How do I access news groups other then throught IE?

On Wed, 28 Jul 2004 04:04:55 -0500, "*Vanguard*"
do-not-email@reply-to-group wrote:

..... snip .....
Do you know if Free Agent provides rules that can search ANY header?
..... snip .....

I think there are no rules available in FREE Agent - you need to
purchase the full version to get that.


--
The Aussie Bomber
Carn The Dons!!

"Aussie Bomber"
wrote in :
On Wed, 28 Jul 2004 04:04:55 -0500, "*Vanguard*"
do-not-email@reply-to-group wrote:

..... snip .....
Do you know if Free Agent provides rules that can search ANY header?
..... snip .....

I think there are no rules available in FREE Agent - you need to
purchase the full version to get that.

Do you have the full version of Agent to check? I just downloaded it.
The download is not the free version but is instead the full version
which cripples itself after the trial period unless you pay and register
it. So when I get some time to scan the current state of my system,
install Agent, scan again to check for all changes made by the install
(so I can guarantee a complete clean uninstall) then I can check this
out myself as long as I don't get too bogged down just trying to use it
initially. Just looking for a heads up to know if Agent gives me the
ability to search ANY header in a post (to see if it exists or to check
for a value or substring after it).

--
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"Aussie Bomber"
wrote in :
On Wed, 28 Jul 2004 04:04:55 -0500, "*Vanguard*"
do-not-email@reply-to-group wrote:

..... snip .....
Do you know if Free Agent provides rules that can search ANY header?
..... snip .....

I think there are no rules available in FREE Agent - you need to
purchase the full version to get that.

Do you have the full version of Agent to check? I just downloaded it.
The download is not the free version but is instead the full version
which cripples itself after the trial period unless you pay and register
it. So when I get some time to scan the current state of my system,
install Agent, scan again to check for all changes made by the install
(so I can guarantee a complete clean uninstall) then I can check this
out myself as long as I don't get too bogged down just trying to use it
initially. Just looking for a heads up to know if Agent gives me the
ability to search ANY header in a post (to see if it exists or to check
for a value or substring after it).

--
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__________________________________________________

On Wed, 28 Jul 2004 21:48:12 -0500, "*Vanguard*"
do-not-email@reply-to-group wrote:

"Aussie Bomber"
wrote in :
On Wed, 28 Jul 2004 04:04:55 -0500, "*Vanguard*"
do-not-email@reply-to-group wrote:

..... snip .....
Do you know if Free Agent provides rules that can search ANY header?
..... snip .....

I think there are no rules available in FREE Agent - you need to
purchase the full version to get that.

Do you have the full version of Agent to check? I just downloaded it.
The download is not the free version but is instead the full version
which cripples itself after the trial period unless you pay and register
it. So when I get some time to scan the current state of my system,
install Agent, scan again to check for all changes made by the install
(so I can guarantee a complete clean uninstall) then I can check this
out myself as long as I don't get too bogged down just trying to use it
initially. Just looking for a heads up to know if Agent gives me the
ability to search ANY header in a post (to see if it exists or to check
for a value or substring after it).
Well they have their own group. Post there and ask the
product experts.
alt.usenet.offline-reader.forte-agent

Cheers,
Dave

On Wed, 28 Jul 2004 21:48:12 -0500, "*Vanguard*"
do-not-email@reply-to-group wrote:

"Aussie Bomber"
wrote in :
On Wed, 28 Jul 2004 04:04:55 -0500, "*Vanguard*"
do-not-email@reply-to-group wrote:

..... snip .....
Do you know if Free Agent provides rules that can search ANY header?
..... snip .....

I think there are no rules available in FREE Agent - you need to
purchase the full version to get that.

