Re: [Pan-users] new pan user question / some possible RFEs

[Duncan]

On Mon 21 Jul 2003 20:59, Helge Hielscher posted as excerpted below:
> Hello,
>
> with pan 0.14.0.91 (and the ability to read mailinglist with it, thanks
> to gmane.org) I decided to change my newsreader from mozilla to pan.
> Thanks to all the people who have developed this increadible newsreader.
>
> But I have a few questions:

Quite a few, and interesting ones, too (shows you are definitely using it 
rather heavily).

First thing..  Unless you like stuff that doesn't work part of the time, as a 
tradeoff for getting new features sooner, even if they don't quite work as 
intended, yet, I'd recommend staying with the latest STABLE version, not the 
betas.  Beta testing help is always appreciated, but stuff might not work, 
and a user needs to be willing to report bugs, and preferably follow the 
group for developments and workarounds, if they are going to use the betas.

PAN's versions work like so: 0. until it is considered fully ready for 
release, much like Mozilla, mostly functional well b4 that, but not 
considered done and professionally ready. .14. is the current major release, 
.0 the current stable minor release, and anything above .90 indicating beta.  
Thus, 0.13.90 was the first beta for 0.14.0, which is stable.  0.14.0.90 was 
the first beta for stable minor 0.14.1, and 0.14.90 will be the first beta 
for 0.15.0.  Unless you are willing to put up with beta quality and report 
problems, then right now, I'd stick with 0.14.0, until 0.14.1 comes out.

> 1) how can I disable smooth scrolling when I hit the space button? (I
> use pan-0.14.0.91-1tex with Mandrake Linux 9.1)

Mandrake w/ texstar, eh?  I'm a Mandrake cooker user, running pretty close to 
the latest cooker AND PAN betas, using self-compiled PAN from the tarballs.

Answer.. Check preferences, under the Body Pane tab, there should be a smooth 
scrolling checkbox and speed setting, when the checkbox is checked.  I find 
smooth scrolling annoying as well, so I keep it unchecked.

> 2) how to download new news always with bodies, at the moment I mark
> all groups an choose download headers and bodies from the context menu
> (I use german locale so I had to translate the strings back).

Here, I set up a rule, applied to the desired groups, with a filter that 
matches everything, and the retrieve body action.  When I get overviews 
(inaccurately called headers) for those groups, it automatically gets bodies 
as well, in accordance with the rule I set up.  If you want to do it for all 
groups, set it up that way, or if you want to do it based on specific 
filters, that can be done as well.  (If you wish to do it based on scores, 
set up a filter for scores, and invert it if necessary.  There was an earlier 
bug on inverting score filters, but I think that's now fixed.)

> 3) can I set a rule to check for new news every 10 minutes

This is not yet available.  There's been talk of doing it.. probably 
implemented as a command line option to simply fetch overviews and bodies as 
configured, then quit.  Thus, it could be run from a cron job.  I believe 
this is on the roadmap @ pan.rebelbase.com, but IDR for which milestone.  As 
Charles would say, patches are welcome, should you have the desire to do the 
coding, and would probably speed up implementation.

> 4) is there a way to highlight groups with new answers to watched
> threads or with replies to my postings

I don't believe so.  Put in a bugzilla feature request.  Again, patches are 
presumably welcome.

Of course, one IN a group, you can filter to that effect, but I don't believe 
there's currently a way to indicate it in the group pane.

> 5) shouldnt all messages have the harddisk icon after I downloaded
> headers+bodies for the group? what does it mean when it blinks in the
> status line "287 are downloading"?

Depending on how the bodies are d/led, PAN often d/ls only the first part of a 
multi-part post.  This is something I run into all the time, if I have 
overviews set to display only the first part of a complete multipart (as in 
preferences).  I don't so often d/l multiparts anyway, so this isn't to bad 
for me, but occasionally I'll set it to show all parts separately, so when I 
mark for d/l, it marks all parts, and has them all already d/led when I get 
there.  Then, after I set them d/ling, I return to my normal complete posts 
as only a single overview display.

287 downloading would mean that's the number being d/led.

One other thing I should really file as a bug but haven't yet..  There's 
apparently a race condition on displaying overviews, when they are being 
filtered.  I'll often see overviews still displayed that are actually 
filtered out, and have learned to reload groups where I have such filters, so 
they display only the overviews the filters didn't delete.  It's possible if 
you tell it to d/l all bodies, it will d/l the post filtered ones, therefore 
less than the number displayed, due to this race condition.

