Properties overview
1. Select Edit...Properties or click the icon on the toolbar
2. Click on the General tab and change all settings to match (PropertiesGeneral.psd)
Explanation of all options
Saving attachments
- Ask for delete - NewsPro will ask you before deleting downloaded attachments from article bodies
- Mark read - After an article is downloaded, NewsPro will mark it as read
- Delete headers - Deletes the header from the spool since its been downloaded and its attachments saved (saves disk space)
- Delete bodies - Deletes the body from the spool since its been downloaded and it been saved (saves disk space)
- Log - Logs all downloads to a file which you can then use my program on to manage (insert URL here)
- Delete bodies when deleting headers - Just what it says. No need for body when header is gone
- Mark read on deleting bodies - Marks header as read if you delete the articles body
- Detach groups when absent from server - Removes groups from a server if they don't exist on it. This will keep bogus newsgroups from being in your newsgroup list
- Ask before deleting all headers - Prompts you for confirmation before a potentially bad decision
- Remove multiple spaces from subject & author - Cleans up subject and author text so its easier to read
- Ignore suppress headers for search groups- When using XPat searches, look at all headers for a match
- Get new headers after rescan - Rescanning is double checking with a server about its article count (verifies the current header range). A server may delete or add (adding is less likely) headers in the middle of its spool. This option lets you do this and get new headers after rescanning a group.
- Reset groups on server error - If an error occurs when downloading stuff from a server, restore groups to state previous to update
- Reset new headers on restart - mark all headers in all Newsgroups as read when NewsPro is restarted
- Derive save names from headers - Attempt to use headers to generate file names when saving
- Force server authentication - just what it says
- Resolve DNS on every connect - Look up server IP from name on every connect. Probably slows things down
- Ignore priorities on maxed servers - With this option checked priorities will be ignored if a server reaches its limit and the article needed from it are available elsewhere
- Check for aliases - Check server names to see if they resolve to the same IP.
- Detect yEnc errors - Check for encoding errors when downloading article bodies
- strict - Be more strict when detecting? Not too sure
- Mouse wheel scrolls page at a time - Moves header list up or down a page on a mouse wheel 'roll'. Uncheck to scroll a few lines at a time
- Show exact num of lines in partials - Show exact vs estimated lines in a partial message
- Clear temp dir periodically - Just what it says
- Compact article storage - Saves hard drive space by compressing storage of articles. Unchecking this may make things faster
- Error log - Writes all errors to a file located under your NewsPro installation directory
- Upload stack trace - Sends author the NewsPro stack trace when the error occurred
- Bugs - Click to report a bug
- Check for updates - Query for new versions of NewsPro on startup
- Database backup - Makes a copy of your database before initiating a new session. USE THIS!
- Show folders - Not sure what this one does
- Keep alive - Pings servers to keep connection open so NewsPro wont have to reconnect
- Docking style - Makes windows dock inside NewsPro main window
- Exit prompt - ask for confirmation before exiting NewsPro
Timeout(sec)
- Read - Allows for a longer wait time when reading data from a server before a timeout/read error occurs
- Write - Allows for a longer wait time when writing data to a server before a timeout/write error occurs
- Read (XPat) - THE VALUE HERE IS 2400! XPat can take a while to return results, so we have a much longer read timeout value
- Close socket (linger) - How long to wait before a socket is closed. Just leave this one alone.
- Deleted/Read Track after leaving groups - Not sure what this one does
- Low space suspend - Suspend activity when this threshold is reached
- Fixed hdr.dat size - See web page for explanation. I wouldn’t worry about it if you have lots (1 GB+ of memory)
- Fixed del.dat size - See 'Fixed hdr.dat size'
- Saving mode General - Auto lets NewsPro determine file names vs asking you for them
- Saving mode Overwrite - Determines what happens when a file is being saved and it already exists on disk
- Autosave per - Interval to run AutoSave at. As bodies are downloaded, NewsPro will check for completed ones and save them
- Recoverable errors - Set to "too*many|license*expired|connection*limit|411|key" (no quotes) This will let NewsPro know what server
errors it can recover from. This differs from an 'Exceeding download limit' message in that NewsPro will try the task again on
a recoverable error, but will temporarily disable a server on a 'Exceeding download limit' message. In other words, tasks should
be retried and not aborted immediately. * means 'and', | means 'or'
- Exceeding download limit - Any errors that match this pattern will result in the server that threw the error to be disabled for the
amount of time in the 'Suspend server for' box. This can be used to temporarily stop using a server when you have exceeded your
download limits. * means 'and', | means 'or'
- Suspend server for - Duration to wait before trying a server again when an error occurs.