Do you have the full version of Agent to check? I just downloaded it.
The download is not the free version but is instead the full version
which cripples itself after the trial period unless you pay and register
it. So when I get some time to scan the current state of my system,
install Agent, scan again to check for all changes made by the install
(so I can guarantee a complete clean uninstall) then I can check this
out myself as long as I don't get too bogged down just trying to use it
initially. Just looking for a heads up to know if Agent gives me the
ability to search ANY header in a post (to see if it exists or to check
for a value or substring after it).
Well they have their own group. Post there and ask the
product experts.
alt.usenet.offline-reader.forte-agent

Cheers,
Dave

"*Vanguard*" do-not-email@reply-to-group wrote:

I think there are no rules available in FREE Agent - you need to
purchase the full version to get that.

Do you have the full version of Agent to check? I just downloaded it.
The download is not the free version but is instead the full version
which cripples itself after the trial period unless you pay and register
it.

That's what FreeAgent is these days, the full Agent package with some
features disabled. But you must have misinterpreted something
somewhere, FreeAgent does not kill itself after a trial period. You
can use it for as long as you like.

What the Agent web page says is that you can download Agent, and use
the entire package free for thirty days. (So you would be able to
check the full array of search capabilities for your self.) If by that
time you have not sent $29 to register the program it will turn into
Free Agent by disabling many of its functions. It remains a very
usable Usenet client. It will send email, but not receive it. You
can't use the kill list, and some other functions.

Just looking for a heads up to know if Agent gives me the
ability to search ANY header in a post (to see if it exists or to check
for a value or substring after it).

Looks like it to me.

--
Tim Slattery
MS MVP(DTS)

"*Vanguard*" do-not-email@reply-to-group wrote:

"davetest"
wrote in :
Well they have their own group. Post there and ask the
product experts.
alt.usenet.offline-reader.forte-agent

Cannot specify a non-standard port for the POP3 mail server.

Yes you can, but you have to make an easy edit to the ini file.Find
the [Servers] section and put whatever you want as the value for
POPPort (you'll see a default value of 110). Yeah, it should be in the
dialog box. Maybe we'll see it there in the next release.

--
Tim Slattery
MS MVP(DTS)

"davetest"
wrote in :
Well they have their own group. Post there and ask the
product experts.
alt.usenet.offline-reader.forte-agent

Cannot specify a non-standard port for the POP3 mail server. I go
through SpamPal for spam filtering which accepts POP3 connections but I
have it configured to monitor for POP3 connects on port 7110, not on the
standard port of 110. This is the first e-mail capable client that I
have encountered where I cannot specify what port it will use to connect
to the POP3 server. This severe deficiency makes Agent completely
unusable to me for e-mail. While I had no intention of using Agent as my
e-mail client for my non-news accounts, I had expected to use it for my
news-related e-mail account (the one published in the Reply-To header in
my posts). Guess not!

After installing Agent again, which is the 30-day trial version before
it cripples itself to the Free version, I remembered why I had
previously abandoned this newsreader as incompetent. It will not support
multiple news servers. In Outlook Express (and, I think, in Thunderbird)
you can define multiple news server to which the NNTP client will
connect. This is not possible in Agent. I believe there was a workaround
where you use multiple configuration files and specify which one to use
in different shortcuts to start Agent, but this means that I have to
bother going through this manual setup and I also cannot jump between
news servers without having to exit and then reload Agent. No one using
Agent over the years has ever expressed that they visit multiple news
servers?
I got a list of newsgroups from my single news server. Okay, now how do
I subscribe to the ones that I visit regularly? Sure I can scroll
through the list of 80,000 newsgroups but I have better things to do.
When I search on "subscribe" in its help, I get a description of NEWSRC
files instead. If I do a search, I have to enter enough of the the
newsgroup name to get a single match highlighted in the newsgroup list
pane as opposed to OE that shows me progressively all matching newsgroup
names as I progressively enter more of a portion of the newsgroup name.
I have to use Find Next to scroll through the list of possible matches.
Note that Search is disabled until you highlight a newsgroup; if none
are highlighted (the situation on its first load), search is disabled.
This interface sucks.

