Selecting a post: Select the group you want to download from, then retrieve and examine the headers there for posts you might want to get. If you find something that looks interesting, see if the post is complete - which means "Are all the files and parts present?". Incomplete, or "broken" posts are covered in "Things to look out for" below. The following example is of a "clean" post. 
In the post that is highlighted above (the entire 10 files of that set constitute the "post"), you can see that all 10 files in the post are there, including NFO and SFV files. Each zip is made up of 10 segments, or parts (the '/10' tells you how many parts should be in the zip). This is because posting programs break larger files up into small segments- a 3-MB zip will be broken-up into 10 parts if the poster has chosen a "lines" setting of 6500 lines per part. In this case all the parts are there for all 8 zips, the NFO and SFV are small, and consist of single segments each. All files are selected, and to mark them for downloading, you can right-click and select "Mark for Retrieval", or you can simply press "M" on the keyboard, or you can click the "Mark for Retrieval" button on Agent's menu bar.  A little down-arrow will appear to the left of the files you have marked. Alternatively you could simply press "Enter" while a file, or files, is high-lighted and Agent will begin what it calls "Priority Retrieval". If you have files marked for download you can begin downloading them by clicking on the "Download Marked Files" button:  or from the Online menu, by selecting the "Get Marked Message Bodies" option. The down-arrow to the left of your marked files will turn into a lightning-bolt, showing that they are queued for downloading, and that Agent has started downloading them. You may repeat the procedures described above for all files you wish to retrieve (download.) Now, if you happen to be one of those folks blessed with a high-speed connection, like cable or DSL, you might consider this little trick- select half of your desired files, mark them for retrieval as noted above, and then press the Download Marked Files button to start downloading the Marked messages. Then go back and highlight the remainder of your files and click on the Get Selected Message Bodies icon button  (or press "Enter") to begin a "Priority Retrieval" of those files. At this point Agent will have two simultaneous download threads going at the same time. This frequently provides a higher overall download rate than a single thread (but this procedure really isn't recommended for limited bandwidth dial-up and single-channel ISDN users.) Since the poster in the example above included an SFV file, you will be able to immediately verify that each download file or part is in perfect condition as soon as each associated file is downloaded and saved to disk. See the section on using an SFV for <more_info> When a file is downloaded successfully and has been saved to disk the lightning-bolt on the left side turns into a green piece of paper. If it has not been saved to disk, the piece-of-paper icon is yellow. That indicates that the file is in Agents database, but not yet saved to disk. 
Finally, when a file has been successfully downloaded and saved to disk, the lightning-bolt on the left side turns into a green-colored piece of paper. If it has been downloaded, but not yet been saved to disk, the paper will be yellow-colored. To "save" the file, and turn the yellow to green, highlight the file, right click and select "Save all attachments" That is basically all there is to the "normal" downloading of binary files with Forté's Agent news reader. If you're wondering, "So, what do I do now that I have all these parts?" be sure to visit the section on using WinRAR, WinZip, and the other compression / decompression tools to learn how to extract and/or combine all your hard work into something usable. |
Joining sections of a file when they are all in the same group or on the same server is simple: | Note that Agent may not show file segments properly if they were posted with 'yEnc' (or something else) after the file name. To fix this, edit agent.ini with a text processor such as notepad, (agent.ini is usually located in the "Data" sub-directory of Agent's directory) and check for the following: In section [Attachment] RequireFilenameWithTag=1 needs to be changed to RequireFilenameWithTag=0 Save and exit the text editor. Restart Agent, and you should see posts with something after the filename displayed properly. | Downloading incomplete yEnc or UU-encoded files with Agent, for use with PAR2 Many tutorials exist on this subject, but it is not very difficult or complex. With the advent of PAR2, formerly useless incomplete files have become usable- but Forté Agent still will not automatically join the sections if any are missing, even in the 2.0 version. Some tutorials indicate that sections need to be downloaded and saved as text files; then decoded by using a stand-alone yEnc or UU decoder, but that isn’t necessary using current versions of Agent. For this example Agent version 2.0 build 646 was used.  This section of the tutorial will deal solely with getting all possible sections of an incomplete file for use with PAR2. In Agent, a file with one or more sections missing is represented by an icon of a piece of paper with the left lower quadrant missing, and the right upper corner turned upward. This makes it easy to spot the incomplete files.
Selecting such a file will show something like this in the message pane: [33694 lines, incomplete] [This is a multi-part message, of which only 7 of 8 parts are available.] [These parts are unavailable: 4] [To retrieve the incomplete message, use menu option Message | Join Sections.] Following that instruction, a dialog window appears which allows us to put the available sections in sequential order, if they are not in the proper sequence.  Looking at the far right of the segment-view pane you see the segment numbers [1/8], [2/8], .. [8/8]; but section [4/8] is missing. The other sections appear in proper numerical sequence so no movement of any of them is necessary. Were any to be out of order, they could be selected and moved up or down in the sequence using the buttons in the dialog. All you need do with this message is to click on “Join” This will cause Agent to logically (but not yet physically) join the message. The icon signifying the file is incomplete will disappear. Then you can retrieve the message in the ordinary fashion (Agent will automatically do any decoding necessary,) for use with PAR2 recovery files. The message/file will still be incomplete, of course. But all the available sections will have been downloaded and saved as a single file. It is as simple as that. The file will be named correctly, and it will be downloaded into the same directory as the other files of the post. When you run QuickPAR all seven of the segments downloaded will be usable so that only one segment of PAR2 file will be needed for QuickPAR to recreate the original file. To join the sections after they have downloaded, the procedure is similar: |
 | This is what multiple sections look like when downloaded, but not joined or saved. The first segment appears as a yellow piece of paper, all successive segments appear as white pieces of paper. |  | When you have all the sections downloaded, highlight them all and right-click. This menu will appear, select Join Sections... |
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 This window will then appear. Here is where you order the sections so that they are in proper sequence. When you have them all in the proper order, click Join. After joining click Save, to save the file to disk, at which point it will appear as a single green piece of paper as shown in the screenshot above. (In this example not all the parts are available.) | | | To join sections that are from different groups, but which are the same files posted by the same poster using the same program and settings, you need to make a temporary directory in Agent using the "Group" menu, select "New Folder", name it anything you like. Copy all the message fragments you have downloaded from all the groups to that folder, highlight them there, right click, and join as shown above. All you did was put them into one place so that Agent could grab them at once. You can do that with multiple instances of Agent using different servers as well, as long as there is a common folder that the segments can be downloaded or copied to. Continue reading for simple instructions on how to set-up multiple instances of Agent. Multiple Instances of Agent: It is very simple to configure Agent for multiple servers and multiple instances, which can run concurrently. How to Configure Agent for Multiple Users and Servers (excerpted from Agent's help file.) Agent stores its settings and data files in the "Start in" folder specified in its shortcut. This allows a single copy of the program's common files (such as, the .exe, help, spell check files) to be used by several users or with several news servers.
To set up Agent for multiple users or servers:
- Create a folder for the program files, including agent.exe, agent.hlp, *.cod, main*.clx, and main*.tlx. (See Agent's Directories and Files.)
- Create a separate folder for each user or news server (e.g., c:\agent\his and c:\agent\hers).
- Create a shortcut for each user or news server with the program (e.g., c:\agent\agent.exe) specified as the Target, and the user's or news server's folder (e.g., c:\agent\his and c:\agent\hers) in the \"Start in\" field.
To run a copy of Agent for that particular server, just double-click on the shortcut for that server. You can have multiple copies for different servers running at the same time.
Read the Agent help files, give it a try and if you have any questions feel free to ask in the discussion group at news:alt.binaries.warez.ibm-pc.d
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| | Things to look out for: "Broken" or incomplete files:  This is an example of what incomplete files look like in the browser window- a piece of paper with the corner missing. Look also at the file numbering - (01/22) - that tells you there were 22 files in this post, but as you can see file 02/22 never even partially made it to this server. This post is unsalvageable using this server alone. By using a "filtered view" which shows only files with all sections present, none of these "broken" files would even appear in the browser window.
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| |  This is what you see in the message pane (where you read the text of a message) when you highlight an incomplete file. As you can see only 8 of the 13 parts have made it to this server.
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| | OBZ: (One Big Zip) 
This is an example of an OBZ post. It is botched, horribly. The poster of this hadn't yet learned how to use his posting program, and didn't test his settings in alt.binaries.test before posting to the news group. He probably attempted to "Attach multiple files as digest." In addition to that, he posted CD-images in a group that is not intended for CD images; where people don't look for them, and where many don't even know how to use them! A post like this indicates a new poster. Everyone was new once, and no one was born knowing how to do this. So if you're going to post, learn how to do it properly first, please! This fellow wasted his time and everyone else's with this useless post. Hopefully he will learn to do this properly, and post the CD-image to a CD-image group, which is where the greatest number of people will be able to take full advantage of it. | | | Agent's Subject Line Too long, or Headers are too messy. | | |
Problem: You get headers like this, with trailing characters after the (n/n) section. Post 3D Studio Max 4.2 CD 2/2 [11/34] - 3dsmaxcd2.r10 (01/89) 3dmaxcd2zippedattachment
Fix this by making a one letter change in Agent's '.ini' file.
First, close Agent.
Now, open the folder that has your copy of Agent, and locate the file named "AGENT.INI"
You can open this file by clicking on it or by right clicking on it and selecting
> Open With > Notepad or > Other Program > Select Notepad (or other simple text editor of your choice) from the list.
When the .ini file is opened scroll down to the section that begins with "[Attachment]": :
[Attachment]
Find the line that begins: "RequireFilenameWithTag"; we're going to change a number 1 to a number 0.
RequireFilenameWithTag=1
change to:
RequireFilenameWithTag=0
That's all. Now close the .ini file, saving the changes
In Agent this truncates the display line to allow no characters beyond the (N/M) tag for attachments, effectively cleaning up the subject line.
Now the Subject line displays: Post 3D Studio Max 4.2 CD 2/2 [11/34] - 3dsmaxcd2.r10 (01/89) <-- after
Post 3D Studio Max 4.2 CD 2/2 [11/34] - 3dsmaxcd2.r10 (01/89) 3dmaxcd2zippedattachment <-- before Note that this can also affect the way Agent displays multi-segment files, i.e.: Post 3D Studio Max 4.2 CD 2/2 [11/34] - 3dsmaxcd2.r10 (01/89) 3dmaxcd2zippedattachment
Post 3D Studio Max 4.2 CD 2/2 [11/34] - 3dsmaxcd2.r10 (02/89) 3dmaxcd2zippedattachment
..
Post 3D Studio Max 4.2 CD 2/2 [11/34] - 3dsmaxcd2.r10 (89/89) 3dmaxcd2zippedattachment becomes a single: Post 3D Studio Max 4.2 CD 2/2 [11/34] - 3dsmaxcd2.r10 (*/89) But only if you also have the option "Join multi-part messages when retrieving or saving attachments," checked in the "Group/Default Properties for all Groups/Receive Files" sub-menu. |
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