted This is the string that appears in the Subject field of a forwarded message if you select Poet Forward Unquoted Verbatim This is the string that appears in the Subject field of your forwarded message if you select Post Forward Verbatim The default string for settings 9 10 and 11 is fwd subject The fwd part of th
196. t press the Manage Menu button This displays the Manage Folder Menus dialog box where you can add the folder from the Folders list to the Menu list For assistance check the online help When you press OK that folder will be added to both the Copy to Folder and Move to Folder flyout menus You can add as many as 9 folders to the flyout menu If you find yourself moving messages to the same folder frequently you can add a toolbar button to move or copy the highlighted message to that folder with a single keystroke see p 177 55 Chapter 4 An alternative way to add your most frequently used folders to the Copy to Folder and Move to Folder flyout menus is to select the Options Menus and Toolbars Folder Menus tab You will notice that the Folder Menus tab and the Manage Folder Menus dialog box are the same Saving Messages to File In addition to storing messages in folders with Agent you can save messages to disk and keep them as part of your Windows file system To save one or more messages to a text file Highlight all the messages in the Message List pane that you want to save then select File Save Messages As or press Alt F A This displays the Save Messages As dialog box shown as follows Save Messages As Save in E Jane s C D Si cl C Ne E Program Files e Temp E Windows File name Join tal Save as type Text Files fb 7 Cancel Help J Append to existing file IV Save raw unformatted mes
197. tcs 190 vi Table of Contents vii CHAPTER 1 Welcome to Agent Congratulations for choosing Agent your Internet personal communications tool With Agent you get the best of two worlds in one neat package an efficient email program and an online offline newsreader With these two functions fully integrated in one package you ll never need to switch between different programs when you want to check your email or read news discussions on the Usenet Agent provides you with more functionality than you ever dreamed possible For example you can e Fight email and Usenet spam with kill and watch filters e Organize all your news and email messages in folders e Send and receive file attachments in a variety of formats e Customize anything from the toolbars to the window layout Best of all Agent is easy to use You don t have to be a techie so relax Have fun In Chapter 1 you ll learn about the following Agent Features About Email and Newsgroups How to Get Help About This User Guide vY Chapter 1 Agent Features Painless Installation and Setup Installing Agent is a breeze Agent s installation wizard guides you through the setup process in just a few minutes It couldn t be easier Support for Windows 95 and Windows NT 32 bit Agent supports long file names as well as dial up networking Windows 95 and Remote Access Services Windows NT Full Email Functionality You can send and receive email
198. ters may contain the qualifiers subject author and from Email Filters may use the name of any header field as a qualifier For example you match all messages posted with Agent with the expression x mailer forte agent In addition email filters may use the following special qualifier words any sender matches any of these fields From Apparently From Sender Reply To or X Sender any recipient matches any of these fields To Apparently To Cc or Bcc Global Search expressions allow all of the qualifiers allowed by email filters and the following additional qualifiers body matches the text sections of the message body In other words it matches all of the text that you would normally read in the message if you are not viewing the raw unformatted message raw body matches the complete unformatted body of the message including sections containing binary attachments and images Usenet Filter Examples Before proceeding with more details on constructing expressions the following examples should help you see how easy it is to create powerful filters These examples illustrate filters for Usenet messages but remember the mechanism is just the same for email messages Scenario You are an aviation enthusiast interested in knowing more about blimps You have subscribed to the group alt aviation methods and want to create a Usenet Filter to tell Agent to retrieve all messages about blimps in that group
199. the AGENT INI help topic directly to the help topic for that dialog box Details of Some Agent ini Settings View ProgressStyle 0 This setting controls the format of the graphical online task progress indicator in Agent s Status Bar The options are 0 Display the progress indicator in its own box on the Status Bar 1 Display the progress indicator in its own box and include text showing the percentage of the task completed so far 2 Display in its own box text showing the percentage of the task completed so far without a graphical progress indicator 3 Display the graphical progress indicator over the text describing the current task Customizing Agent 4 Do not display the progress indicator Article NewsBaseFields lt fields gt NewsAIllFields lt fields gt MailBaseFields to subject from date cc bcc MailAllFields lt fields gt These settings control which header fields are displayed at the top of the message body The News parameters control Usenet messages and the Mail parameters control email messages The Base parameters control the fields that are always displayed if non empty see below The All parameters control the fields that are displayed when Show All Header Fields is activated Each parameter contains a list of comma separated field names with fields displayed in Agent in the order listed in these settings If a field name is preceded with a then the field is always displayed