Rather than show my e-mail as a separate message store, the Inbox is
simply packed in with the list of newsgroups.
The primary reason that I wanted to trial Agent was to see if its
ability to killfile was better than what I can define in Outlook
Express. Nope, Agent is just as impotent as OE. I can killfile on e-mail
address, moniker (sender name),
In OE, I can define a kill filter without even having a message selected
or open; i.e., I can define a rule based on info that I already possess
without having to go find a post from the sender. In Agent, Add Filter
is disabled until I select a message. What if that is not the message
upon which I want to define a kill filter? Okay, so I select the post
for a sender that want to killfile. Since they use a mail2news gateway
(i.e., anonymous remailer), I cannot filter on Author or E-mail Address
(these change or are bogus on each post they make). However, I don't
want anything sent from that remailer so I figure to filter on the
"NNTP-Posting-Host: 63.187.225.31" header and enter that, select Delete,
but when I click OK a message pops up saying, "It is not possible to
filter for field NNTP-Posting-Host".

Oh, great, so Agent is just as impotent as OE to define kill filters. I
can define "subject: sendername" but not other qualifiers (where
"qualifier" really means in which header to restrict the search). "In
addition, you can use so-called expression qualifiers to limit the
search to selected fields." Okay, so how about listing what qualifiers
are supported. Obviously NNTP-Posting-Host is not supported. From what I
found in the included help, the miniscule qualifiers available are
"subject:" and "author:" (or "from:"). Oh, wow, what a huge list of
qualifiers - NOT! I can also definitely scrap the idea of trying to
check for "!mail2news" to be at the end of the string using regular
expressions in the PATH header. Why is it so hard to let the user
search on ANY particular header that may occur in a post? Even e-mail
filtering has a severely restricted list of qualifiers (i.e., headers)
that you can specify. Having regular expressions is great but rendered
toothless if you cannot specify ANY particular header in which to
perform the search. I can't be the only user that has ever wanted to
filter newsgroup posts based on headers *other* than just subject and
author.

Well, Agent gets put on hold and probably will get uninstalled while I
go to investigate Thunderbird.

"davetest"
wrote in :
Well they have their own group. Post there and ask the
product experts.
alt.usenet.offline-reader.forte-agent

Cannot specify a non-standard port for the POP3 mail server. I go
through SpamPal for spam filtering which accepts POP3 connections but I
have it configured to monitor for POP3 connects on port 7110, not on the
standard port of 110. This is the first e-mail capable client that I
have encountered where I cannot specify what port it will use to connect
to the POP3 server. This severe deficiency makes Agent completely
unusable to me for e-mail. While I had no intention of using Agent as my
e-mail client for my non-news accounts, I had expected to use it for my
news-related e-mail account (the one published in the Reply-To header in
my posts). Guess not!

After installing Agent again, which is the 30-day trial version before
it cripples itself to the Free version, I remembered why I had
previously abandoned this newsreader as incompetent. It will not support
multiple news servers. In Outlook Express (and, I think, in Thunderbird)
you can define multiple news server to which the NNTP client will
connect. This is not possible in Agent. I believe there was a workaround
where you use multiple configuration files and specify which one to use
in different shortcuts to start Agent, but this means that I have to
bother going through this manual setup and I also cannot jump between
news servers without having to exit and then reload Agent. No one using
Agent over the years has ever expressed that they visit multiple news
servers?
I got a list of newsgroups from my single news server. Okay, now how do
I subscribe to the ones that I visit regularly? Sure I can scroll
through the list of 80,000 newsgroups but I have better things to do.
When I search on "subscribe" in its help, I get a description of NEWSRC
files instead. If I do a search, I have to enter enough of the the
newsgroup name to get a single match highlighted in the newsgroup list
pane as opposed to OE that shows me progressively all matching newsgroup
names as I progressively enter more of a portion of the newsgroup name.
I have to use Find Next to scroll through the list of possible matches.
Note that Search is disabled until you highlight a newsgroup; if none
are highlighted (the situation on its first load), search is disabled.
This interface sucks.

