Getting Started.

Glitter User's Guide
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# Chapter 2. Getting Started.

First select the Available tab and select the groups that you wish to subscribe to. Then click the Subscribe button.

Next set your preferences (File->Preferences). On the 'Defaults' page set a Store Directory. This is where Glitter will store all your binaries by default. You may ignore the 'Description File' and 'Hook Program' entries for now.

Next select the 'Sample Size' page. The first time that you download binaries, you may find that there are a huge number of messages on your news server for each group that you have subscribed to. This can result in a very long download time. A way to avoid this is to set the sample size to something sensible like 300. Then each time you subscribe to a new newsgroup, Gliter will initially examine only 300 messages. The next time you download from that group Glitter will examine all new messages.

Next select the 'News Server' page. The 'Concurrent Connections' entry specifies the maximum number of connections that will be made to your news server. Most news servers will allow several connections. Setting this to a number like 3 should make efficient use of your available bandwidth, but be aware that not all news servers will allow multiple connections. This will increase your download speed.

Close the preferences page. You may now click the 'Download' button on the toolbar to start the download process. Alternatively switch to the 'Scheduler' page and select the times you would like Gary to connect to your news server and retrieve the binaries. Then click the 'Save' button on the toolbar. You may then close the program. Gary will download the files from your selected newsgroups at the specified time.

You may want to set a store directory independently for each group. You may do this on the 'Subscribed page' by selecting a group and then entering the directory in the Store Directory entry box.

That should be enough to get you started. Later please read the section on 'Hook Programs'. The 'Hook Program' mechanism gives you great control over which binaries Glitter will download, letting you avoid spam and unwanted files

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Introduction. |  | Store Directories.