The NEWSRC File

In order to keep track of your viewing history, WinVN records information about newsgroups in a file named NEWSRC. This file contains a list of all newsgroups. For each newsgroup, WinVN records whether it is subscribed and which articles have been seen.

Many UNIX-based news readers record this information in a file named .newsrc. WinVN uses a similar file format to provide compatibility with these programs. One extension had to be made to the file format to provide features not found in ordinary UNIX newsreaders. WinVN NEWSRC files contain in each line a field of the form

sbiggest_art_number

where biggest_art_number is the number of the most recent article to appear on the news server. WinVN uses this information at the beginning of a session to tell you which articles have appeared on the server since your last session. WinVN does not require this field to be present, so you can transport your UNIX-style .newsrc file to your PC as the filename NEWSRC and WinVN should be able to use it without modification. Transporting a WinVN NEWSRC back to UNIX would require a simple script to remove the "s" fields.

See Group Menu Commands. and Invoking WinVN.