4. Problems and Issues

4.1. Fixed-width fonts and alt.ascii-art

ASCII art requires fixed-width fonts to view. Clicking the fixed font button above the message headers will simply lock the message so the vertical scrollbar won't work.

The easiest way to deal with this is to go into "Special -> Setup Xnews -> Fonts and Colors" and select a fixed font for all types of text. The default "Fixed" will not work; use "Misc Fixed", size 12.

4.2. Erasing sections of text

Selecting sections of text with the mouse and pressing Backspace or Delete will delete the text from the screen, but for some reason it might still be there when the message is sent or posted, depending on the window manager. KDE seems to work fine, but Gnome with Sawfish seems to cause problems.

The only way to guarantee deleting sections of text is to press Backspace or Delete for each character. Be careful when holding down keys.

4.3. Window sizing problems

There are several problems relating to the sizing of the windows. When the CatchUp button is clicked, the main groups list window shrinks and must be maximized. These are mostly minor annoyances, except...

4.3.1. Closing Xnews

Depending on the window manager (Sawfish has problems with this), it may be impossible to close the Xnews window, and there is no "Exit" option in the main menu. To get around this, make sure that the window is sized so that the terminal used to launch Xnews is accessible, and close that terminal. Do not press Ctrl-C, etc as this will cause problems. Be sure to click the Save button to save the newsrc first.

4.4. Binary newsgroups

The posting of binaries to newsgroups does not currently work. An attempted post will lock at 1% completion and give an error message when the post is aborted, posting only the text portion of the message. However, the combining and decoding of binaries works with no problems at all.

4.5. Text on some tabs are indented

If Windows XP is "emulated," certain tabs will have text indented, leaving some of it out of visibility. The solution is to use Windows 98SE files instead of XP files. It isn't that important.

4.6. No sample text in font selection dialog

If Windows XP is "emulated," the font selection dialog will not show sample text. According to a Wine mailing list message, there are certain un-"emulated" functions in Windows XP "emulation." Version 1.1 of this document was updated with new files to copy and configure when using Windows 98SE "emulation" in order to solve this problem. Until the Wine developers implement these Windows XP functions, use a Windows 98SE configuration to get around this issue. If a Windows 98SE computer is not available, just apply changes and look at the main window.