[Pan-devel] where in the code would I address server I/O errors and retries

[Rob]

I'm a QT programmer so I'm not too well acquainted with the gtk callback 
structure.  I need to find the server I/O functions in the code to address a 
problem with a non-RFC compliant usenet service.

It seems that a trend these days with the large usenet providers is to NOT hold 
all content locally on their servers, but to onlyinitially receive headers and 
to only cache articles locally when they are requested by a client.  This 
process breaks nntp fairly easily if there is any substantial delay between the 
client requesting an article and the provider going out and finding it.  I'm 
not convinced that pan is handling this as well as can be.  Another concern I 
have is that when pan issues a GROUP command that the "last" article number is 
invalid...meaning that way too often the server responds with a 501 error code 
when chunks of article headers in the value group range are retrieved.

In simplest terms I'd like to make sure that pan is retying some number of 
times when a 501 error response is generated with downloading new article 
headers.  My understanding is that header downloading would use the XHDR 
command and download in chunks...well, sometimes the requested chunk generates 
the non-conformant 501 error.  I want to check for this and retry when it 
happens.

On a related note, the regular expression capabilities don't seem to be 
documented at all and I have yet to figure out what dialect of regular 
expressions are supported when searching the Subject: field...or if the RE 
functions are well supported and tested in the application.

Kind regards,
Rob