BioBit No 16 (ANU NEWS)
ROBERT HARPER, FINLAND
HARPER at finuh.bitnet
Mon Mar 26 06:54:00 EST 1990
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No 16
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INDEPENDANT NEWSLETTER PRODUCED AT HELSINKI UNIVERSITY, FINLAND
<< EDITED BY ROBERT HARPER >>
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Whenever anybody subscribes to the BIOSCI lists at IRLEARN I get
some notification that a new member has joined. It often happens
that this new user will then pass on the good news to other
people at his computer center and then LISTSERV gets more
subscriptions from the same NODE.
To illustrate this graphically:
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
% %<-----------> User1 at NODE | Listserv sends the
% %<-----------> User2 at NODE | same message to
% LISTSERV %<-----------> User3 at NODE | five different people
% %<-----------> User4 at NODE | at the same NODE.
% %<-----------> User5 at NODE |
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
Each individual receives the message in their PERSONAL mail box.
They have to maintain their mailbox... deleting old messages...
sometimes their disk quota becomes full and when this happens
messages get bounced back to the LISTSERV, and then it is the
duty of the moderator of the lists to remove the offending
USER at NODE from the distribution lists.
Recently however I have been seeing new types of subscriptions to
LISTSERV namely from NEWSREADERS on BITNET/EARN.
To illustrate this graphically:
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %%%%%%%%%%%%%%
% % % %<-------> User1 at NODE
% % % %<-------> User2 at NODE
% LISTSERV %<--->% NEWSREADER %<-------> User3 at NODE
% % % %<-------> User4 at NODE
% % % %<-------> User5 at NODE
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %%%%%%%%%%%%%%
With this situation LISTSERV only sends ONE message to the
NEWSREADER, and the local users use the NEWSREADER software to
keep track of what is going on in the BIOSCI lists. This would
seem to be a more economic use of network bandwidth... and besides
the individual no longer needs to worry about their disk quota
since the newsreader has its own diskspace allocated for the
collection of messages, and automatic expiry dates can be set so
that old message just simply disappear over the blue event
horizon and cause nobody any more trouble.
The LISTSERV/NEWSREADER option is only one way of economically
handling the distribution of messages to different NODES on
BITNET/EARN. The USENET option is another way. Basically the
principal is the same... messages are delivered to NEWSREADING
programmes rather than to individual POSTBOXES... this would seem
to be the most sensible way to proceed when it comes to the
distribution of messages.
Recently Don Gilbert has written in BIOSOFT about VNEWS and ANU
NEWS and where to get the source codes for these NEWSREADERS. He
dealt with the technical side of how to install these programmes.
In this addition of BioBit I will look at the "visual" side of
ANU NEWS and briefly look at some "cosmetic" details.
Basically ANU NEWS through a NNTP feed provides a means of
reading NEWSGROUPS from USENET, The main newsgroups that are of
interest to life scientists are the BIONET newsgroups.
At the moment there are 21 BIONET newsgroups. Now USENET has
about 700-800 different newsgroups, so the first thing to do is
to be selective about what you want to read. You can filter off
all the newsgroups that you are not interested in and REGISTER in
those newsgroups that you want to read.
So with ANU NEWS first of all a DIR/ALL will give you a list of
all the USENET newsgroups that are available. With the cursor you
then move to the BIONET newsgroups that you want to read and
write REGISTER... that newsgroup will then become HIGHLIGHTED.
Proceed in this way until you have registered in all the
newsgroups that you want to read. ANU NEWS will now remember that
these are the special newsgroups that you have chosen and the
next time you login to ANU NEWS it will only present you with the
newsgroups that you have registered yourself in.
You can observe this in action if you write DIR/REG at the NEWS>
prompt, and instead of getting the complete list of ALL the
newsgroups you only get the ones you are interested in. ANU NEWS
allows you to be selective about what newsgroups you want to
read, and thus saves you alot of time hunting through loads of
messages to find the articles that you are interested in.
The third option is DIR/NEW which will show you if any NEW
messages have come into the newsgroups that you have REGISTERED
in.
Here is a DIR/NEW from inside ANU NEWS. You are told the
newsgroup name, the number of entries recently made in the
newsgroup, and the number of unread entries. At a glance you can
see which of the newsgroups are the most active.
This example is from the BIONET newsgroups.
NEWSGROUPS NEW, 35 Newsgroups
Newsgroup Count Unread
1 bionet.general 34 7
2 bionet.jobs 11 6
3 bionet.journals.contents 6 4
4 bionet.molbio.embldatabank 3 2
5 bionet.molbio.evolution 4 4
6 bionet.molbio.genbank 14 6
-->7 bionet.molbio.genome-program 29 2
8 bionet.molbio.methds-reagnts 19 16
9 bionet.molbio.proteins 2 2
10 bionet.population-bio 7 7
11 bionet.sci-resources 6 6
12 bionet.software 23 16
To read the entries in a specific newsgroup you just "point and
shoot" with the cursor. The newsgroup then "opens up" and you get
a listing of the messages within the newsgroup giving you the
title and the number of lines in the message, as well as the date
when the message was written.
