Location in the unPoster: The Watcher can be opened from the File menu.
The Watcher’s job is to watch your newsgroups, and create the list of files that you see on the Lister. You can have any number of newsgroups and any number of Usenet servers. When you click the Add button, you will see all of the Usenet servers and newsgroups that you have created and can add them to the Watcher. To use the Watcher, you must create at least one server and one newsgroup via the Setup menu.
If you use several servers, it is best to sort the list by server so that the Watcher can save time logging on and off.
The Watcher’s list can be sorted by clicking the column headers. The columns can be stretched by dragging the column dividers in the header area to the left or right.
You can turn newsgroups on and off by clicking in the On/Off column while the Watcher is not running.
The Last Post column shows the number of the last post that the Watcher scanned.
The “%” column shows how much of the newsgroup the Watcher has analyzed. When you start up the unPoster, this number is left blank because the Watcher has no way of knowing what new posts have arrived in the newsgroups and what old ones have expired since you last ran the program.
The Headers column shows the number of headers that the Watcher has processed for each newsgroup during the current session. The Files column shows the number of files it found within those headers.
The Lap count is the number of times the Watcher has cycled through all the newsgroups.
The number to the right of the Total Headers count is the total number of files found.
The count at the lower left is the number of headers downloaded or the number of headers analyzed, depending on which phase the Watcher is in.
The count at the lower right is the number of headers downloaded per second or the number headers analyzed per second, depending on which phase the Watcher is in.
The Watcher only scans headers. It is not practical to download entire posts to see if they contain files. In binary newsgroups, that would require an insane amount of bandwidth. As a consequence of this, the Watcher will not find posts from those clueless people who post files without putting a filename in the subject. In the vast majority of cases, this is not a problem since most posting software automatically puts a filename in the subject.