You can trick most news readers into
providing a linear listing of all accessible newsgroups, whether
they provide the feature built-in to the program or not.
Some news readers always sort newsgroups into hierarchies
when they display them, so that you have to open each hierarchy
like an indented folder list to see the individual groups themselves,
so you can't get a simple sequential listing of all
groups. For example, you may want to get a simple linear listing
of
all
of the comp.* groups so that you can scan the whole hierarchy,
and don't want to have to open each sub-hierarchy one-by-one.
With these kinds of news readers you can often use the following
trick to get a linear listing anyway:
- Open the news reader's "search newsgroups" function.
- Enter as a search string just the portion of the name you
want to see. For example, if you enter "comp." as a search
string, then you will get a linear listing of all of the "comp" newsgroups
without any hierarchical groupings.
- If you want a complete linear listing of all of the newsgroups,
search for just a period ".", which will return every newsgroup
in alphabetical order.
Where there is a will, there usually is a way.
