Format of news overview database
The file /etc/news/overview.fmt specifies the organization of the news overview database. Blank lines and lines beginning with a number sign (``#'') are ignored. The order of lines in this file is important; it determines the order in which the fields will appear in the database.
Most lines will consist of an article header name, optionally followed by a colon. A trailing set of lines can have the word ``full'' appear after the colon; this indicates that the header should appear as well as its value.
If this file is changed, it is usually necessary to rebuild the existing overview database using expireover(8) after removing all existing overview files.
The default file, show below, is compatible with Geoff Collyer's ``nov'' package:
Subject: From: Date: Message-ID: References: Bytes: Lines: ## Some newsreaders get better performance if Xref is present #Xref:full
Written by Rich $alz <[email protected]> for InterNetNews. Intended to be compatible with the nov package written by Geoff Collyer <[email protected]>. This is revision \$3, dated \$4.