Download Type specifies the type of download to be performed for a newsgroup: “Full Articles,” where every message is downloaded in its entirety, or “Headers Only,” which instructs the program to download only the beginning of every article, and download the body later. If you specify “No Download,” then the group in question cannot be downloaded until it is switched to one of the other two download types.
Download Order specifies how the program should download articles. “Oldest First” instructs the program to download a group’s articles starting with the oldest ones and going forward through time. “Newest First” means that the newest articles are downloaded first, with subsequent downloads proceeding backward through time. I suppose “Newest First” is more popular among my users, but I have made “Oldest First” the default, because to me it makes more sense to read a group’s articles in the order that they were posted.
Default Charset When messages are downloaded into this newsgroup that do not indicate their character set, then the group-wide character set specified here will be applied. See the help topic Character Sets.
Articles expire in specifies how long existing messages are kept before being deleted by the program. The default is two weeks. The contents of this field must be specified as a number and a time unit, for example “2 weeks” or “3 months.”
Enable Download Limits, if checked, instructs the program to download only a certain number of items per newsgroup before going on to the next group. If a group has been set to download full articles, then the number of downloads per run is specified by the “Max Articles” field. If a group has been set for headers-only downloads, then the “Max Headers” field specifies how many headers-only messages will be downloaded at a time.
Pineapple News keeps track of newsgroup settings at three different levels: global, per-account, and specific to a particular newsgroup. The previous section showed you how to set global newsgroup prefs. That group of settings will be used for any newsgroup that has no other settings that apply to it.
If you wish, you can set newsgroup prefs at the account level, which will override the global prefs for one account’s newsgroups. In the main window’s storage view, click on the account you’re interested in, then control-click or right-click to bring up that account’s context menu. Select “Account Prefs,” which should bring up the account preferences window, filled out with that account’s particulars. Press the button labeled “Newsgroup Settings ...” and the newsgroup prefs window will appear, ready for you to enter newsgroup settings particular to this account.
You can also set prefs that apply to a single newsgroup, which will override any other settings from the global or account level that would otherwise apply. In the main window, click on the icon that represents the newsgroup you’re interested in, control-click or right-click to bring up that group’s context menu, and select “Newsgroup Prefs.”