Re: [Pan-devel] When the NSP company tells us the headers will be re-numbered, what should we make Pan do?

[Duncan]

SciFi posted on Wed, 17 Dec 2014 08:11:29 +0000 as excerpted:

> Presently, a certain NSP company told us that the articles (headers)
> will be renumbered thru-out.  And they were.
> 
> Or is there a procedure?
> Even editing certain files under $PAN_HOME maybe?

Removing the newsrc file (with pan not running, of course) corresponding 
to that server should do it.  You'll have to update the group list after 
that.

Note that the newsrc file format normally tracks three things, list of 
groups, subscriptions, and on visited groups, per-server per-group "seen" 
article sequence numbers, the last of which is what you're resetting here 
and the first of which is updated with a group-list refresh.  However, 
the newsrc file format assumes only a single news server, and pan is 
multi-server, so it uses a different mechanism to track subscriptions, 
leaving the newsrc files tracking only the group list, with its own 
refresh mechanism, and the article sequence numbers.  Thus, removing the 
newsrc file shouldn't disturb actual subscriptions, and a group-list 
refresh should get that back just fine.  However, you might want to move 
the file to a backup location instead of immediately deleting it, just in 
case.

Alternatively, you can edit the file, removing the numbers after the 
group name.  Note that these numbers will appear for any group you've 
visited, subscribed or not.

In the normal newsrc format a : following the group name indicates a 
subscription, while a ! indicates not subscribed, and the number ranges 
indicate already seen articles.  However, pan doesn't appear to use or 
update the :/! any longer, and seems to have ! for all my currently 
subscribed and updated groups in current server newsrcs, tho an old newsrc 
for my ISP's old server which no longer exists, but which I continue to 
keep the old messages (unexpiring!) archived for, has : for some groups I 
was subscribed to on that server.  So you'll probably see ! for all 
groups, subscribed and not, in a currently used newsrc, with pan as I 
said using a different method to track group subscription.

But since you're resetting the numbering for all groups that server 
carries, simply removing the newsrc and doing a group list update is the 
easiest.  Knowing about editing the file can be useful if you want to 
reset just a single group, tho.

-- 
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