[Pan-users] Re: New PAN

[Duncan]

Toby A Inkster
<address@hidden> posted
address@hidden, excerpted below, on  Sun, 28 Jan 2007
15:59:28 +0000:

> Simple features I'd love to see in PAN 1.1:
> 
>       * Add to the Subject/Author/Message-ID search "Cached Bodies".

Allowing either search or scoring on anything but overview headers has
been a long requested feature, since 0.13.x or earlier, I believe,
definitely before scoring was introduced when it was still filtering-only.
I know as I filed at least one of the bugs.  Charles' reply back then was
that it was a nice idea, but for later, effectively "bluesky".  I'd
certainly very much like pan to be able to search and score on elements of
the message beyond overview (including other headers, body, and entire
message) myself, but unfortunately I can't code up the patch myself, and
I've no indication the status has moved from bluesky.

If you file a bug on it, however, and post the URL here, I'll certainly
second it.  Maybe "bluesky" is now (or at least no longer just "bluesky"
anyway), since it's certainly true that automated multiserver handling was
"bluesky" for quite some time, too. =8^)

>       * Add to the scoring mechanism a way to score by cross posted
>         group (i.e. name of the group, not number of groups).

This info is in the overview, and it has been reported that it's possible
to score by it -- *IF* you edit the scorefile manually to do so.  You'd
match on the xref header, I believe.  Again, if pan could score on any
element in the post, it'd make things SO much easier... <sigh>

>       * Easier way to set Followup-To header, like there used to be.

Agreed.  I think that feature was simplified out of existence, however,
and since it's possible to add the header manually via "More Headers", I'm
not sure what the chances are.  I'd suggest filing a feature request bug
on this, however.

>       * For "Command" type signatures, would be nice to be able to
>         specify a command of:
>               /home/me/sig.pl %g
>         where '%g' would be the group name(s)

No opinion on this.

>       * 0.14.x had a "fetch bodies too" sub-option below "fetch headers
>         from subscribed groups on startup". I'd love to see this return.

Some form of this has been discussed and is now scheduled for inclusion. 
The discussion was in the context of bringing back rules, or some
replacement for them.  It turns out, however, that most of what folks used
rules for can be accomplished with a few (optional) automated behaviors
based on scoring, tho.  In particular, the likely implementation will have
options to auto-delete ignored, auto-mark-read low (negative) scored
(with score level categories identical to the score coloring levels), and
auto-download watched. That's the minimum requirement. However, once
that's implemented, it's trivial to add further checkboxes to delete
low-scored (instead of mark-read), mark-read ignored (instead of delete),
and to auto-download zero-scored, medium-scored (slightly positive) and
high-scored (between that and watched), as well, giving folks pretty wide
flexibility, including what amounts to a general auto-download as you and
many others have requested.

>       * On the "View" menu, "Show status bar" to match "Show toolbar".

I wasn't even aware the option was missing, but yes, as a KDE user
accustomed to having that option, I agree, it's needed. =8^)  File a bug.

> More complex stuff I'd love even further down the line:
> 
>       * Ability to "rename" newsgroups. For example, reading this
>         mailing list on GMANE, the group is gmane.comp.gnome.apps.pan.user.
>         This takes a lot of room to display. Turning on abbreviations, it's
>         "g.c.a.p.user" which is still fairly long and quite cryptic -- the
>         only word that's spelt out in full is "user" which doesn't give me
>         much of a clue what the group is about. It would be nice to be able
>         to go into the group's preferences and tell PAN to display the group
>         name as "PAN" in the group pane.

I'm not sure about this, but I do know there's an active request, already
discussed and IIRC positively commented on by Charles, for either
optionally or just doing it, making the abbreviated version the last /two/
segments of the name, instead of the last one only.

This would be extremely useful for common names such as
alt.binaries.*.d (for discussion) as well.  Just a bunch of single
characters isn't very helpful, especially where there might be two or more
groups abbreviating the exact same way, when they end in .d, so it was
generally agreed that expanding the last /two/ elements was preferred to
the current situation.  I think the main thing holding it back now is
simply that no one has submitted a patch, and there have just always been
other things for Charles to work on, so far.

>       * Integrated RSS/Atom feed reader.

This one's almost certainly very "bluesky".  FWIW, I've read about scripts
that can take a group (as fetched by say leafnode) and turn it into a
feed, and I think that's a neat idea, but it doesn't so well fit the way I
work, so I didn't followup with further investigation.  However, there are
solutions out there, if you are interested enough to go digging for them,
unless I somehow misunderstood when I thought I was reading about them.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman