Detailed Descriptions of HyperNews Functions

Reading Messages

Reading is usually open to the public - that's one reason people like the web. You do not have to be a member to read messages at this site.

A HyperNews "base article" looks like a normal web page except there may be "messages" appended to the end after a "Messages" header, and there are controls to traverse the messages, add new ones, etc. A message looks like a base article except it also displays some header lines at the top of the page identifying the context and author of the message. A "reply" is another name for a message that has been added in-reply-to another message, or to a base article.

New messages are always postioned after older messages in the same discussion. The newest of the new messages have a icon of some kind to draw your attention.

Replies to messages should appear indented, but not all browsers indent properly. Please send feedback to the HyperNews author (liberte@ncsa.uiuc.edu) if it fails for you - and what your browser is.

Outline and Inline

The tree of messages at the end of a HyperNews page are displayed in an outline which shows, by indentation, which messages are replies to which other messages. Only the titles, authors, and dates are shown for each message in the outline. If the replies go deeper than the outline depth (the default is 3), you will see a "..." where there would be more. You can click on one of the messages in the outline to see that message, and its message outline may then reveal some additional replies.

An abbreviation is used in the outline for the special case of a chain of replies - a single reply to a single reply, etc. Instead of indenting deeper and deeper, subsequent replies are displayed at the same level prefixed by the weird notation: "(_". Here is how that looks:

27. New response list format by Mike Overton, 1995, Jun 26

1. Indenting problems by Daniel M LaLiberte, 1995, Jun 12

(_ Alternate indenting method, 1995, Jul 05

(_ DL Indenting is OK in WebEx v1.03, 1996, Mar 12

You can change how deeply nested the outline is by selecting one of the controls after "Outline" on the "Messages" header line. You can select the depth of the outline by clicking on the Outline 1 , Outline 2 , or Outline 3 control. The All control displays all levels.

Instead of viewing the tree of messages in an outline and selecting each one you want to display, you can embed the messages inline by selecting one of the controls after "Inline" (this was called "Embed" in older versions). The bodies of inlined messages will be displayed sequentially in "digest" form after the message or base article they are in reply to. The control will turn off inlining (the default). The control will inline just one level of replies; there may be non-inlined replies to some of these replies which will be displayed in the usual outline form. The All control will inline all of the messages, leaving no outline. The title of each inlined message is a link to a page with only that message on it, so you can go there to reply to it or do other things with it.

Navigation

You can use one of the navigation buttons to simplify reading of neighboring messages.

"Next Message": Go to the next message that is replying to the same thing, skipping over any replies to this message. If there is no next message, go to the next message one level up.
"More (or "Next-in-Thr ead"): Go to the first reply, if there is one, or the next message at the same level, or some higher level. Use this to read every message.

General Instructions (Go Back)

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