This is an example from the Human Genome Newsgroup.
bionet.molbio.genome-program: 29 Items (#18 - #46) Reg:1 Prot:RW
-<Discussion of Human Genome Project issues.>-
Title Lines Date
29 Important announcement 87 16-Mar-90
30 What we need is roadmaps... not more roads. 56 16-Mar-90
31 Re: JITF Information Dissemination 38 16-Mar-90
32 Re: JITF information on Bionet 41 17-Mar-90
33 Re: JITF information on Bionet 24 18-Mar-90
34 Re: JITF information on Bionet 59 18-Mar-90
35 USENet and GenBank Updates 87 18-Mar-90
36 Re: JITF information on Bionet 84 20-Mar-90
37 Re: USENet and GenBank Updates 117 20-Mar-90
38 Re: local copies of genbank 50 20-Mar-90
39 Re: local copies of genbank 68 20-Mar-90
40 local copies of genbank 78 21-Mar-90
41 Central vrs Local databases 70 21-Mar-90
42 Re: bionet/biosci popularity 19 21-Mar-90
43 Re: bionet/biosci popularity 16 21-Mar-90
44 GenBank, FASTA, life and the universe. 46 23-Mar-90
45 Re: GenBank and FASTA 61 23-Mar-90
-> 46 COMPUTATIONAL GENETICS ISSUES 141 24-Mar-90
Now the beauty of ANU NEWS is that it gives you three
possibilities of entering a message.
When you want to write a completely NEW message into a newsgroup
then you use the command POST. The VAX then kicks you into the
EVE editor and you write your message and then send it off.
When you want to reply to an already existing message then you
use the FOLLOWUP command. This will put the old message into your
EVE editor and put those arrows down the left hand margin so you
can refer to it when you are making your comments. When you send
the message off it goes into the newsgroup so that everyone can
read it.
And thirdly if you do a REPLY to a message then the reply will be
sent PRIVATELY and PERSONALLY to the original poster and will not
appear in the newsgroup at all.
In addition there are the usual VAX MAIL commands which allows
you to EXTRACT messages to a FILE or FORWARD messages to another
user. ANU NEWS is also set up so that when you give the command
OPEN MAIL you can use the newsreader for looking at your MAIL
folders, since they appear as separate newsgroups.
I find this a very useful interface for handling personal mail.
Here is what the mail interface looks like inside ANU NEWS, after
giving the command OPEN MAIL. (Hmmmm... when is BIONAUTS going to
be ready? ED)
Newsgroup Count Unread
-> 1 harper.mail.bionauts 69 0
2 harper.mail.canada 14 0
3 harper.mail.finland 16 0
4 harper.mail.japan 4 0
5 harper.mail.laser 4 0
6 harper.mail.mail 60 0
7 harper.mail.swiss 6 0
8 harper.mail.uk 17 0
9 harper.mail.usa 29 0
On the "cosmetic" side ANU NEWS allows you to set up personal
headers and signatures. For example I can change my mail header
so that the organization is Rob "BioBit" Harper, and set the
PROFILE so that a signature will be appended to the end of every
text that I write. You alter your NEWS PROFILE with the command
SET PROFILE and to see what it is like, you use the command SHOW
PROFILE. My present profile is:
NEWS PROFILE for user: harper
Default Editor: Call EVE/SECTION=WPU_LIBRARY:WPU
Signature file: HAMBI_DISK:<HARPER>TAIL.TXT
Profile Personal Name: Rob 'BioBit' Harper
This calls up the WPU version of EVE which is an editor that
allows you to put in right justification on your text, always
appends the file TAIL.TXT (a signature to the bottom of any
message you write from ANU NEWS) and gives your mail messages a
"personal name". Just cosmetics... but nice all the same.
Well that is a short visual peek into ANU NEWS. The next question
to be asked is where is it available from? Don Gilbert has it on
his server at iubio.bio.indiana.edu and it is also available from
kuhub.cc.ukans.edu via FTP. When I checked these sources out it
was revealed that ANU NEWS is rather a large programme so if you
are ordering it make sure you have enough disk space to receive
it.
To quote Don Gilbert:
> The ANU-News software, with C source and executables, can obtained by
> anonymous ftp to kuhub.cc.ukans.edu or to iubio.bio.indiana.edu, in
> directory archive.util.vms.netnews as anunews*.*. These files are
> compressed, backup sets. You will need lzdcmp.exe to decompress these,
> as from archive.util.vms.
One final word of information is that on USENET there is a
newsgroup called news.software.anu-news which specifically deals
with ANU NEWS, and if you have any questions regarding the
installation or running of the programme there are a host of
knowledgeable people who are willing to share their experiences
with you.
*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*
* Robert Harper * Internet: HARPER at CC.HELSINKI.FI *
-=ROB=- * Helsinki University * Earn/Bitnet HARPER at FINUHA.BITNET *
* Finland * Tel:358-0-7085300 *
*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*
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