200. the message This signature will not appear in the Composition Window but is appended when the message is sent While composing a message select Edit Paste Signature then select the desired signature from the Paste Signature dialog The signature will be added at the insertion point in your message This method has the advantage that you will see exactly how your signature will appear in the message When you use this method Agent will not automatically append the signature indicated in the dropdown list in the Composition Window To create a signature for a posting Select the Options Posting Preferences Signatures tab to view the following settings Posting Preferences E General Signatures Introductions Spelling Names Default Signature Greta Garbled Add Greta Garbled a None Rename Delete m Settings for Greta Garbled Text Complete the settings on the Signatures tab described as follows Names Each name listed in this box is a signature you ve added using the Add Signature dialog box see step 2 2 Add Press this button to display the Add Signature dialog box and add a new name to the Names list Composing and Sending Messages 3 Rename Press this button to edit the name currently highlighted in the Names list 4 Delete Press this button to delete the name currently highlighted in the Names list If you accidentally delete a signature press the Cancel button t
201. the most frequently asked questions refer to Fort s Web site at http www forteinc com Welcome to Agent Newsgroups Ask and answer Agent questions with fellow Agent users in these newsgroups e alt usenet offline reader forte agent e comp os ms windows apps winsock news While these newsgroups are not official Agent support platforms Fort personnel monitor these groups and frequently answer questions and give advice Support Question You can quickly contact Agent s Support team with questions by selecting Support Question from the Post menu On the pre addressed Composition window that displays just type your question and send it to us We re eager to help Make sure you have the correct return address when you send a question Otherwise we won t be able to send you an answer About This User Guide To better follow the contents of this User Guide you ll want to note the following conventions used to clarify different types of information This section also describes the various chapters that make up this User Guide allowing you to see at a glance how this guide is organized Conventions courier type for words or characters you type Typed entries are always shown in lowercase letters unless they must be typed in uppercase to work properly Quotes for new terms and single keyboard characters Bold Type for newsgroup names and URL addresses Italic Type for fields on dialog boxes toolbar icons and b
202. the specified newsgroups there is a second variable the Distribution range The message is sent to all systems subscribing to the newsgroups within the specified Distribution range For the message to be transmitted the receiving site must normally receive one of the specified newsgroups AND must receive one of the specified distributions For example a message concerning a car for sale in New Jersey might have headers including Newsgroups rec auto misc forsale Distribution nj ny so that the message about the car for sale would only go to persons subscribing to rec auto or misc forsale within New Jersey or New York A follow up message should default to the same Distribution line as the original message Expires Usenet messages only The date you want the message to expire Composing and Sending Messages Followup To Usenet messages only The newsgroups where you want follow up messages posted Note You can set this field to poster which forces users to post email replies to you From The email address and optional full name of the person who posted the message or sent the email Keywords Optional keywords to help categorize the message or email message Organization Usenet messages only Your company school etc Reply To The email address where you want replies sent If you normally want replies sent to your From email address you can leave this field blank Sender The name of the entity respons
203. ther hand can dynamically load and unload the DLL as it goes online and offline which makes it possible for Agent to cause the DLL to dial the phone automatically whenever Agent goes online and more importantly hang up the phone whenever Agent goes offline The load winsock on startup option controls when Agent should load and unload the DLL When the option is checked Agent loads the DLL immediately upon startup and keeps it loaded until you close Agent When the option is unchecked Agent loads the DLL only when going online and unloads it as soon as Agent goes offline For most 16 bit DLLs which won t hang up the phone until unloaded you should leave this option unchecked so that Agent will load and unload the DLL dynamically as it goes online and offline You may also need to uncheck this option for certain 32 bit DLLs that operate the same way as 16 bit DLLs For the Microsoft Windows 95 and Windows NT 32 bit DLL you should check this option since it is not necessary to dynamically load unload the DLL to force it to dial or hang up the phone Setting Up Your Connection As described in the note above for 32 bit systems Agent takes full advantage of Windows Dial Up Networking features greatly enhancing the ease with which you can go online and offline Dial Up Networking tells 48 Agent Fundamentals Agent to automatically dial your service provider and establish a network connection In Windows 95 the automatic di