- Warning msg box - Pops up a dialog about the suspended server warning. More trouble than its worth
3. Click on the Tasks tab and change all settings to match
Explanation of all options
Maximal number of tasks
- Regular
- Total - Max # of tasks to run at once
- Easy tasks - Sets max # of each type of easy task
- Hard tasks - Sets max # of each type of hard task
- Public server tests - Not sure what this one does
- Retry failed articles every - sets duration to wait before retrying to get an article that has previously failed
- Bandwidth
- Limit to - Set max download bandwidth usage. Set this to a few dozen K below your cap so your connection is still usable when NewsPro is doing stuff
- Limit upload to - Save as 'Limit to', but for upload bandwidth
- Pause button pressed - Allows you to lessen or stop bandwidth usage. Set as you feel is warranted in your situation
- Relative change to run - Percentages that tasks will run. This is a way to prioritize what NewsPro does. Tailor to your UseNet usage
- Article tasks - Set priorities on NewsPro downloads. Higher #s will get higher priorities
- Hard tasks - Similar to 'Bandwidth' settings. Change as needed
- Current mark for download priority on program start - If you have tasks with a priority at or greater than this, they will be processed when NewsPro starts
- Save task list - Saves task list in case you need to restart NewsPro
- with failed - Save any failed tasks so you can try again later
- Below normal priority for network threads - If you run other programs that degrade NewsPro network performance (e.g. some games), you can uncheck the box and subsequent NewsPro network threads will be run at normal priority
4. Click on the Newsgroups tab and change all settings to match
Explanation of all options
- Last headers per server - How many headers to get when getting headers for a new group
- Retention - How long to keep headers locally. 'Natural' means expire when they are gone from server
- the rest - What to do with the ones that aren't dealt with via Retention setting
- Sort by - How to sort the headers when you open a group. 'Persist' remember the last sort order
- Threads - Show article threads within a tree structure
- Partial - Show partial posts or not
- Purge deleted headers - What to do with headers that have been deleted. Purging removes them from the local spool
- Set - Makes your changes to the above settings the default.
- Save - The default path to save attachments to
- Browse - Show directory list so you can choose a save directory
- Default - Make selected directory the default save directory
- Copy - Copies save directory to clipboard
- Paste - Pastes save directory from clipboard to 'Save'
- Ask - If checked, NewsPro will ask for the save path every time
Once you have these options set, any groups you add will use these settings, to override on a per group basis, select the group or folder and set different options. For instance, you may want to save MP3s to D:\MP3 and juarez to D:\Juarez, etc
5. Click on the Servers tab and change all settings to match (PropertiesServers.psd)
Explanation of all options. Set New server options before adding any servers
- Max tasks - Limits max # of tasks to run against a server. Newsfeeds max is 3 per server
- Retries - How many times to retry a task before failing it.
- Connect delay - How long to wait to connect to a server. Newsfeeds complains if you try too many times in 4 seconds
- Enabled Priority - Priority controls the order servers will be used when tasks are running. 1 is the lowest and 128 is the highest. The idea behind prioritizing is that you want the highest numbered servers to be used first and the least numbered to be used last
- Strict - With this option checked for a server, no lower priority servers will ever be used if articles queued up are available on this higher priority server.
- Port - the port to connect to. Some providers offer different ports as well.
- Force retention - The servers retention header retention policy. Again, 'Natural' retention will keep things around until they aren't on a server anymore
- On MsgID Direct - Enables NewsPro to download articles via message ID from this server. You can use this to download headers from a good server with high completion, but bandwidth limits. Then you can hit higher quota servers for downloads by using the msgID. Check both boxes to use, just the top one otherwise
- On Suppress get headers - when enabled, don't download headers for this server. Often used in conjunction with 'On MsgID Direct'. Check both boxes to use, just the top one otherwise
- User - Your username for the news server
- Pass - Your password
- New server - Same as above options, but these are used for each new server you add. Set these first
Click here and here for more info
6. Click on the Post tab and change all settings to match (PropertiesPost.psd)
Explanation of all options
- Encoding attachments - The method to use when encoding post attachments
- Filenames in quotes - Add quotes around file names when posting
- Append yEnc - Adds yEnc to end of subject to denote a yEnc'ed post
- Split large messages - Set sizes to split large posts into mulitpost articles
- Word wrap - What postilion to wrap lines to a new line
- Headers - Set different options used by news servers
- Identity - What settings to use when posting. Not too sure on this one
- Posting server - What server to use when posting articles. Newsfeeds has an anonymous server
Click here for more info
7. Kill filters tab
I don't use this, so its hard to say what it does! Click here for more info
8. For the Watch/Auto and Scheduler tabs, see http://www.netwu.com/newspro/automation.htm
If I ever use these, I will update this to reflect it
9. For the Articles and proxies tabs, leave all settings at default
See v3.1.4 notes here for more proxy info
Now that all our properties are set, its time to start using NewsPro! Lets start by adding some news servers!
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