Re: [Pan-users] Feature request: merge groups.

[Duncan]

On Tue 07 Jan 2003 23:37, Chris Petersen posted as excerpted below:
> Sounds cool to me, though I'd settle for the ability to delete articles
> across groups.  Pan currently recognizes "read" status against
> cross-posted articles, but not deletions or downloads.  Would be nice to
> not have to see articles I've already deleted elsewhere.

??  That all works here, and has since 0.11.x at least, AFAIK.  Cross-posted 
articles link to the same cached articles once they download, and once 
downloaded, marked read, or deleted, in one group, they are the same in the 
other groups as well.

I suspect what you are seeing is either multi-posted articles (posted 
separately to each group, not cross-posted as the same message to multiple 
groups), which because they are actually different messages, not the same 
one, are indeed tracked separately, or on downloading, possibly a race 
condition, such that two d/l threads are downloading the same thing at the 
same time, or you scheduled the one for d/l b4 deleting it from the other 
group.  (PAN will skip the d/l if it sees it already there, but if two 
threads happen to be on the same post at the same time, the second one starts 
d/ling it b4 the first one finishes so the second one doesn't see it's 
already there before it starts.  The same idea applies to downloads scheduled 
but not done when a file is deleted, I believe, altho it may still not show 
up on the group view when you load it again, and I'm not sure what happens to 
the "orphaned" message in the cache.  Hopefully it's deleted in some sort of 
garbage cleanup, eventually.)

How do I know it works?  Because on downloading, I can go to the other group 
and see the cross-posted articles already marked for download, or already 
downloaded if it's finished that task.  In addition, I can set it to download 
a bunch including the x-posted ones, and when it gets to those, the progress 
indicator takes a huge leap over the already downloaded ones.  Likewise with 
deletions. If a group has X overviews, and I visit another group with some 
crossposts to the first and delete them in the second, then go back to the 
first, the overview count again "magically" jumps down to the correct count, 
adjusting properly for the cross-posted ones deleted in the second group.  Of 
course, as I said, multi-posted messages that are actually different 
messages, different message ID and all, don't get downloaded or marked read, 
because they aren't even the same messages, whether they have the same 
content or not.

-- 
Duncan
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little
temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." --
Benjamin Franklin