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Guerri Stevens
December 14th, 2009, 03:35 PM
I am totally clueless about these. I want to join one of the Corel groups so I looked at their website. They have instructions for setting things up using Outlook Express, but I don't use that, I use Thunderbird. So I looked up the instructions on the Thunderbird site.

Confusion #1: I thought I could have newsgroup messages go to a Google mail account, but I now think that is not possible. On the other hand, does Thunderbird simply act as a "reader" for messages in the group, downloading them and Emailing them to the Gmail address I provided?

Anyway, I went through the process described by Thunderbird and I see the newsgroup listed. I right click and then click on "subscribe". I get a dialog with the Account at the top, then a box labelled "show items that contain" but the box is empty. There is "please wait" at the bottom, and it appears to be doing something, but what???? Am I supposed to put something in that box? If so, why doesn't it ask for that first, then start searching or whatever it is that I am "please waiting" for?

At any rate, I don't know what Tbird is doing or how long it might take, so I have stopped it for the time being.

Peter Creasey
December 14th, 2009, 07:09 PM
I don't know what Tbird is doing

Guerri, Various ISPs, including mine, are no longer providing access to Newsgroups so your problem might be with your ISP rather than with ThunderBird.

If you have a gmail account, newsgroups are available via that source.

Mike
December 15th, 2009, 04:04 AM
Guerri, Various ISPs, including mine, are no longer providing access to Newsgroups so your problem might be with your ISP rather than with ThunderBird.
Nope, nope, nope.

Many ISPs no longer have newsservers. In other words, many ISPs do not store the news articles for people to read and process.

However, ISPs are not blocking access to newsservers hosted elsewhere, such as those hosted by software companies.

Mike
December 15th, 2009, 04:11 AM
I thought I could have newsgroup messages go to a Google mail account, but I now think that is not possible. On the other hand, does Thunderbird simply act as a "reader" for messages in the group, downloading them and Emailing them to the Gmail address I provided?
News articles are not sent to a mailbox. They are a separate set of messages, processed differently by Thunderbird. Actually, there is a lot of similarity between news articles and the old forum messages we used to read using Tapcis!

Where are the Corel groups described? To be able to answer your questions, I need to test it myself. It has been a long time since I used T-bird to retrieve news articles, so I need to refresh myself before trying to answer your questions.

Also, can you list all the steps you took up to the point where you got the "dialog with with the Account at the top"?

Guerri Stevens
December 15th, 2009, 09:10 AM
Where are the Corel groups described?...

Also, can you list all the steps you took up to the point where you got the "dialog with with the Account at the top"?

Here's where I found the newsgroups:
http://corel.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/corel.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=754345

I got there from the corel site which I think is www.corel.com, then on the Resources tab, clicking the Newsgroups button. The group I'm interested in is WordPerfect X3.

Now, listing the steps I took: I am not exactly sure what I did, but here's what I think I did (this is in Thunderbird, and I don't have the latest release which may matter).

Tools menu, choose Account Settings
Choose Add Account
Click Newsgroup Account
I entered my name and the Gmail address to which I wanted newsgroup messages sent. Note: that particular Gmail address has not be set up within Tbird.

I entered the newsgroup server, but it is possible that was wrong. I put in what I thought was the address of the WP X3 group: cnews.corel.com/corel.WordPerfectX3 and maybe it should have been just cnews.corel.com

Back in the main window, I clicked the newsgroup account, and then Manage Newsgroup Subscriptions. Tried that just now and got "Failed to connect to server cnews.corel.com/corel.WordPerfectX3. I didn't see that yesterday and I don't think it's the kind of message that goes away if you don't click on OK. So that is new behavior.

If I click on OK now, I get a dialog with the title Subscribe. In it is a box with the newsgroup account name I set up. This is a drop-down list, but that's the only account in it. Then there is a box labelled "Show items that contain". Underneath there is a big box labelled "Select the newsgroups to subscribe to" which presumably will be filled in when Tbird finds them. There are four buttons on the right of that large box: Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Refresh, and Stop; Stop is grayed out at the moment. At the bottom, there are two buttons: OK and Cancel.

Just now I typed in "WordPerfect X3" in the "Show items that contain" box. I wasn't sure what to do next, so I clicked Refresh and got the "failed to connect" again. I can experiment further, this time using cnews.corel.com as the server name, but I am out of time at the moment. In the meantime, I'll just post my WP question here; maybe someone will know the answer. I still have to learn how to use the newsgroup for the future, though.

sidney
December 15th, 2009, 09:28 PM
I entered my name and the Gmail address to which I wanted newsgroup messages sent

That's a misunderstanding - A newsgroup is just like a forum. All messages are posted in the newsgroup. Thunderbird just gives you a way of reading and posting to the newsgroup. When you configure a newsgroup "account" in Thunderbird, you will see the newsgroup posts in a similar format to the way Thunderbird displays mail. Each newsgroup, such as corel.wordperfectx3, will appear on the side like a mailbox folder. When you click on it you will see a list of news posts sumarized in the upper right pane, and can read individual posts in the lower right pane.

The reason that it asks you to enter an email address in the settings is that when you post a message to the newsgroup it will contain a From header with the name and email address you configured. That is the only use for that setting.

I entered the newsgroup server, but it is possible that was wrong.
That is wrong, which explains why you had the difficulties getting the list of newsgoups to subscribe to. The news server is cnews.corel.com

The newsgroup is corel.WordPerfectX3 (or more likely corel.wordperfectx3). You don't see that until you get the list of newsgroups to subscribe to.