Rather than show my e-mail as a separate message store, the Inbox is
simply packed in with the list of newsgroups.
The primary reason that I wanted to trial Agent was to see if its
ability to killfile was better than what I can define in Outlook
Express. Nope, Agent is just as impotent as OE. I can killfile on e-mail
address, moniker (sender name),
In OE, I can define a kill filter without even having a message selected
or open; i.e., I can define a rule based on info that I already possess
without having to go find a post from the sender. In Agent, Add Filter
is disabled until I select a message. What if that is not the message
upon which I want to define a kill filter? Okay, so I select the post
for a sender that want to killfile. Since they use a mail2news gateway
(i.e., anonymous remailer), I cannot filter on Author or E-mail Address
(these change or are bogus on each post they make). However, I don't
want anything sent from that remailer so I figure to filter on the
"NNTP-Posting-Host: 63.187.225.31" header and enter that, select Delete,
but when I click OK a message pops up saying, "It is not possible to
filter for field NNTP-Posting-Host".

Oh, great, so Agent is just as impotent as OE to define kill filters. I
can define "subject: sendername" but not other qualifiers (where
"qualifier" really means in which header to restrict the search). "In
addition, you can use so-called expression qualifiers to limit the
search to selected fields." Okay, so how about listing what qualifiers
are supported. Obviously NNTP-Posting-Host is not supported. From what I
found in the included help, the miniscule qualifiers available are
"subject:" and "author:" (or "from:"). Oh, wow, what a huge list of
qualifiers - NOT! I can also definitely scrap the idea of trying to
check for "!mail2news" to be at the end of the string using regular
expressions in the PATH header. Why is it so hard to let the user
search on ANY particular header that may occur in a post? Even e-mail
filtering has a severely restricted list of qualifiers (i.e., headers)
that you can specify. Having regular expressions is great but rendered
toothless if you cannot specify ANY particular header in which to
perform the search. I can't be the only user that has ever wanted to
filter newsgroup posts based on headers *other* than just subject and
author.

Well, Agent gets put on hold and probably will get uninstalled while I
go to investigate Thunderbird.

"*Vanguard*" do-not-email@reply-to-group wrote:

I think there are no rules available in FREE Agent - you need to
purchase the full version to get that.

Do you have the full version of Agent to check? I just downloaded it.
The download is not the free version but is instead the full version
which cripples itself after the trial period unless you pay and register
it.

That's what FreeAgent is these days, the full Agent package with some
features disabled. But you must have misinterpreted something
somewhere, FreeAgent does not kill itself after a trial period. You
can use it for as long as you like.

What the Agent web page says is that you can download Agent, and use
the entire package free for thirty days. (So you would be able to
check the full array of search capabilities for your self.) If by that
time you have not sent $29 to register the program it will turn into
Free Agent by disabling many of its functions. It remains a very
usable Usenet client. It will send email, but not receive it. You
can't use the kill list, and some other functions.

Just looking for a heads up to know if Agent gives me the
ability to search ANY header in a post (to see if it exists or to check
for a value or substring after it).

Looks like it to me.

--
Tim Slattery
MS MVP(DTS)

"*Vanguard*" do-not-email@reply-to-group wrote:

I think there are no rules available in FREE Agent - you need to
purchase the full version to get that.

Do you have the full version of Agent to check? I just downloaded it.
The download is not the free version but is instead the full version
which cripples itself after the trial period unless you pay and register
it.

That's what FreeAgent is these days, the full Agent package with some
features disabled. But you must have misinterpreted something
somewhere, FreeAgent does not kill itself after a trial period. You
can use it for as long as you like.

