Main Window Overview

The Pineapple News main window is divided into three panes. On the left is the storage view. This is a graphical representation of all storage folders, news accounts, and newsgroups. At the top right is the headers view, which displays the contents of whatever is currently selected in the storage view. At the bottom right is the message view, which displays the message that is currently selected in the headers view. This is the familiar “drill-down” pattern: each view is a way to look inside the one that comes before it. Finally, the status bar is at the bottom of the window, which is essentially part of the headers view. It is used to display message counts and the progress of file operations.

Changing relative window pane sizes

Due to the arrangement of the three panes, there is a vertical splitter that runs down the center of the window from top to bottom, and a horizontal splitter that runs from the middle to the right side. You can change the relative sizes of the panes by dragging the vertical splitter left and right and dragging the horizontal splitter up and down. The splitter locations are saved when the program shuts down, so you won’t lose your customizations.

Fonts

The storage view and headers view can be assigned a custom font and font size of your choosing. The message view can have two separate fonts and sizes applied: one for the headers bar, and another for the scrolling text view. There are only two areas in the main window that cannot have custom fonts applied: the column headers in the storage and headers views, and the status bar at the bottom of the window.

To apply a font to a view, first click on the view you’re interested in. Next, from the Edit menu, select “Show Fonts.” The font picker window should appear, loaded with the font and font size currently in use in that view. If you select a new font or point size in the picker window, the change will be immediately reflected in the view. You can click on a different view, and the contents of the font picker window will change to reflect the current view’s font. Custom fonts are saved in the program’s prefs, so you will not lose your customizations.

Context menus

Items in the storage and headers views can be right-clicked or control-clicked with the mouse to bring up a context menu. The selections that appear in the menu will depend on what type of item is selected, and what state it is in. For example, control-clicking on a message in the Drafts folder gives you the option to edit it, while control-clicking on a message in a newsgroup will not. Double-clicking or pressing Return or Enter on any item in the storage or headers view is the same as if you had selected the top-most option in that item’s context menu.

Control-clicking on the column headers above the headers view will display a context menu that allows you to select which columns are displayed in the view. If you are having trouble visualizing where to click, you can bring up the context menu via the program’s main menu: select the View menu, then Headers, then “Select Columns ...” Control-clicking on the header bar directly above the message view allows you to select which strings are displayed there. To bring up the context menu another way, select the View menu, then Message, then “Select Columns ...”

Keyboard navigation

If you like to read messages with both hands planted on the keyboard, you can get a lot done with only the space bar and the tab key. Tab switches between the three primary views in the main window. A highlighted focus ring will be drawn around the view that currently has the input focus.

If the storage view has the input focus, then the space bar moves from group to group. If the headers view is focused, then the space bar moves from one message to the next, skipping headers-only messages. When you reach the last message in a group, pressing the space bar again takes you to the next group. If the message view is focused, then space bar will scroll past one screen-full of text. When you’re at the bottom of a message, pressing the space bar again takes you to the next message.

For more on this subject, see the help topic Keyboard Navigation.

The Storage View

There are four types of things that can exist in the storage view: “Fixed” folders that serve a special purpose for the program, personal storage folders which you create yourself to save message files, news accounts, and newsgroups.

Fixed folders   There are three fixed folders: Outbox, Drafts, and Sent Messages. They will always be the first three items in the storage view. They cannot be deleted or renamed, and they can’t have other folders created inside them.

The Outbox is where your messages go when you have finished editing them and they are ready to be transmitted to your news server. If you change your mind about sending a message, you can select it in the Outbox and press the Delete key, and it will be history.

Once a message has been sent to your server, it will automatically be moved from the Outbox to Sent Messages. What happens to files in the Sent Messages folder is up to you: you can delete them, drag them into other storage folders, or copy them into Finder windows.

The final fixed folder is Drafts. This is where messages go that you have started but haven’t yet finished. To continue editing a message in Drafts, select it in the headers view and double-click.

Personal storage folders   These are folders you create yourself to save message files that interest you. Personal storage folders can contain message files and other folders. When you select a storage folder, the messages that live inside it will be displayed in the headers view. Any files in personal storage folders are immune from being automatically deleted by the program, unlike the messages stored in newsgroup folders (covered below).

When the program is run for the first time, there are no personal storage folders. You must create them yourself. You can create, rename, and remove storage folders with the items in the Folder sub-menu, available on the File menu. If your file and folder management needs are more sophisticated, you can exit Pineapple News and rearrange your folders using the Finder. See the help topic Navigating with Finder for more information.

All your top-level storage folders will appear in alphabetical order below the three fixed folders. If you create a folder inside another folder, the parent folder will grow a disclosure triangle to the left that you can click to expand or collapse it. Once you’ve created personal storage folders, you can drag messages out of the headers view and into your folders.