204. tion 11 electronic 13 shrinkwrap 13 Internet Explorer 171 Internet Explorer s Favorites list 171 keep command 107 keeping messages 31 43 45 103 9 keywords field 119 languages 186 launching attachments 151 local addresses 129 132 mail alerts 66 checking for 63 default inbox folder 23 email defined 4 filing automatically 67 replying to 42 retrieving at more than one site 65 88 retrieving for the first time 23 unread mail icon 67 mail SMTP server 16 mailing lists 125 field text 125 managing crosspostings 61 63 Index MAPI 142 marking messages for retrieval 30 31 37 44 marking messages read 36 menu bar 28 message body pane 29 message details 188 message digests See digests message display 182 89 message fields 117 message filters 67 89 add email filter dialog 72 add Usenet filter dialog 69 creating 68 deleting 75 editing 75 examples 86 expiring 71 74 filter expression language 75 79 filter expressions 70 72 filtering out spam 84 managing 74 regular expressions 81 84 Usenet filter examples 79 81 message index 152 message list pane 29 resizing columns 29 showing author s full address 182 views 92 message properties 137 157 159 message status 31 32 messages canceling Usenet messages 141 composing 113 creating an address book entry from 124 deleting 108 digests 159 60 display options 182 89 displaying 97 filing in folders 42 45
205. tion will be vertical Portrait or horizontal Landscape To define Page Setup settings Select File Page Setup to display the Page Setup dialog box Page Setup E m Margins in inches Top joz Left EA Bight 0 75 Bottom fa75 T Print raw unformatted message Header Fields to Include C All fields Selected fields To Newsgroups Subject From Date Ce Bec No fields Body only m Page Breaks Ce None C Between messages C Between Threads The Margins settings are much like those on standard Page Setup dialogs The other settings unique to Agent are described as follows 1 Print raw unformatted message Check this box to print the message in its raw form This means that you will print the message header details e g Path From Subject Date etc and the message text In addition any attachment in the message is printed as a series of lines of coded characters 2 Header Fields to Include Choose which header fields you want printed with a message 109 110 Chapter 4 3 Page Breaks Select where you want page breaks To print single or multiple messages Highlight the desired message headers in the Message List pane and select File Print or press Ctrl P CHAPTER 5 Composing and Sending Messages In this chapter you ll get a close look at the Composition window and the many options you have when composing and sending messages Whether you re com
206. tions for changing the fonts in messages are described below Browser Press this button to change the font for the Groups pane as well as for the Outbox Usenet Filters and Address Book windows Fonts for the Message List and Message panes are defined below Fonts for the Language In the rest of the dialog box you may select which fonts to use for each language that you have defined Use this combobox to select the language you may want to modify Variable Pitch Body Press this button to change the font to be used when displaying message bodies in a variable pitch font Fixed Pitch Body Press this button to change the font to be used when displaying message bodies in a fixed pitch font Often messages will contain fancy signatures or other text that uses characters to create a graphic image If the image is indefinable or looks distorted try using the fixed pitch font Message List Press this button to change the font used in the Message List pane 184 Customizing Agent Use the variable pitch body font Check this box if you want the font that was selected for the Variable Pitch Body setting to be used in the Message List pane Message List Subject Press this button to change the font of the message subjects in the Message List pane Use the bold version of the message list font Check this box if you want the message subjects to be displayed in the bold version of the Message List font Printer Pre
207. tive links that can be launched by simply double clicking them Purging and Compacting Databases Agent allows you to manage your disk space by designing a purging strategy e g keeping messages only for as long as they re available on your server After purging you can compact your database to reclaim previously used disk space Spell Checker Whenever you compose a message you can check for spelling errors using Agent s built in spell checker You can choose from a number of language specific dictionaries Customizable Toolbars By choosing from over 150 toolbar commands you can customize Agent s toolbars so they contain the functions you use most Languages Agent supports a variety of character sets for different languages including some with special accented characters like French or with a unique set of characters like Russian These character sets allow you to view the messages correctly for the given language Chapter 1 About Email and Newsgroups Email Agent is an integrated email program and newsreader If you re unfamiliar about these functions here s a brief explanation The word email is the common techno term for electronic mail Email in the past few years has become an integral communication tool that rivals the telephone in many workplaces and homes Companies with computer networks often use some sort of email program that allows employees to communicate ideas and discuss topics with one or more cowo
208. tly copy or move messages To customize the folder flyout menus Select the Options Menus and Toolbars Folder Menus tab Menus and Toolbars xi Toolbars Folder Menus Folders Internet Service Records Administration Inbi _ Delete Marketing Info Miscellaneous New Ideas Technical News 179 Chapter 8 Under Folders you ll see all currently defined folders Select each folder that you want to add to the Folders flyout menu and press Add The folder will switch from the Folders list to the Menu list You can list up to nine folders on the Folders flyout menu To remove a folder from the menu simply select the desired folder in the Menu list and press Delete The folder is removed from the Menu list and reappears as a choice on the Folders list When you close the dialog box verify that your selections appear on the Folders menu e g on the Copy to Folder flyout Window Display By default Agent displays all three window panes upon startup Once you have used the program a few times you may want to customize the layout by rearranging the three panes Changing the Layout of the Panes Select Options Window Layout and the button bars below will display Window Layout Layout of Panes HCG EI Contents of Panes RISEGT The button bars on the Window Layout dialog box are described as follows e Layout of Panes These buttons show all of the available pane layouts Click a button to cho
