The K Desktop Environment

5.5. The Message Display Settings dialog

Here you can change the way messages are displayed on your screen.

Header Style

You can choose between:

Fancy (the default)

Displays the headers nicely formatted, and with a graphic. The headers shown are: Subject, From, Date, Newsgroups, Followup-To and References as numbers which are clickable to take you to the referenced message.

Brief

Displays minimal headers, the same as above but in compact format, and in bare text. Takes up very little screen space if this is a concern.

Standard

Displays the most commonly useful headers (Subject, From, Newsgroups, Followup-To and clickable References,) in plain text. Takes up less screen space than Fancy but more than Brief

Long

Displays the same as Standard with the addition of the date

All

Shows all available headers, including so called "X" or custom headers, which some people use to hide a fun comment, or other wierd and wonderful things. Usually not very interesting, and takes up a lot of screenspace. The references are still clickable, but shown in the full messageid format.

Attachment Style

Configures KRN's handling of attached files. You can choose from:

Iconic

KRN will display an icon in the message body, which you can click to display the attachment. This requires that KDE understands the mime-type, which is beyond the scope of this document, but you can find information in the help files for KDE

Smart

The default. KRN will try to determine what the attachment is, and if it's something KRN is capable of displaying directly, for example a jpeg image, it will do so. Attachments KRN doesn't recognise, or can't display (for example, a .rar archive,) it will display an icon.

Inline

KRN will attempt to display all attachments directly in the body of the article.

Font Size

Choose the size text is displayed on your screen. You can choose between Small, Normal, which is the default, Large, and Huge. Your choice may depend on several things, including your eyesight, the resolution you are using, and your choice of font in the next option.

Standard Font

Choose the standard proportional font to display text in.

A proportional font in which all the letters do not necessarily take up the same amount of space: a "W" is much wider than an "l", and most of the text you see in KRN will be displayed with this font.

The default is Helvetica, which should be standard with most linux distributions. I have a personal fondness for lucida sans for reading on screen. Your choice here is immediately reflected directly below the box, as the text "Standard Font Test" is updated to show your choices. This option is a drop box, and the contents are any font available to KDE.

Fixed Font

A Fixed font is one where a "W" and an "l" take up the same amount of space. This option works exactly like the one above for proportional fonts, in that you can choose from the drop down list, and see your choices reflected in the sample text box. The fonts available in the list are limited to those that KDE knows are fixed width. The default is Courier, again this should be provided as standard with most linux distributions. Others you may like to try if they're available on your computer are Andale Mono, Lucida Console, and Lucida Typewriter.

Background Color

Sets the background color of the message window, that is, where the text of the currently selected article is shown. The default is white. Selecting the colored bar will open a KDE standard colour picker, where you can choose a color to change to.

Foreground Color

Sets the foreground color, that is the color of the text, for the message display window. The default is black. Selecting the colored bar will open a standard KDE color picker, allowing you to choose another color.

Link Color

This option allows you to change the color of clickable links. KRN makes links from the References headers, the From and Reply To headers, and anything it finds in the text of the message that appears to be an email address or a URL.

Followed Color

Changes the color of links you have already followed.

Use only one window

This is selected by default, and causes KRN to reuse the current window if you choose a different newsgroup to view. If you deselect this, KRN will open a new window for each newsgroup you select. This can become unwieldy if you don't close them as you're done with them, but give it a try if you like to work that way.

Split Window Vertically

The default display of KRN is to have the message headers displayed in a panel above the message bodies. Selecting this option will change the display to have the headers displayed in a panel to the left of the bodies. This works best on high resolution screens, so you can see all the information in the header panel.

Select the "OK" button to apply and save your changes, and close the dialog. Select "Cancel" to abandon your changes without applying any, and close the dialog.