How do I post news?

If you wish to respond to a news article that you are reading in rn, you have two options: you can reply to the user who submitted the article you just read, or you can follow up on that article with one of your own. If you respond to the "end of article" message with r, rn will let you type in a message, which will be sent by email to the person who posted the article. If you respond with f, rn will post your message to the newsgroup itself instead of the person who wrote the article. If you want to include part of the message you are responding to in your own message, type a capital R or F instead of a lower-case letter.

You may also respond with f to post an original article to news.

example

End of article 22 (of 24)--what next? [npq]f

Are you starting an unrelated topic? [yn]y

Subject: Labs closed this weekend
Distribution: cis.general

(leaving cbreak mode; cwd=/n/reptile/0/tech-docs/CID/xmosaic-1.0-src/src)
Invoking command: Pnews -h /n/music/0/white/.rnhead


This program posts news to machines throughout the local organization.
Are you absolutely sure that you want to do this? [ny]

If you respond y at this point, your editor will be invoked and you can compose your message.

An alternative way to post an original article to News which does not require the use of rn is using the Pnews program. When you enter the Pnews command, you will be asked to enter the name of the newsgroup(s) to which you wish to post, the subject of your article, and the distribution for your article.

Be sure to read about USENET etiquette before posting!!!

Last Update: 1/11/94 JGW