Creating a new message Click on the newsgroup you want to post to in the the storage view. From the Message menu, select “Create ...” A new message composition window will appear with the newsgroup field properly set. If you want to make a cross-post (a message sent to two or more newsgroups), you’ll have to type in the names of the groups yourself, separated by commas. Eventually, the Newsgroups: button will bring up a list of newsgroups to choose from, but I haven’t written that window yet. Type a subject for your post, and then the message contents. When you’re finished, press the “Save to Outbox” button, which will save your message to the Outbox.
Replying to an existing message Select the message you want to reply to in the headers view. From the Message menu, pick “Reply ...” A new message composition window will appear, pre-filled with the quoted contents of the post you’re replying to. Just as with a top-level message, you can press the “Save to Outbox” button to save your message to the Outbox, or “Save as Draft” to edit it later.
Editing drafts As you might expect, you can resume editing a post in the Drafts folder by double-clicking on it. When you’re ready to send it, press the “Save to Outbox” button.
Custom font You can set a custom font to be used for composing messages. Click inside the text area in the message composition window. From the Edit menu, select “Show Fonts,” which should cause the font picker window to appear. The font and font size selected in the picker window is immediately applied to the view.
Line wrap The composition window wraps text so that lines contain the number of characters you selected in the Preferences window. The program defaults to 78 characters per line. This can be confusing, because most people expect text to wrap to the width of the window, rather than to a specific number of characters. But I think this way is better, because it allows you to see where line breaks will occur when your message is posted to USENET. Unfortunately, this feature only works if you have selected a fixed-width font for composing messages. I tried to make it work for variable-width fonts as well, but Mac OS X’s Cocoa framework doesn’t allow for such a thing at this time.
Setting up a signature file You can set up a signature file that contains text to be appended to every message you create. Signatures are set independently for each identity you create. Signatures are covered in the help topic Getting Started.
Spell checking This feature is provided by Mac OS X’s built-in spell checker. When you’re ready to proof your work, select the Edit menu, then “Spelling,” then “Spelling ...” If the spell checker finds problems, it will present each misspelled word in turn, along with guesses indicating what word it thinks you might have been trying for.
If you prefer, you can turn on continuous spell-checking, where the program puts a dotted underline under every word it thinks is misspelled. Click somewhere within the message composition area, to ensure that it is selected. From the Edit menu, pick “Spelling,” then “Check Spelling as You Type.”
Replacing straight quotes with “smart quotes” Pineapple News can automatically replace straight quotes with “smart quotes” as you type. to enable this feature, click inside the message composition area, select the Edit menu, then pick “Smart Quotes.” If you need to type a straight-up-and-down quote mark, you can temporarily disable this feature.
Messages you create will not be sent right away. You can write as many of them as you like, all of which will collect in the Outbox folder. When you’re ready to send them, select the Transfer menu, then “Upload,” then “All Accounts.” Messages will also be sent whenever you select the “Transfer All” menu option.
If you change your mind about sending a message that’s in the Outbox, you can select it and press the Delete key, which will send it to the trash. If you decide you don’t want to send it right now, you can double-click on it to load it into a message composition window, then press the “Save as Draft” button. The message will be saved to the Drafts folder. Messages in the Drafts folder will not be sent.
Once a message has been sent, it is moved from the Outbox folder to Sent Messages. What happens to it after that is up to you. You can delete your sent messages or drag them to storage folders, your choice.