News Flash -- Android Newsgroup Downloader includes a built in wizard to help you post large files in multiple parts to newsgroups.

First of all, let's discuss why you need to use this wizard. The newsgroup servers place a limit on how large a message can be, and usually it's somewhere in the range of a megabyte, or about 20,000 - 30,000 lines of text. If the file you're posting is less than a megabyte in size, then nothing special is required. You can use the regular Android "post" command, and attach your file to it.

However, if the file you're posting is larger than a megabyte in size, then it won't fit in a single message, and has to be split amongst several messages. For example, if you have a 60 Megabyte MPEG file that you want to post, then it probably needs to be split into 60 or more messages.

The "Post File as Multiple Parts" wizard does this automatically. All you have to do is enter the filename, and Android will handle the splitting it into multiple messages and posting them. Here is what the wizard looks like:

In the screenshot above, I've selected a Lindsey Buckingham music video for posting to the alt.binaries.test newsgroup. As you can see, Android has decided to split this video, which is about 27MB in size, into 38 messages.

You can even enter some descriptive text into the "long description" box, and android will post that as a 0/ message in the set. Long descriptions are useful as they are a place where you can explain what you're posting.

For more about how to post to newsgroups with android, check out the posting to newsgroups tutorial.

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