THE ADASS NEWSGROUPS

"adass" is a USENET alternate news hierarchy, available only by subscription
(unless your local news server already happens to carry it).  The adass
hierarchy is for news and discussions about astronomical software, and is
named after the Astronomical Data Analysis Software and Systems (ADASS)
conference.

Here is a current (October 1994) list of the adass newsgroups.

adass.test              Test postings.
adass.admin             Administration of the adass news hierarchy.
adass.general           Items of general interest.
adass.misc              General discussion of astronomical software.
adass.conference        Software conference announcements.

adass.iraf.readme       General information about the IRAF news facility.
adass.iraf.announce     Announcements of new IRAF software, documentation, etc.
adass.iraf.buglog       Project bug notices (this is not a discussion group)
adass.iraf.applications Discussion of IRAF applications software.
adass.iraf.programming  Discussion of IRAF programming.
adass.iraf.sources      Archive newsgroup for small programs, scripts, etc.
adass.iraf.system       IRAF system issues and system administration.
adass.iraf.misc         Miscellaneous discussion of IRAF software.

adass.fits.dishfits     FITS for single dish telescopes
adass.fits.oirfits      Optical/IR FITS discussions


When this facility is fully operational we hope that a number of additional
newsgroups will be added representing a range of astronomical software
projects.

The "adass.iraf" newsgroups are used for news and discussions of the IRAF
software and the IRAF project (IRAF = Image Reduction and Analysis Facility).
The main discussion or question-and-answer groups are "applications",
"programming", "system", and "misc"; feel free to post to these newsgroups.
Announcements of new software, new documentation, meetings, etc. may be
posted to adass.iraf.announce.  The newsgroups adass.iraf.readme,
adass.iraf.announce, and adass.iraf.buglog are not discussion newsgroups, so
please post queries and followup discussions to the other newsgroups.  In
particular, don't post reports of possible bugs to the buglog newsgroup.
This newsgroup is intended only to log bugs which have already been checked
out and verified by the responsible programmer.

If you subscribe to a newsgroup via the listserver you can also post to a
newsgroup by replying to an article you receive via email from the listserver
(this feature is available only for the discussion newsgroups).


LOCAL ACCESS TO THE ADASS NEWSGROUPS

Any site that wishes to get a feed of the adass newsgroups should have their
local news administrator contact news@iraf.noao.edu.  A feed is necessary to
make the newsgroups appear on your local news server so that you can use
your favoritie newsreader (rn, rrn, xrn, vnews, etc.) to read them along
with all the other news such as sci and comp.


REMOTE ACCESS TO THE ADASS NEWSGROUPS

You can also read and post to the adass newsgroups from anywhere on the
Internet by connecting to iraf.noao.edu with any NNTP-based newsreader.

For example with XRN one could do:

    % xrn -nntpServer iraf.noao.edu -newsrcFile ~/.newsrc-adass

Alternatively most newsreaders recognize the environment variables NNTPSERVER
and NEWSRC hence (for csh) one could set

    % setenv NNTPSERVER iraf.noao.edu
    % setenv NEWSRC ~/.newsrc-adass

to direct a newsreader utility to read the adass news from iraf.noao.edu.


REMOTE ACCESS VIA THE WEB

The following URL can be used to read the adass newsgroups with a Web
client such as mosaic:

    http://iraf.noao.edu/adass/adass_news.html


LISTSERVER NEWSGROUP ACCESS

It is also possible to receive any of the adass newsgrups via email.
The list server address is "listproc@iraf.noao.edu".  To get information
about the list server send it the following request:

    % mail listproc@iraf.noao.edu
    help
    <eof>

(You can omit the Subject: line).  This will cause a list of all the commands
recognized by the list server to be returned via email.

To subscribe to a newsgroup send the following request to the listserver:

    subscribe <newsgroup> <your name and affiliation>
e.g.
    % mail listproc@iraf.noao.edu
    subscribe adass-iraf-announce "Joe Smith, Boston University"
    subscribe adass-iraf-buglog "Joe Smith, Boston University"
    <eof>

Note that the "dashed" form of the newsgroup/list name is used for the
listserver, rather than the "dotted" form.  Multiple requests can be
included on successive lines, for example to subscribe to multiple
newsgroups.  To unsubscribe from a newsgroup send the "unsubscribe
<newsgroup>" request.  You should receive a confirmation of your request
when it is processed.

NOTE:  The ADASS newsgroups are not officially moderated, although we will
cancel any commercial, spam or otherwise inappropriate messages.  Messages
are cancelled as soon as they appear on the NOAO server but it may take a
while before they are cancelled on other feeds.  You WILL NOT see these
messages in the email exploder.