Summary of News Commands by Paradigm

The following key principles underlie all of the command forms that have been described in the preceding section:

The primary purpose of all news window commands is to facilitate the rapid definition of values for a news window’s current category and current query settings, thus selecting a current index list which will be meaningful to the user.

The current query can be set directly, canceled, set by appending a new query element to an existing query (current or previous), or set by direct recall.

Excepting the semantics of using a solitary forward-slash (‘/’), all search query commands can be entered in conjunction with the selection of a new current category.

A double-slash (“//”) always indicates a source reference to the previous query

A single-slash (‘/’) always has some relation to the current query: (1) to set or cancel the current query, or (2) to use the current query as a source reference in defining a new current query.

Following is a synopsis of all news window commands, grouping them by usage paradigm.

The direct-set command forms are:

/ search_query

category / search_query

The query-cancellation command forms are:

category

The append command forms which combine an existing query with a new query element are:

/ operator search_query

// operator search_query

category / operator search_query

category // operator search_query

The direct recall forms are:

category /

category //