What the Agent web page says is that you can download Agent, and use
the entire package free for thirty days. (So you would be able to
check the full array of search capabilities for your self.) If by that
time you have not sent $29 to register the program it will turn into
Free Agent by disabling many of its functions. It remains a very
usable Usenet client. It will send email, but not receive it. You
can't use the kill list, and some other functions.

Just looking for a heads up to know if Agent gives me the
ability to search ANY header in a post (to see if it exists or to check
for a value or substring after it).

Looks like it to me.

--
Tim Slattery
MS MVP(DTS)

"*Vanguard*" do-not-email@reply-to-group wrote:

"davetest"
wrote in :
Well they have their own group. Post there and ask the
product experts.
alt.usenet.offline-reader.forte-agent

Cannot specify a non-standard port for the POP3 mail server.

Yes you can, but you have to make an easy edit to the ini file.Find
the [Servers] section and put whatever you want as the value for
POPPort (you'll see a default value of 110). Yeah, it should be in the
dialog box. Maybe we'll see it there in the next release.

--
Tim Slattery
MS MVP(DTS)

"*Vanguard*" do-not-email@reply-to-group wrote:

"davetest"
wrote in :
Well they have their own group. Post there and ask the
product experts.
alt.usenet.offline-reader.forte-agent

Cannot specify a non-standard port for the POP3 mail server.

Yes you can, but you have to make an easy edit to the ini file.Find
the [Servers] section and put whatever you want as the value for
POPPort (you'll see a default value of 110). Yeah, it should be in the
dialog box. Maybe we'll see it there in the next release.

--
Tim Slattery
MS MVP(DTS)

"Tim Slattery"
wrote in :

That's what FreeAgent is these days, the full Agent package with some
features disabled. But you must have misinterpreted something
somewhere, FreeAgent does not kill itself after a trial period. You
can use it for as long as you like.

No, I said it *cripples* itself after the trial period expires (i.e.,
you download the full version, get to use all its features for a month,
and then it cripples itself to become Free Agent).

snip
Free Agent by disabling many of its functions. It remains a very
usable Usenet client. It will send email, but not receive it. You
can't use the kill list, and some other functions.

As per my other post 8 hours earlier, I found the killfile function (of
the FULL but trial version which is what you get to download) to be near
useless. All you get for "qualifiers" (they need a different name than
"headers") is Author and E-mail address. That is only useful to
killfile *polite* posters that always use the same moniker or e-mail
address. Remailer users don't. Any user can modify the From field in
their newsreader, and some let you change it on-the-fly in the compose
window for the post. Attempting to killfile nasty posters using Author
and E-mail Address is as stupid as using the Blocked Senders list in OE
and expecting spammers to always use the same name or e-mail address.
Doesn't work.

Just looking for a heads up to know if Agent gives me the
ability to search ANY header in a post (to see if it exists or to
check for a value or substring after it).

Looks like it to me.

So give an example. When I went to define a killfile filter (a function
that was only available when I selected a message), the only
"qualifiers" that it accepted were Author and E-mail Address. I wanted
to killfile a poster using their IP address, so I tried specifying
"NNTP-Posting-Host" as the qualifier with the nasty poster's IP address
as the value, so instead of "Author: Joe Schmuck", I replaced it with
"NNTP-Posting-Host: xx.xx.xx.xx" but Forte wouldn't accept that. It
didn't know how to "understand" that qualifier - because it wasnt' one
of the few (only 2) that was hardcoded in it.

I didn't see anywhere else to define a rule, only to define filters.
When a post was selected, look in the dialog window and you'll see
buttons showing the only 2 qualifiers that it supports (Author and
E-Mail Address). That's it. That's worthless when trying to killfile
anyone other than polite posters.

However, even with most of Forte Agent (full) not doing much more than
what I can do in OE (but with Forte Agent correcting some defects of OE,
like not top-posting but which can be corrected using OE_QuoteFix), the
biggest and immediate reason that I abandoned Forte Agent was the lack
of multiple news server support. I'm not going to define multiple
shortcuts that specify different config files and have to bounce in and
out of Forte to use different news servers. Nor do I really want to
have multiple instances of Forte Agent running to permit concurrent
access (but disconnected use within each instance from the other
instance of Forte Agent).

