              NEWSwatch v1.00 (c)1997 Gary A. Priest
              --------------------------------------

Welcome to NEWSwatch for the Atari ST/STE/TT/Falcon and compatibles.

NEWSwatch enables the sending and receiving of Usenet news articles 
from Oasis1.3x/Snews or Oasis2, but with STiK instead of NOS or ICE. 

It is not a full news client, ie. you cannot read or edit articles.
It is meant to complement the offline part of your existing news client
and replace the online parts such as NOS and ICE.


PROGRAM PREFERENCES
-------------------
The retrieval format must be either NOS or Oasis2.

The retrieval path must be:

	OASIS/SPOOL/	for Oasis1.3x using NOS
	NOS/SPOOL/      for NOS

	OASIS2/		for Oasis2
	
The GMT offset is *very* important, and *must* be set up.

NEWSwatch retrieves articles by date and time. The time used is 
always in GMT. NEWSwatch uses the figure entered here to calculate 
the current GMT time.

eg. if your Atari is currently running BST, set this field to 1 +


NNTP.DAT
--------
You must configure the nntp.dat and it must be in the same folder as 
nwatch.prg.

NEWSwatch uses it's own format of nntp.dat file. It is similar to the 
one used by NOS but *not* the same. It is completely different from 
that used by Oasis2.

The first line must point to the news server you wish to connect to.
Subsequent lines must start with a single space (to receive articles) 
or an = sign to receive just the headers, and detail the newsgroups that
you wish to collect news for.
Comment lines are allowed and must start with a # symbol.
This can be useful if you wish to temporarily disable a particular 
group.
Each entry and it's associated date, must be separated by *one* space, 
and each line must end in CRLF.

A typical nntp.dat file follows:

news.demon.co.uk 970101 000000
#The date above is used by NEWSwatch when retrieving a list of new 
#groups.
 demon.ip.support.atari 970101 000000
#Each newsgroup has it's own last retrieved date.
#Unlike NOS, the date can be easily altered for each group.
 comp.sys.atari.st 970101 000000
=alt.binaries.large
#The above is a binaries newsgroup and thus I will download only the 
#headers. I can fetch specific articles later.
 
NB. When setting up your nntp.dat file, the date and time's *must* be 
valid. NEWSwatch does not validate them!!!

HEADER RETRIEVAL
----------------
If the newsgroup line in nntp.dat begins with an = sign instead of a 
space then NEWSwatch will only retreive the headers of articles for 
this newsgroup and *not* the whole article.

This is particularly useful in binary newsgroups, you download the 
headers and then select which articles are of interest. Next time 
NEWSwatch connects to the news server, it will download the requested 
articles before downloading any other new ones.

NOS
NEWSwatch will still retrieve the headers into BATCH.TXT, and will 
look for a file in the /NEWS/ path called GET. If it finds it, it 
will download any messages that are specified. The format of GET is 
one message-id (including the < and >) ending with CRLF.
The populating of the GET file can either be done manually, or a much 
better way would be to use Guy Harrison's Make_Get program (available 
from http://www.swampdog.demon.co.uk/ 

OASIS2
NEWSwatch retrieves the headers in NEWSHEAD.DAT and NEWSHEAD.IDX.
Oasis2 will unbatch these correctly just as if they were downloaded 
via ICE. Oasis2 has the ability that when you select a header article 
to read, it adds the message id to a file called HEAD.OUT. 
This file is used by NEWSwatch, in place of the GET file above.
Thus for Oasis2 users the use of headers is completely transparent and 
to all intents and purposes no different from using ICE.


USING NEWSWATCH
---------------

1. Configure the NNTP.DAT file as appropriate.

2. Connect to your ISP with STiK.

3. Run NWATCH.PRG and configure the Program Preferences.

4. Select 'Retrieve', and NEWSwatch will log on to the specified
   news server and retrieve all new articles since the date
   specified against each newsgroup in the NNTP.DAT file.

5. Select 'Post' to send any queued outgoing news articles. 
   This option is largely redundant because NEWSwatch will always give 
   you the option of posting any waiting articles upon initial 
   start-up. Also it can be configured to always post any outgoing 
   articles before retrieving any, whenever you select 'Retrieve'.


ACCESSING THE RETRIEVED ARTICLES
--------------------------------
To read any downloaded articles in either Oasis1 or Oasis2, you must 
take their 'unbatch' option to unbatch the news into a readable 
format.


DOWNLOADING NEW NEWSGROUPS
--------------------------
NEWSwatch will automatically download a list of all new newsgroups 
since the date specified against the server in nntp.dat. This is 
called NEWGROUP for NOS, and NEWGROUP.DAT for Oasis2.


DOWNLOADING THE FULL LIST OF ALL NEWSGROUPS
-------------------------------------------
NEWSwatch can download the full list of newsgroups if required. This 
will be in the NOS format and is called NG or NG.DAT for Oasis2.
This file is extremely large (about 500K at time of writing this).


HISTORY FILE
------------
NEWSwatch adds the message ID of each article retrieved to the 
HISTORY file as is done under NOS and Oasis2. NEWSwatch checks each 
article against this file to see if it has already been retrieved.
This file should be periodically deleted as is usual with both NOS and 
Oasis2.


BUBBLEGEM SUPPORT
-----------------
NEWSwatch supports the excellent BubbleGEM program by Thomas Much.
This program provides Windows95 style Help Bubbles when you right 
click on a particular control/field.
If BubbleGEM is running then right click on an entry field in NEWSwatch 
and you'll see a cute little help bubble appear!


FREEWARE
--------
NEWSwatch is FREEWARE! I make no charge for using it.

If you use and like NEWSwatch, then please drop me an email and tell me 
so. Without encouragement, NEWSwatch may not develop. So, even if it's 
just a one liner, please make the effort.


DISCLAIMER
----------
NEWSwatch is used at your own risk. I will not be held responsible for 
any damage caused either directly or indirectly from it's use, or the 
loss of any electronic data.


NEW VERSIONS
------------
The latest version of NEWSwatch can be found at my website:

http://www.the-gap.demon.co.uk/
   
Gary Priest 20/09/97
gary@the-gap.demon.co.uk