It should be fairly straightforward once you get those settings correct.

Guerri Stevens
December 16th, 2009, 04:42 AM
...The reason that it asks you to enter an email address in the settings is that when you post a message to the newsgroup it will contain a From header with the name and email address you configured. That is the only use for that setting.So what is the point of an Email address at all? Does it just give members of the newsgroup the ability to reply privately to me by Email?

The news server is cnews.corel.com.I changed the news server to cnews.corel.com. I then tried to "manage newsgroup subscriptions". There was nothing in the "show items that contain" box and the "please wait" was displayed. After a bit I got "cnews.corel.com timed out" or words to that effect. I then put "wordperfect" in the show items box and clicked refresh, but the "wordperfect" immediately disappeared and the thing timed out again.

sidney
December 16th, 2009, 02:03 PM
So what is the point of an Email address at all? Does it just give members of the newsgroup the ability to reply privately to me by Email?

Yes. If you don't want to be contacted by them via email and don't want your email address is the public view for possible harvesting by spammers then enter an obviously fake email address that is certain not to go to some happless person's inbox, e.g. nospam@example.com (because the domain name "example.com" is reserved for examples and guaranteed not to go to any real site).

I changed the news server to cnews.corel.com.

I just tried that and when I went to "manage newsgroup subscriptions" the dialog immediately got the list of corel newsgroups, almost no time spent in "please wait". Go to Server Settings in the properties dialog for the account and make sure that you have not checked the box for "use secure connection (SSL)" in the settings for the cnews.corel.com server. I just tried connecting with that setting and the server does not support SSL, producing the "timed out" message that you saw. There is no need for SSL in your case because you are not logging in with a name and password.

If it still times out with SSL disabled, it may be that your ISP blocks unencrypted newsgroup connections.

Guerri Stevens
December 16th, 2009, 06:46 PM
I just tried that and when I went to "manage newsgroup subscriptions" the dialog immediately got the list of corel newsgroups, almost no time spent in "please wait". Go to Server Settings in the properties dialog for the account and make sure that you have not checked the box for "use secure connection (SSL)" in the settings for the cnews.corel.com server.I did have SSL selected. I thought the instructions I'd downloaded said to do that, but in rereading them, I noticed that they'd said do NOT select SSL. All I can say is that I printed out the instructions and the font is not intended for people with adult eyesight.

I got the list of groups and I subscribed. Then I somehow got it to download some "headers". Now how do I get rid of them? I select them, but instead of an option to "delete" there is "cancel". Does it retrieve on the fly? I.e. you click on the header and it grabs the messages?

Will it automatically collect headers when I go online for my regular mail?

How do I write a message to the group? I guess I can experiment with that.

sidney
December 16th, 2009, 11:25 PM
Then I somehow got it to download some "headers". Now how do I get rid of them? I select them, but instead of an option to "delete" there is "cancel". Does it retrieve on the fly? I.e. you click on the header and it grabs the messages?

Yes, in general everything stays on the server and it downloads messages when you read them. There is an option in the View menu as to whether you have it display the headers of messages you read already, or hide them. There is also an option to display the headers in threaded or linear mode.

Will it automatically collect headers when I go online for my regular mail?

You choose whether to do that in the Server Settings of the account properties dialog, where there is an option to check for new messages at startup (when you start Thunderbird) and whether to check every so many minutes. If neither of those are set it will check for new messages when you click on the newsgroup in the left pane.

How do I write a message to the group? I guess I can experiment with that.

If you click the Reply button in the toolbar or use the usual reply key (I think that's ctrl-r in Windows? I use a Mac which has slightly different keys) then you will compose a reply as a post to the newsgroup.

If while you have the newsgroup or a message in it selected you click on the Write button or use the Message | New message menu, it will let you compose and post a message to the newsgroup.

The important thing to look for is that in your compose window the destination address says "Newsgroup: corel.wordperfect3" or whatever newsgroup you are using instead of the "To: some-email-address@example.com" that you usually see when composing an email.

Guerri Stevens
December 17th, 2009, 06:15 AM
There is an option in the View menu as to whether you have it display the headers of messages you read already, or hide them. There is also an option to display the headers in threaded or linear mode.I don't think the view menu applies individually to the various folders. And I didn't see any option to not display messages already read, although you can choose not to show read FOLDERS.

What I found in the Account settings, though, was the Offline and Disk Space settings. It has an option to delete messages more than a given number of days old, so I set that to 15 days. Messages appear to be deleted when you exit from Thunderbird. I don't think they are really "deleted" because they aren't really there in the first place; but I don't see them listed any more. There is also an "offline" option that will download messages so that you can read them when you are offline. So I need to experiment a bit with this stuff and figure out what will work best for me.

If you click the Reply button in the toolbar or use the usual reply key (I think that's ctrl-r in Windows? I use a Mac which has slightly different keys) then you will compose a reply as a post to the newsgroup.
Yes, Ctrl+R is the shortcut for Reply in Windows and it will reply to the group. You can also right click on the message header; the drop-down list allows you to reply to the group or reply to the individual, among other things. I assume that the reply to individual would send an Email, as we discussed earlier in this thread.

Thanks for your help! I think I have this working now, and will tinker with it a bit.

sidney
December 17th, 2009, 11:35 AM
I didn't see any option to not display messages already read, although you can choose not to show read FOLDERS

I had forgotten exactly where it was... The choices are under View | Threads when you have a single newsgroup selected in the left pane, and are similar to the choice for All or Unread for folders in View | Folders.