It is possible to automatically have messages from a news group be fed into  a
real  folder, and visa versa.  This allows BULLETIN messages to be shared with
a news group, thus giving access to such messages to people who  do  not  have
access  to  BULLETIN.   This can also be combined with email access for people
who have neither BULLETIN nor news group access. 

To associate a folder with a news group, place the name of the news group into
the  folder  description  surrounded  by  <>, i.e. <misc.test>.  It must be in
lower case.  (Other text is allowed in the description, i.e. "THIS IS  A  TEST
FOLDER  <misc.test>".)  When messages are added the folder, they are also sent
to the news group, and new messages from the group are posted  to  the  folder
(via  the  BULLCP  process  which wakes up on a periodic basis).  Whenever you
modify the folder description and specify the news group  name,  you  will  be
prompted  as  to  whether  you  want  to initializee the news group counter to
either load all the messages present in the news group, or to load  only  news
messages that appear there. 

Messages posted to the news group from such a folder have a  special  line  in
their  header  indicating  they were sent from that node using bulletin.  When
bulletin feeds new postings back to the folder, it will see that  header  line
and  also see that it was posted from that node, and thus will avoid adding it
to the folder (and thus creating a duplicate message).  Note that messages are
added  to  the  news  group  via  the  BULLCP process, so they will not appear
immediately after being added to the folder. 

If you are modifying an existing folder to make  it  associated  with  a  news
group, and if you want to copy any existing messages in the folder to the news
group, you can do that by using the command COPY/ORIGINAL/LOCAL and specifying
the  news  group  as the destination.  /ORIGINAL will cause the original owner
names and dates to be preserved (note, however, that dates older than 14  days
in  the  past are not usually accepted by the news server, so dates older than
that will be changed to the present date).  /LOCAL  will  create  the  special
header  line in the messages to prevent BULLCP from adding those messages back
to the folder from the news group.  /ALL can be  specified  to  copy  all  the
messages in the folder. 

If you create a remote folder that points to a folder that has  a  news  group
associated  with  it,  you  do  not  have  to  specify  the  news group in the
description of the remote node.  However, on the  node  on  which  the  folder
actually  exists,  the  news  group  has be a stored news group, i.e. you must
issue the command SET NEWS/STORED for that news group. 

When a news group is specified for a folder, it is still possible to associate
an  email  address  for  the messages to be sent to in the folder description.
You do this by using [] to enclose the address rather than the usual <>,  i.e.
[mrl@pfc.mit.edu]  See  help in BULLETIN on the command CREATE/DESCRIPTION for
more info about associated email addresses.  Note that  these  features  allow
you to create a full gateway between a news group and a mailing list.