From: utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!CAD:tektronix!teklabs!keithe
Newsgroups: net.jokes.d
Title: reading news to a file
Article-I.D.: teklabs.1705
Posted: Fri Jan 28 07:39:45 1983
Received: Sat Jan 29 05:08:48 1983

A couple of days ago the following procedure was suggested to read news
into a file, for later perusal:
		     1) Type 'news > file'
                     2) either  hold down the enter button if that 
			will send a bunch of new-line charaters,
                        or keep hitting the return button if you don't
                        have auto-repeat.

                  or 1) make a file 'ret' that consists of about 50 
			returns (or more if you get a lot of news.)
                     2) type 'news < ret > file'.
		     3) type 'more file'.

There is an easier way, however. Instead of all the new-lines, just
use the "-p" option to readnews; it will dump all the news into the
file with "no questions asked" is how the man page puts it.
Since our version of news doesn't have the un-subscribe capability
I use this method in the following scheme:

	1) readnews -p -n [list of news I don't want to read] >/dev/null
		(this updates my .newsrc file showing that
		 the unwanted news has been read.)

	2) readnews -p -n net.all >filename

The above is a shell script that is run by at(1); the file is
ready for me when I get to work in the morning. I find that just
letting the news roll by (using cat) or forward scrolling/skipping
(using more) is much faster than replying "y" or "n" to each 
individual article. And if something really interesting DOES show
up (not often, but occasionally it dose happen) I can "vi" the
file and pick out the parts I want, which is how I got the copy of
the article for the first part of THIS entry.

ciao!

Keith Ericson