> 6) is there any documentation, especially on how to use scoring?

Documentation is currently a weak point of PAN.  Reading the gmane archives 
for the pan group should get you most things.  Note that a few features may 
be in flux at any given time, so documenting them isn't a good idea anyway, 
since they may change with the next beta.  However, one of the targets for 
the 1.0 release milestone is full documentation of what should be by then a 
fairly stable featureset.

Scoring in particular..  Scoring is brand new as of 0.14.0, and while the 
basics should now be stable, details might change a bit.  However, if you 
look at the announcement (again, as it should be archived on gmane) for PAN 
0.14.0, you will see that the score files are slrn/XNews style.  Thus, you 
should be able to apply any documentation you may find on their scoring, with 
a few minor variations anyway, to PAN.

> 7) can you embed another editor (like KMail does), the native one is very
> limited (no undo, rewrapping doesnt work well)

Embed?  No.  Use an external editor, yes.  Set it from preferences, then from 
a composer window, use the edit with external editor feature.

> What do you think about these ideas as request for (future)
> enhancements:
> a) filter that work for words in bodies, e.g. score up threads that
> contain the word "pan" in the body by 50 Points

Filters/scoring for entire post, including other headers and body, is a 
feature I've wanted for sometime.  It will come, but Charles has stated it's 
not on the front burner right now..

Currently, PAN filters/scores on headers available with the overviews, which 
is a limited subset of all available headers, but doesn't require downloading 
the message itself in ordered to work, only the overview.  Thus, filters that 
delete the overview prevent the use of additional bandwidth for downloading, 
if it is just to be deleted anyway.  That's a good thing, but because the 
headers that can be so filtered/scored are limited, because only a limited 
selection of headers show up in the overviews, it is less useful than a full 
header and body capable filter/scorer would be.  Yes, it's nice to be able to 
delete the overview b4 the body is even downloaded, but even if that's not 
possible, it would still be nice to be able to delete (or score up, or 
whatever) based on other header and body content.  After all, such repetitive 
mindless tasks are what computers are supposed to be good at automating.  
However, PAN isn't there yet, one of the two things that irritates me most 
about it (the other being lack of even rudimentary attachment posting).

As always, if you have patches that implement this...

> b) some kind of bayesian filter for scoring e.g. if you have marked
> enough interresting articles, pan scores other articels up automatically

This would be a COOL feature!

> c) watch/kill subthreads

I don't generally use that feature, but I thought it was already implemented?  
I know there's been talk about it, and it has been agreed it should be added.

> d) search newsgroup descriptions

This could be quite useful..

> e) search newsgroups (including bodies, headers, etc.), e.g.
> mark all gnome newsgroups and do a rightclick search for "pan" in the
> bodies

This is likely to be added about the same time as body filtering, above, given 
that much the same code would be needed, so reuse would be quite possible.

> Misc question: what is the easiest way to read mailinglists not covered
> by gmane.org with pan?

Probably by using some of the mail2news gateway utilities out there.  I don't 
know much about this, but I was looking around the gmane site the other day 
in prep for eventually switching to it for my lists, and they have some 
hints.. and also a place where you can request additional lists be added.

Additional hints..

Hotkeys can be reassigned per user preference.  Try hovering your mouse over 
the function you wish to reassign, and hitting the key combo you want.  Note 
that if it's already used it won't work properly, so creating a table with 
the current key mappings might be useful.  If that doesn't work, you may need 
to edit the gtkrc file as described in the archive, or googlize for it.  Or, 
try editing the hotkeys file directly, as I've described several times 
(again, hit the archives, if necessary).

Not to advertise the competition, but for text groups only, since you already 
mentioned you like kmail, try knode.  I use it when I want to post 
attachments, but it doesn't seem to do yEnc, so it isn't very good for most 
binary groups.

Explore the various PAN configuration dialogs a bit.  It seems you missed at 
least a couple options in preferences, and getting familiar with the rules 
and filters dialogs can also be quite useful.  Don't forget to check the 
posting profiles and news server dialogs as well, for "power user" settings 
that might come in handy.

Some people miss the ability to switch profiles from the composer window, so 
create as many as you wish and use them as needed.  Note that it's easy to 
set up a group to use a specific profile, since it remembers the one you used 
last.  Thus, you aren't limited to just the mail and news default profiles.

Hope you enjoy PAN, and stick around to grow with us!

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