[Pan-users] Re: Problem with the list of headers

[Duncan]

Joe Zeff <address@hidden> posted
address@hidden, excerpted below, on  Thu, 26 Jun 2008 16:32:38
-0700:

> On 06/26/2008 Ben Bullock wrote:
>> I don't think there is a way to do it.
>> 
>> I reported this as a bug:
>> 
>> http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=527799
>> 
>> I also spent some time (a few hours) looking through the source code to
>> find where the bug might reside, but without success.
> 
> Thank you.  I'll add myself to the CC list so that I can track it.  I
> take it, then, that there's no way to set up a filter that will do this?
>   If so, that'd be all I'd need.

Unfortunately, new-pan has only half the required functionality.  As you 
observed, you can killfile someone.  That's great, but only half the 
solution.

Old-pan had a mechanism called rules which allowed you to take actions 
based on scores (among other things).  It was possible to setup a rule 
that marked-read or deleted a post based on its score.  In the other 
direction, it was also possible to mark a file for automatic download 
based on its score (say watched).  I had pan setup to auto-delete 
messages scored as ignored, as I NEVER wanted to see them, auto-mark-read 
messages scored less than zero (low/negative), as I didn't want to see 
them normally but wanted them still available if someone else replied to 
them and I wanted/needed to see the context, and auto-download anything 
that was scored positively (medium, high, or watched).  That was great!

Unfortunately, Charles hasn't implemented anything like that in the 
rewrite yet.  As with attachment posting (a different current thread), 
it's a bit of the perfect being the enemy of the good, as Charles' 
opinion is that the rules functionality as implemented in old pan was too 
complex and difficult to understand.  At least the functionality was 
THERE back then! =8^(

A replacement design has been discussed.  Basically the UI as discussed 
would create a new tab in preferences that looked something like this:

Automatically:

        Download  files scored at least [dropdown]

        Mark-read files scored at most  [dropdown]

        Delete    files scored at most  [dropdown]

The dropdown would then include the following choices based on the same 
scoring "zones" seen in the color preferences:

Disabled
Ignored         (  <= -9999  )
Low/negative    (-9998 to -1 )
Zero            (     0      )
Medium          ( +1 to 4999 )
High            (5000 to 9998)
Watched         (   >= 9999  )

There has been a bit of discussion as to what the defaults should be.  
Disabled for all three would prevent any surprises for upgraders.  Delete 
ignored, mark-read negative, download watched, might be the most logical, 
but would probably make a few people mad when they discovered ignored was 
actually doing just that, now, effectively ignoring the post on the 
server.  That choice could also lead to some false bug reports as people 
wondered what happened to messages they saw replies to but had never seen 
(not realizing the message had been scored ignore for some reason).  Mark-
read ignored, download watched, would be a slightly more conservative 
version of the above, but could still lead to false bug reports when 
people didn't realize a post had been marked read due to score, and that 
was why they didn't see it.

I suspect Charles would probably take the safe route and disable all 
three by default.

In any case, /nothing/ has been implemented yet, and it's a sorely missed 
bit of functionality! =8^(

Meanwhile, there's a couple workarounds.  For those who don't save posts 
as marked unread to check later, as I often do, the mark entire group 
read when exiting group and/or before getting new headers options on the 
behavior tab of preferences might be helpful.  Unfortunately, that's not 
going to work for folks like me who deliberately keep some posts marked 
unread and want them to stay that way until we get back to them.

What I do instead is keep ignored posts visible, and manually delete them 
as I come to them -- I keep the score column visible and have my colors 
set to I see them right away.  This works reasonably well for text 
groups.  For binary groups, I don't so often keep messages marked unread, 
and threading is less of an issue, so I can either sort by score and 
delete, or simply select-all and delete the entire set when I'm done with 
it, depending on the group and whether I have anything in it I want to 
keep around for awhile, or not.

It'd sure be nice to have the options as described above, tho, and 
actually have it working again!  That's for sure!

-- 
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