PNEWS(1)

💌 PNEWS — the PNEWS(1) glow-up ✨

okay bestie, welcome to the General Commands Manual entry for Pnews, and honestly? she's a whole vibe. let's get into it 🫶

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✨ NAME ✨

Pnews — a program for posting news articles 💅 (yes, that's it, that's the whole job, and she does it cute)

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🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

Pnews newsgroup title

or, plot twist:

Pnews -h headerfile [oldarticle]

or, third option, the main character entrance:

Pnews

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🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

so Pnews is basically the friendly interface for posting news articles — like, it holds your hand through the whole thing. it asks you a bunch of questions, then lets you write your article, then posts it for you using the inews(1) program. easy peasy. 🎀

and here's the little secret: if you type h and hit carriage return at literally any point, Pnews will tell you what it wants to know. she's not mysterious, she's just waiting for you to ask. 🙈

okay now the signature lore, listen up:

• if you drop a .signature file in your home directory, your inews program will usually append it to your message after you're done editing. so you don't even see it while you type — it just appears at the end. surprise! 💖
• if you'd rather see your signature while you're editing, rename your .signature file to .news_sig and it'll get appended before you begin to edit. slay.
• ⚠️ important tea: .news_sig obeys the setting of DOTDIR, but .signature may not, because that one is out of Pnews's control. not her fault, she doesn't run that. 😭
• and if both .news_sig and .signature exist? bestie you're getting two signatures appended. two. i don't make the rules. 💀

now, the -h form — that one's for when you get invoked from trn or rn. if your editor can edit multiple files, and you want the article you're replying to to show up as an alternate file, define the environment variable NEWSPOSTER as:

Pnews -h %h %A

you can also modify the NEWSHEADER environment variable to change the header file that [t]rn passes to Pnews. iykyk ✨

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💅 ENVIRONMENT 💅

the environment variables, aka the settings that run her world:

• AUTHORCOPY — if defined, this contains the name of a file to which the finished article will be appended.
  • Default: article not saved. (so if you don't set it, it's gone, bye 👋)
• DOTDIR — where to find your dot files, if they aren't in your home directory. this is primarily for accounts which are shared by more than one person.
  • Default: $HOME
• EDITOR — the editor you want to use, if VISUAL is undefined.
  • Default: whatever your news administrator installed, usually vi.
• HOME — your home directory.
  • Default: $LOGDIR
• LOGDIR — your home directory if HOME is undefined.
• LOGNAME — your login name, if USER is undefined.
  • Default: value of whoami.
• NAME — your full name.
  • Default: name from /etc/passwd, or ~/.fullname.
• NEWSORG — either the name of your organization, or the name of a file containing the name of your organization. (for use at organizations where the ORGANIZATION environmental variable is in use for other purposes). if both NEWSORG and ORGANIZATION are set, NEWSORG will override ORGANIZATION. periodt.
• ORGANIZATION — either the name of your organization, or the name of a file containing the name of your organization.
  • Default: whatever your news administrator chose.
• REPLYTO — the contents of a "Reply-To:" header line to insert into your message.
  • Default: header line not inserted.
• USER — your login name.
  • Default: $LOGNAME
• VISUAL — the editor you want to use.
  • Default: $EDITOR

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🍓 FILES 🍓

the girlies she keeps tabs on:

• $DOTDIR/.article
• $DOTDIR/.news_sig
• ~/dead.article

(yeah, dead.article. spooky. 💀✨)

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👑 SEE ALSO 👑

go read these too, they're the friend group:

• trn(1)
• rn(1)
• Rnmail(1)
• inews(1)

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😭 DIAGNOSTICS 😭

literally nothing here bestie. the section exists. it's giving silence. 🌈✨

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💀 BUGS 💀

not the speediest program in the world… but maybe that's a blessing to the net. 🧚

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and that's the whole page, no cap 💜 — this was the LOCAL build, PNEWS(1), signing off like the icon she is. take care of her, she's trying her best 🎀💖