209. ts 9 12 rec sport volleyball UCLA on Fox tec sport volleyball Re UCLA on Fox rec sport volleyball UCLA vs Arizona Spoilers within h gt rec sport volleyball UCLA vs Arizona State 9 20 97 4 View All Clear View Help Using this dialog you will execute the search in four easy steps 1 Tell Agent what to search for Search For enter the search expression in this entry box Global Search expressions are the same as Usenet and email filter expressions that is either word based expressions or regular expressions can be used e If you don t specify any fields in the expression Agent searches all fields and the message body e f you enter the field body Agent searches the formatted message body i e the text you see on the screen when Show Raw Message on the Message menu is not selected e f you enter the field raw body Agent searches the complete raw body of the message excluding headers Here s an example subject testing and body some regular expression Note Any field name you enter is legal as well as the special names Tam Sender any recipient body and raw body 99 100 Chapter 4 For body searching regular expressions are line based That is a regular expression search matches a line at a time and cannot search for text that spans multiple lines Word based searching spans multiple lines Note Lines refer to lines of text bounded by hard breaks
210. type of search if you only want to search say unread messages change the Browser window s message view to unread before searching and choose the Search in Visible messages only option on the Global Search dialog box If the search reveals too many messages change the search expression and do a Find All again using the displayed results of the last search Agent will re search only those messages selected by the previous search All About Messages Keeping Messages To read messages offline at your leisure Agent stores all groups and message data on your hard disk Inevitably your message databases will grow causing your hard disk free space to shrink For this reason Agent has a system to automatically purge remove messages after a certain period to make room for new messages You need not do anything to make this happen Agent is configured to purge messages for you at what is considered a prudent rate However you have the option to create your own purging strategies or to override purging to keep selected messages indefinitely The following topic Purging Strategies describes your options for telling Agent when and what to purge Purging Strategies You can specify exactly what messages to purge and when you want them purged on a routine basis eg purge all messages over 10 days old when exiting Agent Purging controls the messages that you keep in your message database Purging does not affect disk space usage Fo
211. ultiple groups folders from the Groups Folders pane then choose the desired method to sort all of them at once Using the mouse option you can sort by thread or size by clicking the leftmost column until Thread or Size appears in the column label Agent displays the most recent messages at the bottom of the Message List pane when sorted by date and the largest messages at the bottom when sorted by size To change the order of the date and size sorts 1 Select the Options General Preferences Message List tab shown below 2 Check the Date sorts descending and or Size sorts descending box You must re sort the group or folder after checking or unchecking these boxes for the changes to take effect Changing the Way Threads Display In addition to sorting your message headers you can fine tune the way the threads are viewed in the Message List pane To define how threads display 89 90 Chapter 4 Select the Options General Preferences Message List tab to see the following settings affecting how threads display General Preferences x MIME Types URLs URL Types Navigation Message List Languages Confirmations Newsre Threading IV Start a New thread when a follow up subject changes M Expand thread if necessary to highlight current body pane message Initial thread setting Collapse all threads When skipping to unread follow ups Expand active threads D Follow Up In
212. ure to work Alternatively make sure you have set the purge properties on the Group Properties What to Purge and When to Purge tabs so this message header remains as long as the thread will be active Managing Crosspostings Many Usenet enthusiasts post the same message to several newsgroups This practice known as crossposting is advantageous for the sender because a crossposting reaches a wider audience than a posting to a single group On the receiving end however crosspostings can be annoying When retrieving new headers you may find yourself re reading the same crossposted message in several of your subscribed groups Fortunately with Agent you can manage the crosspostings you retrieve and can prevent this problem from occurring 61 Chapter 4 To manage crossposted messages Open the Group Properties Crossposts tab Default Properties for All Groups x Mark Read What to Purge When to Purge Retrieve Filters Crossposts Post Send Files Receive Files Directory Language IV Enable crosspost checking If a message header has already been retrieved in one group perform the following action in all subsequent groups Retrieve the header normally Mark the header read Skip the header do not retrieve it I Look for crossposted messages only when retrieving NEW headers Uncheck this option to look whenever you retrieve headers Detect crossposted messages by Subject author date an
