[Pan-users] Re: news articles time out?

[Duncan]

Alan Cocks posted <address@hidden>, excerpted below, 
on Thu, 29 Jul 2004 07:56:04 +0100:

> I am very new to pan and could not find out about time out of articles.
> Is this automatic? and/or settable? Where should I look please?

PAN removes the articles from a group at group update, if the server it is
syncing from no longer has them. Thus, if you turn off the various
auto-sync functions in prefs (download new headers at pan start, at
entering group, etc, even if "headers" is the incorrect term, with the
correct one being "overviews", grr!, also ensure the clear cache at pan
exit isn't checked), all overviews along with all currently downloaded
bodies, will stay there until you sync (provided, of course, you have your
cache set large enough that PAN doesn't run out of room and start weeding
old bodies out of the cache for a "stale" group before their time, to make
room for new ones just downloaded in a different group).

To prevent a specific post from being removed, switch the selector in the
groups pane that normally says subscribed, to folders, create a folder to
contain your saved posts, go back to the group the posts are in that you
want to save, select the post you want to save, and use the right-click,
copy to folder option.

Or.. do as I do and mail yourself a copy of text posts you want to save,
and simply save the attachments of binaries you want to save.

If you see bodies disappearing before the posts are removed from the
server, you probably have to small a cache, and PAN is having to make room
for new posts by eliminating old ones (or possibly you have PAN set to
delete the cache on exit).

If you are using a server such as gmane.org's list2news gateway (as I do
for this list), which keeps messages virtually indefinitely, you may wish
to create a filter that selects all posts older than say, a month (or
whatever).  Then you can create a rule that deletes messages based on that
filter, and apply it manually whenever you decide pan's startup time is
getting unbearably long, due to it going thru all those old messages.  I
don't believe it's possible to get PAN to automatically do  it with
messages already fetched (altho it's possible to have it apply rules to
incoming overviews).

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little
temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." --
Benjamin Franklin