1616161616 1616161616 1616161616 1616161616 1616 1616 1616 1616161616 1616 1616 1616 161616161616 16161616 1616161616 16161616 161616161616 16161616 1616 1616 1616 16161616 1616 1616 1616 1616 1616 1616 1616 1616 1616 1616 1616 1616161616 1616 1616161616 1616161616 1616 1616 1616161616 1616 1616161616 1616161616 1616 1616 No 16 %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% INDEPENDANT NEWSLETTER PRODUCED AT HELSINKI UNIVERSITY, FINLAND << EDITED BY ROBERT HARPER >> %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% 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@NODE | Listserv sends the % %<-----------> User2@NODE | same message to % LISTSERV %<-----------> User3@NODE | five different people % %<-----------> User4@NODE | at the same NODE. % %<-----------> User5@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@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@NODE % % % %<-------> User2@NODE % LISTSERV %<--->% NEWSREADER %<-------> User3@NODE % % % %<-------> User4@NODE % % % %<-------> User5@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... an besides the individual no longer need 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. 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 on 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 and the first thing to do is to REGISTER in those newsgroups that you want to read... that is filter out all the newsgroups that you are not interested in. 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. Now you can do a DIR/REG 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. 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 -- 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 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. 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 look at 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: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.