I tried Forte Agent (full trial version). It failed. Then I tried
Thunderbird. It failed (rules are any better). So what other
newsreaders are there out there? Newsbin is really just a tool to yank
files from binary groups, and I don't visit binary groups. NewsRover is
too clunky, slow (especially to download the groups list), and seems
more like a binary yanking tool than a newsreader.


--
__________________________________________________
*** Post replies to newsgroup. Share with others.
(E-mail: domain = ".com", add "=NEWS=" to Subject)
__________________________________________________

"Tim Slattery"
wrote in :

That's what FreeAgent is these days, the full Agent package with some
features disabled. But you must have misinterpreted something
somewhere, FreeAgent does not kill itself after a trial period. You
can use it for as long as you like.

No, I said it *cripples* itself after the trial period expires (i.e.,
you download the full version, get to use all its features for a month,
and then it cripples itself to become Free Agent).

snip
Free Agent by disabling many of its functions. It remains a very
usable Usenet client. It will send email, but not receive it. You
can't use the kill list, and some other functions.

As per my other post 8 hours earlier, I found the killfile function (of
the FULL but trial version which is what you get to download) to be near
useless. All you get for "qualifiers" (they need a different name than
"headers") is Author and E-mail address. That is only useful to
killfile *polite* posters that always use the same moniker or e-mail
address. Remailer users don't. Any user can modify the From field in
their newsreader, and some let you change it on-the-fly in the compose
window for the post. Attempting to killfile nasty posters using Author
and E-mail Address is as stupid as using the Blocked Senders list in OE
and expecting spammers to always use the same name or e-mail address.
Doesn't work.

Just looking for a heads up to know if Agent gives me the
ability to search ANY header in a post (to see if it exists or to
check for a value or substring after it).

Looks like it to me.

So give an example. When I went to define a killfile filter (a function
that was only available when I selected a message), the only
"qualifiers" that it accepted were Author and E-mail Address. I wanted
to killfile a poster using their IP address, so I tried specifying
"NNTP-Posting-Host" as the qualifier with the nasty poster's IP address
as the value, so instead of "Author: Joe Schmuck", I replaced it with
"NNTP-Posting-Host: xx.xx.xx.xx" but Forte wouldn't accept that. It
didn't know how to "understand" that qualifier - because it wasnt' one
of the few (only 2) that was hardcoded in it.

I didn't see anywhere else to define a rule, only to define filters.
When a post was selected, look in the dialog window and you'll see
buttons showing the only 2 qualifiers that it supports (Author and
E-Mail Address). That's it. That's worthless when trying to killfile
anyone other than polite posters.

However, even with most of Forte Agent (full) not doing much more than
what I can do in OE (but with Forte Agent correcting some defects of OE,
like not top-posting but which can be corrected using OE_QuoteFix), the
biggest and immediate reason that I abandoned Forte Agent was the lack
of multiple news server support. I'm not going to define multiple
shortcuts that specify different config files and have to bounce in and
out of Forte to use different news servers. Nor do I really want to
have multiple instances of Forte Agent running to permit concurrent
access (but disconnected use within each instance from the other
instance of Forte Agent).

I tried Forte Agent (full trial version). It failed. Then I tried
Thunderbird. It failed (rules are any better). So what other
newsreaders are there out there? Newsbin is really just a tool to yank
files from binary groups, and I don't visit binary groups. NewsRover is
too clunky, slow (especially to download the groups list), and seems
more like a binary yanking tool than a newsreader.


--
__________________________________________________
*** Post replies to newsgroup. Share with others.
(E-mail: domain = ".com", add "=NEWS=" to Subject)
__________________________________________________