If you have been following the last several installments of MacInsight, by now you should
have already installed a copy of Thoth 1.4.1, configured it for Newsguy, and created at
least one subscription list (also called a Group List) that contains your favorite news
groups. Before we delve more deeply into the advanced functionally in Thoth, I’m going to
take a look at techniques for increasing productivity using the features we have already
become familiar with.
The first technique is to set up multiple Group Lists. Start by rebuilding the Full Group
list (it is under the Special menu), which will insure you have the most up-to-date list
of available news groups. To create more news group lists after the rebuild is complete,
open Edit -> News Server settings -> "your news server," then select "Group Lists" from
the popup menu. Click "Add New…" to create a new group, and keep creating as many new
groups as you like, following the strategies outlined in the next paragraph.
There are several strategies to choose from when organizing multiple groups. One method is
by visit frequency, such as "check daily" and "check weekly." Another way would be by
purpose, such as "binaries" or "newspapers." And finally, by Usenet hierarchy, such as
creating a list for all the "comp.sys.mac" groups. The idea is to make the groups fit how
you work. Feel free to experiment, mix and match any combination of the three methods I’ve
mentioned, it is easy to make changes later.
After creating a personal collection of groups, make sure to utilize the auto-open
feature. Each Group List that you plan read each time you launch Thoth should be set to
auto-open. To turn this feature on, place a checkmark next to the Group List name in the
list of groups in the server settings window.
Great, now you have a set of custom Group Lists, and they each open automatically and
indicate the number of new messages since the last time you marked any as read. If your
setup is anything like mine, you have a lot of message headers to choose from. Here is an
overview of how I scan though thousands of news headers in just a few minutes. Select the
Group List window and type Command-A, which will highlight all the groups. Double-click on
any one of the highlighted groups. A solid bullet will appear on the topmost group, and
the others will show asterisks, indicating that they are in the queue. The way the Thoth
is configured, it will use one of the two possible connections to Newsguy just to download
message headers.
As soon as the first list of messages appears, you can read the headers by using the Page
Down key to look at groups of messages a screen at a time. To read a message, double-click
the subject, and it will appear. If the thread is interesting, double-click on all the
messages in it to add them to the download queue. If the message contains a binary
attachment, type Command-b to download the attachment. Keep repeating this cycle until you
have reviewed all the message headers in a particular group.
After you finish scanning the group, type Command-J, which automatically marks all the
frontmost window’s messages as read, then opens the next successive group. Depending on
how many message headings are pending and how fast you read, it should be possible to
finish downloading all the headers in the background while reading the first couple of
groups. At that point, any message you ask to view will be added to the download queue,
and Thoth will fetch them two at a time.
By typing Command-J after reading each group, you will progressively step though each
group in your list, and marking as read any item that is either downloaded to reviewed and
passed over. If there are more articles on the server in a given group than could be
downloaded in a single pass, then Command-J will also successively fetch the next group of
downloaded articles, until all of them have been marked as read. By using keyboard
shortcuts like Command-J, Command-B, and Command-M (mark message as read) along with a
little practice, and you can read over many more messages than you might have otherwise
thought possible.
"Making the Most of Thoth: Basics"
