NAME

     nngoback - make news articles unread on a  day-by-day  basis
     (nn)

SYNOPSIS

     nngoback [ -NQvi ] [-d] days [ group ]...

DESCRIPTION

     nngoback will rewind the .newsrc record file of nn(1) one or
     more  days.   It can be used to rewind all groups, or only a
     specified set of groups.  In other words, nngoback can  mark
     news  articles  which  have arrived on the system during the
     last days days unread.

     Only subscribed groups that occur in the  current  presenta-
     tion  sequence  are  rewound.   That  means that if no group
     arguments  are  specified,  all  groups  occurring  in   the
     sequence  defined  in the init file will be rewound.  Other-
     wise, only the groups specified on the argument line will be
     rewound.

     When a group is rewound, the information  about  selections,
     partially  read  digests  etc. are discarded.  It will print
     notifications about this unless the - Q  (quiet)  option  is
     used.

     If the -i (interactive) option is specified,  nngoback  will
     report  for each how many articles can be marked unread, and
     ask for confirmation before going back in that group.

     If the -v  (verbose)  option  is  specified,  nngoback  will
     report how many articles are marked unread.

     If the -N (no-update) option  is  specified,  nngoback  will
     perform  the  entire  goback  operation,  but not update the
     .newsrc file.

     If you are not up-to-date with your news  reading,  you  can
     also use nngoback to catch up to only have the last few days
     of news waiting to be read in the following way:
          nn -a0
          nngoback 3
     The nn command will mark all articles in all groups as  read
     (answer  all to the catch-up question.)  The following nngo-
     back will then make the  last  three  days  of  news  unread
     again.

     Examples:

     nngoback 0
          Mark the articles which have arrived today as unread.

     nngoback 1
          Mark the articles  which  have  arrived  yesterday  and
          today as unread.

     nngoback 6
          Mark the articles which have arrived  during  the  last
          week as unread.

     You cannot go more than 14 days back  with  nngoback.   (You
     can change this limit as described below.)

THE BACK_ACT DAEMON

     It is a prerequisite for the use of nngoback that the script
     back_act  is  executed at an appropriate time once (and only
     once) every day.  Preferably this  is  done  by  cron  right
     before  the bacth of news for `today' is received.  back_act
     will maintain copies of the active  file  for  the  last  14
     days.

     Optionally, the back_act program accepts a single  numerical
     argument  specifying  how  many copies of the active file it
     should maintain.  This is useful if news is expired after  7
     days,  in which case keeping more than 7 days of active file
     copies is wasteful.

FILES

     ~/.newsrc            The record of read articles.
     ~/.newsrc.goback     The original rc file before goback.
     $db/active.N         The N days `old' active file.
     $master/back_act     Script run  by  cron  to  maintain  old
     active files.

SEE ALSO

     nn(1),   nncheck(1),   nngrab(1),   nngrep(1),    nnpost(1),
     nntidy(1)
     nnadmin(1M), nnusage(1M), nnmaster(8)

NOTES

     nngoback does not check the age of the `old'  active  files;
     it will blindly believe that active.0 was created today, and
     that active.7 is really  seven  days  old!   Therefore,  the
     back_act  script  should be run once and only once every day
     for nngoback to work properly.

     The days are counted relative to the time the  active  files
     were copied.

AUTHOR

     Kim F. Storm, Texas Instruments A/S, Denmark
     E-mail: storm@texas.dk