213. uttons Menu Dialog Tab for the sequence of mouse clicks necessary to display a dialog box fy Ge for tips reminders or cautions Chapter 1 In addition to the above conventions you ll also see alternative ways for invoking Agent s menu options such as the example below Toolbar button Menu option Message Watch Thread Keyboard shortcut W Note The browsers and dialog boxes shown in this User s Guide are from the Windows 95 version of Agent unless noted Organization Chapter 1 Welcome to Agent presents a brief overview of Agent s many features discusses the guide and tells you how to get help when you have questions about Agent Chapter 2 Getting Started steps you through the installation of Agent During this initial session you will retrieve all available newsgroups from your service provider sample message headers from groups and subscribe to those groups that interest you This chapter also describes checking for email for the first time Chapter 3 Agent Fundamentals introduces you to several key concepts about the way Agent is designed to work how information is displayed in Agent s three pane window environment how to navigate efficiently through these panes how you can define specific properties for newsgroups and how to work in online or offline mode Chapter 4 All About Messages shows you how to organize messages in folders how to retrieve and view only the messages you want to track
214. w Folder dialog box tells you that in order for Agent to receive email you must create an nbox folder You can name this something other than Inbox if you like When you press OK the nbox or other name folder is created and the Inbound Email dialog box displays 23 24 Chapter 2 Inbound Email System CheckingMal Ales Folder Kil Watch Receive email with POP POP Server mait hub ca forteinc com Login with a usemame and password TI Use APOP if supported by the server Username figoldbin V Remember password between sessions Password Login with Secure Password Authentication Receive email with SMTP F Uoadivinsock on startup Cancel Help On the System Profile tab complete the settings for the type of server you are using to receive email If you re not sure of these settings check with your ISP 1 Receive email with POP Select this option if you receive mail with a POP server Most users receive email using POP 2 POP server Enter the name of your POP server or its IP address Often this is the same name as the SMTP server 3 Login with a username and password Select this option if you require both a username and password to log in to your server 4 Use APOP if supported by the server Check this box to require Agent to use APOP Authenticated Post Office Protocol which may be required by some POP servers when logging in to the server Agent will use APOP if t
215. ween retries IV Go offline automatically after bm seconds of no activity Tl Send keep alive messages every bn seconds IV Enable priority message retrieval T Enable priority retrieval for Attachments I Load winsock on program startup and leave it loaded when offline Viewing Unretrieved Messages When Offline Go online and Retrieve the message s body C Mark the message for later retrieval C Do nothing If you want to operate primarily in offline mode press the button Use Offline Defaults This configures the rest of the dialog box settings for typical offline use If you want to operate primarily in online mode press the button Use Online Defaults This configures the rest of the dialog box settings for typical online use We ve taken great care to set the defaults correctly so that you don t ever have to worry about any of this but you may change the settings to suit your particular needs Agent Fundamentals Below are descriptions of the four key options in this dialog box that affect how Agent performs offline and online Note Refer to Agent s online Help for the options not listed in the table Choose this option to have Agent do this Select this option if you want Agent to automatically disconnect from your news server after the specified number of seconds of inactivity If you deselect this option Agent will not disconnect from your news server until you Go offline automatically close the progra
216. window To open these windows use the Window menu By default Agent will open only one of each type of window Selecting the appropriate window from the Window menu activates the current window if it has already been opened Agent Fundamentals Holding Shift while selecting the window to open will open a new window To switch between open windows you can use the Window menu and select from the list of open windows or you can enter Ctrl Tab to cycle through the open windows Navigating in Agent Agent provides you with a rich set of tools for moving between newsgroups folders and messages These tools can be accessed from the Navigate menu the toolbar or the keyboard Although you probably won t use all the available options this section will make you familiar with them so that you can choose which navigation techniques best suit you Moving Between Panes As you saw in the previous section Agent is composed of three panes the Groups pane the Message List pane and the Message pane You can view all three panes at the same time or to maximize the information you see on the screen Zoom the current pane in focus to fill Agent s Browser window To zoom maximize a pane Use any of the following options Pane icon ol Windows 95 E Windows 3 1 Menu option Navigate Zoom Window Keyboard Shortcut Z To return to three pane mode after zooming a pane Use any of the following options Pane icon E Windows 95 D Windows 3 1

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News & Mail Reader User's Guide