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### 4.5 `news`, `nntp` and `snews`

The `news`, `nntp`, and `snews` schemes, defined in RFC 1738, are used for reading Usenet newsgroups. For compatibility with non-standard-compliant news clients, the `url` library allows host and port fields to be included in `news` URLs, even though they are properly only allowed for `nntp` and `snews`.

`news` and `nntp` URLs have the following form:

‘`news:newsgroup`’

  Retrieves a list of messages in newsgroup;

‘`news:message-id`’

  Retrieves the message with the given message-id;

‘`news:*`’

  Retrieves a list of all available newsgroups;

‘`nntp://host:port/newsgroup`’
‘`nntp://host:port/message-id`’
‘`nntp://host:port/*`’

  Similar to the ‘`news`’ versions.

The default port for `nntp` (and `news`) is 119. The difference between an `nntp` URL and a `news` URL is that an `nttp` URL may specify an article by its number. The ‘`snews`’ scheme is the same as ‘`nntp`’, except that it is tunneled through SSL and has default port 563.

These URLs are retrieved via the Gnus package.

User Option: url-news-server

  This variable specifies the default news server from which to fetch news, if no server was specified in the URL. The default value, `nil`, means to use the server specified by the standard environment variable ‘`NNTPSERVER`’, or ‘`news`’ if that environment variable is unset.