When dragging a message from a newsgroup to a personal folder, the default operation is to copy the message, leaving the original untouched. When dragging from folder to folder, the default operation is to move the message, deleting the original. If the drag operation will be a copy, then the message you are dragging with the mouse will be augmented by a green circle with a plus sign. If you’re doing a move operation, the message being dragged will have no such decoration. You can override the default operation by holding down a modifier key while dragging: the option key forces a copy operation, while the ⌘ key forces a move operation. Modifier keys work this way only when dragging a message file into Pineapple News. If you’re dragging into a Finder window, onto the desktop, or into the Mac OS X trash bin, then the drag operation is controlled by the target.

News accounts   The third type of storage view entry is the news account. There will be one of these for every account you set up. Once you’ve subscribed to one or more newsgroups, the icon for your news account will grow a disclosure triangle, which you can click to see all the account’s newsgroups.

Newsgroups   The fourth and final type of storage view entry is the newsgroup. They will always appear underneath a server account, never anywhere else. When you select a newsgroup by clicking on it, all message files that it contains will be displayed in the headers view.

A newsgroup will have one of three icons, depending on its download method. If the icon depicts two people looking at a news article, that means downloads for this newsgroup will get headers and bodies. If the article in the icon contains the word “Head,” it means that downloads for this group will retrieve headers only. An empty news article means that this newsgroup cannot be downloaded until its download method is changed to one of the other two types. You can control-click on a newsgroup icon and select “Newsgroup Prefs” to change its download method.

Pineapple News deletes message files storaged in newsgroup folders when they reach a certain age. See the help topic Newsgroup Preferences for more information.

The Headers View

This is a hierarchical view of the messages present in the newsgroup or storage folder selected in the storage view, subject to certain criteria. For example, it may display only unread messages, or only authors that are not killfiled.

Most operations performed here will be carried out on the message that is currently selected. Note that the headers view is a multi-selection list, meaning that more than one message can be selected at a time. This is useful if you want to delete a group of messages, drag a list of messages somewhere else, and so on.

Column data   There are many types of column data that can be displayed. To select the ones you want, pick the View menu, then Headers, then “Select Columns ...” This brings up a context menu that allows you to add and remove columns from the view. You can also control-click on the column headers to bring up the menu more directly.

The order of the columns in the view can be changed by dragging them with your mouse: grab the column header of a column you want to move, then deposit it in a new location.

To change the width of a column, move the mouse pointer to a position between two column headers. The mouse cursor should change to a two-headed arrow pointing left and right. Now you can drag the mouse left or right to change the relative sizes of the columns on either side.

To sort items in the headers view according to the values in a particular column, click on the column’s header. The column header you clicked should change to a distinctive color, and you should see an up-pointing arrow to the right of the column header’s text. To change the sort order from ascending to descending or vice versa, click the column header a second time, which should change an up-pointing arrow to a down-pointing one, and vice versa.

Header display characteristics   There are three menu options on the View/Headers menu that control how messages in the headers view are displayed. The first is “Threaded.” If checked, this menu option means that replies will appear underneath the message that is being replied to, if that message is available. (If it is not available, then the reply may be underneath an earlier message in the thread.) If this menu option is unchecked, then all messages will be displayed at the outermost outline level.

The second option is “Expand Threads.” If checked, all threads will be “expanded,” i.e., all replies will be visible. If it is not checked, then the newsgroup or folder will be displayed with all threads collapsed, and you’ll have to click the latches to see replies.

The third option is “Show Read Messages.” Header entries for messages that you have not yet read are displayed in bold text. When you click on a header entry, it is marked as read, and it changes from bold to regular text. If this menu option is checked, then the view will display messages that you’ve already read. If unchecked, then you’ll see all messages, whether they’re read or not.

The Message View

The message view is split into two parts: a horizontal “header bar” that displays header information, and a scrolling text view.

Header Bar   The header bar displays the same kinds of data for the current message that you can see for every message in the headers view. To select which items are displayed, pull down the View menu, then Message, then “Select Columns ...” A context menu will appear that allows you to select which header strings you want to see. The headers bar can have a custom font applied, as described earlier.

If the message you are currently viewing contains a binary attachment, then a square button will appear at the far right end of the header bar containing an icon appropriate for the type of attachment in the message. More information is available in the help topic Attachments.

Message Text   Below the header bar, you’ll see the text of the current message. Quoted message text is displayed in a distinctive color. URLs in the text view will be highlighted and underlined. They are clickable links, much like you’d see in a web page. There is a help topic that covers this in more detail: Highlighted URLs.

There are two items in the View/Message menu that control how the message text is displayed. The first is “Prefer HTML.” This only affects the display of MIME messages that include two representations of the same content, one in plain text, another in HTML. If this item is checked, then the message view will display the HTML portion of such messages in a WebKit view. If the item is unchecked, then the plain text portion of the message will be displayed instead. It’s rare to find HTML-only messages on USENET that contain no plain text, but they do exist. If you run across such a message, then this setting will have no effect, and its contents will be displayed as HTML in a WebKit view.

The “Show Headers” menu item controls whether the message text view displays all headers and other formatting data found in the message or not. This option should usually be unchecked, which informs the message view that it should display the message normally. If this item is checked, then the message is displayed “raw,” including all header strings, binary attachment sections, and so on. URL highlighting and quote coloring are not performed in this mode.

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