[Pan-users] Re: Fit image to Window

[Duncan]

James Sumners posted <address@hidden>,
excerpted below,  on Sun, 17 Oct 2004 20:26:03 -0400:

> I know that this has already been suggested in the thread --
> http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/pan-users/2003-04/msg00022.html -- but I
> just want to say that I would like to see the feature as well. It would
> really improve reading groups like 'alt.binaries.pictures.wallpaper'.
> 
> Support for index files might be asking a bit much but it would certainly
> be cool -- http://www.ozinsight.com/faqs.html#B2_1

Both features would indeed be cool.

Of course, multiple hi-rez monitors in xinerama mode helps with the first.
In fact, probably three or four years ago, back on MSWormOS 98, I first
setup multi-monitors for use with Outlook Express.  Use for other apps is
nice too, but news is what I /really/ use it for.  

I'm currently running dual monitors, a 19" and a 22", both at 2048x1536
resolution, the 19" on top of the 22".  At the top of the top monitor, I
have a KDE kicker panel in 128-px mode, loaded with ksysguard displaying
graphs of CPU usage (for both CPUs, dual Opteron), memory usage (a gig
memory, swap entirely disabled), and 3 rx and two tx graphs for bandwidth
(4Mbps rx, 512kbps tx), plus a clock, a pager applet, kdict applet, and
ksystray.  That has all the stuff I want more or less constantly
displayed, so my other kicker panels are auto-hide.  Thus, I have an
active appspace area of 2048x2944 (3072-128).

When I run PAN, I run it filling the /whole/ 2048x2944.  I have the panes
arranged with a large header pane to the left of a small group pane, with
the entire bottom monitor (save for the status bar) and the bottom bit of
the top monitor displaying the body pane.  Normally, the bit of the body
pane in the top monitor is just enough to display the header info, leaving
the entire bottom monitor (sans the status bar area, ~56 px) for message
body display.  A 1600x1200 image fits quite well, with a bit of extra room
even.  Of course, get close to a 2048x1536 image and it'll be clipped, but
those are still rarer than smaller images, and even that or a 1200x1600
image (portrait mode) is generally displayed well enough so generally
little or no scrolling is needed.

OTOH, I'm often having to ctrl-alt-plus/minus to zoom smaller images with
X. Still, that's easier than scrolling.

Without dual monitor, I'd probably be using tabbed mode, or even hotkeying
the various panes in and out, avoiding tab real estate on the screen.

As for index file support, that too would be cool, altho I generally
download all the overviews that look interesting anyway (sometimes after a
sample or two).  Cox limits connections to four 384kbps connections per
server, three servers available.  Thus, I get 1.5Mbps per single server
using PAN's multi-connect.  Sometimes if I'm in a hurry I'll load the
group on another server and start from the other end, downloading, so they
meet in the middle, but generally, that's to much hassle and I'm not in
that much of a hurry, so I just let it go at 1.5Mbps.  (I recently upped
my cache size to 20-gig, the PAN max, altho I have the cache on its own
dedicated 8-gig partition so that's it's real limit.)  Anyway, index
support a la Ozimum or whatever it's called would be nice, but it's not
really necessary the way I use PAN.

IOW.. You need a bigger machine with more big hi-rez monitors, and a fast
internet and news server connection, and PAN won't seem so limited any
more! =:^)

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little
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Benjamin Franklin