Previewing Posts in NewzToolz

When you are writing a new post in NewzToolz, you can click the Preview button to see how it will appear on Usenet.

NewzToolz will show you your post in its raw format so that you can see exactly what will be sent out. At the top, you will see the “message headers”. Each message-header is on its own line, and is formatted as:

[header name] colon [header text]

For example, the “From” message-header might look like this:

From: Bob

NewzToolz will use the text you have entered into the program for the “From” message-header and the “Subject” message-header. It will then set the “Newsgroups” message-header to the newsgroup(s) showing on the Send Post window. The “Date” message-header will take the time from your computer and convert it to GMT, which is the Usenet standard. It will carry over any extra message-headers you entered into the “Other Headers” box on the Send Post window, and finally, it will create the “Message-ID” header which always must be present. The program doesn’t let you change the “Message-ID” header because it must be unique among the millions of headers on the Usenet server. So, NewzToolz makes a long ID with some random data in it to ensure that it will be unique.

NewzToolz always makes you go through the Post Preview window because when you post frequently and use multiple identities, it is very easy to dash off a post using the wrong identity and accidentally reveal yourself in a place where you want to remain anonymous. So, this step gives you chance to take a second and double-check the details of your post.