[Pan-users] Re: How do I get a header count for all groups?

[walt]

On Sat, 01 Sep 2007 22:34:25 +0000, Duncan wrote:

> Greg Lee <address@hidden> posted
> address@hidden, excerpted below, on  Sat, 01 Sep 2007
> 17:12:52 +0000:
> 
>> Since getting headers can be very time-consuming, very _very_
>> time-consuming, I think what's needed is an estimate of the number of
>> headers available, which does not involve actually fetching the
>> headers.
>>  From the behavior of the newsreader I used previously, I'm guessing
>> that information is available from the news server.  I realize the
>> disparity between the count of articles and the count of article parts
>> would a problem ...
> 
> I had forgotten about the get header count option...

I just fired up old pan and I found that Refresh Article Counts just uses 
the nntp GROUP command.  After grepping thru the new pan source code I'd
say that the necessary code is already there, and it should be just a
matter of adding that task to the popup menu in the groups pane.

I would also love to see that option added to new pan for exactly the 
same reasons cited above.  I think it would be neat to refresh the article
count for all groups on a server and then sort the group pane on the total
number of articles.  Seems like a very cheap-and-easy way to tell which
groups are currently active.

The fly in the ointment once again is the multiple-servers problem.  Each
server will generally have a different number of articles in any given
group, so Charles would need to add the code to poll each server for the
selected groups and pick the largest count for each group.  That may be a
bit of a PITA, especially since Charles seems to be very busy with other
things -- like making a living.  One more reason for me to learn C++ and
gtk+ <sigh>