.TH NNGOBACK 1 "Release 6.6"
.\" (c) Copyright 1988, 1990, Kim F. Storm.  All rights reserved.
.UC 4
.SH NAME
nngoback \- make news articles unread on a day-by-day basis (nn)
.SH SYNOPSIS
.B nngoback
[ \-\fBNQvi\fP ]
[\-\fBd\fP] \fIdays\fP
[ \fIgroup\fP ]...
.SH DESCRIPTION
.I nngoback
will rewind the .newsrc record file of \fBnn\fP(1) one or more \fIdays\fP.
It can be used to rewind all groups, or only a specified set of
\fIgroups\fP.
In other words, \fInngoback\fP can mark news articles which have
arrived on the system during the last \fIdays\fP days unread.
.LP
Only \fIsubscribed\fP groups that occur in the current presentation
sequence are rewound.  That means that if no \fIgroup\fP arguments are
specified, all groups occurring in the sequence defined in the
\fIinit\fP file will be rewound.  Otherwise, only the groups specified
on the argument line will be rewound.
.LP
When a group is rewound, the information about selections, partially
read digests etc. are discarded.  It will print notifications about
this unless the \-\fBQ\fP (quiet) option is used.
.LP
If the \-\fBi\fP (interactive) option is specified, \fInngoback\fP
will report for each how many articles \fIcan be\fP marked unread, and
ask for confirmation before going back in that group.
.LP
If the \-\fBv\fP (verbose) option is specified, \fInngoback\fP will
report how many articles are marked unread.
.LP
If the \-\fBN\fP (no-update) option is specified, \fInngoback\fP will
perform the entire goback operation, but not update the .newsrc file.
.LP
If you are not up-to-date with your news reading, you can also use
\fBnngoback\fP to catch up to only have the last few days of news
waiting to be read in the following way:
.br
	nn \-a0
.br
	nngoback 3
.br
The \fBnn\fP command will mark all articles in all groups as read (answer
.I all
to the catch-up question.)  The following \fBnngoback\fP will then make
the last three days of news unread again.
.LP
Examples:
.TP
nngoback 0
Mark the articles which have arrived today as unread.
.TP
nngoback 1
Mark the articles which have arrived yesterday and today as unread.
.TP
nngoback 6
Mark the articles which have arrived during the last week as unread.
.LP
You cannot go more than 14 days back with \fInngoback\fP.
(You can change this limit as described below.)
.SH THE BACK_ACT DAEMON
It is a prerequisite for the use of \fInngoback\fP that the script
\fBback_act\fP is executed at an appropriate time once (and only once)
every day.  Preferably this is done by \fBcron\fP right before the
bacth of news for `today' is received.  \fBback_act\fP will maintain
copies of the active file for the last 14 days.
.LP
Optionally, the \fBback_act\fP 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.
.SH FILES
.DT
.ta \w'~/.newsrc.goback'u+5m
.\"ta 0 21
~/.newsrc	The record of read articles.
.br
~/.newsrc.goback	The original rc file before goback.
.br
$db/active.\fIN\fP	The \fIN\fP days `old' active file.
.br
$master/back_act	Script run by cron to maintain old active files.
.br
.DT
.SH SEE ALSO
nn(1), nncheck(1), nngrab(1), nngrep(1), nnpost(1), nntidy(1)
.br
nnadmin(1M), nnusage(1M), nnmaster(8)
.SH NOTES
\fBnngoback\fP 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 \fIback_act\fP
script should be run once and only once every day for \fInngoback\fP
to work properly.
.LP
The days are counted relative to the time the active files were copied.
.SH AUTHOR
Kim F. Storm, Texas Instruments A/S, Denmark
.br
E-mail: storm@texas.dk