[Pan-users] First glance at .100

[Peter B. Steiger]

Lookin' good!  As promised, it's faster, smaller, and able to leap tall
buildings in a single bound.

Some features I really loved in 0.9x seem to have disappeared or changed
for the worse. Before I post these as feature requests over on bugzilla
(read: learn how to use Bugzilla, set up an account, and all that other
stuff I'm too lazy to do) I thought I should bring 'em up here and make
sure this isn't just a case of Stupid User Syndrome.

1) You can no longer associate a specific posting profile with each
group, or designate a default profile.  Profile editing rewrites
posting.xml to list the identities in alphanumeric order, and the
posting UI defaults to the first one alphabetically.  I can work around
that by naming the profiles carefully so that the one I use most often
is "0", but groups that I prefer another identity still have problems
because the default loads first and populates the extra headers, which
may not be overwritten by the alternate profile if I change.

Why is this a Bad Thing?  Well, suppose I normally post with my real
name, some customized headers like X-Whatever-I-Think-Of.  But when I'm
posting to alt.whistleblowers to rat out my thieving boss at the CIA, I
want to use a different profile that strips all personally identifiable
information out.  Because the new message UI populates all headers with
the default posting profile before you get a chance to switch to a
different profile, all that personal stuff is still present in the extra
headers; I have to remember to go into the extra headers list each time
I post a message and strip those out.

So... what I'd like to see is going back to the old way of (optionally)
associating a newsgroup with a different profile than the default, and
only load up extra headers for that profile.  Or, if you change from the
default to a nonstandard profile, strip out the custom headers from the
default and add back only those explicitly included in the alternate
profile.

2) Allow a custom font in the message editing window
If I'm using the built-in message editor, 0.9x used to allow me to
choose between the monospace or custom font.  Unless I'm writing
something that requires fixed spacing for some tabular layout, I'd just
as soon see my own writing in a prettier font and only switch to mono as
needed.  I actually wrote a patch for this one myself - took all of two
lines in the user prefs GUI and another two lines added to the posting
GUI.  Now all I need is "submitting patches to bugzilla for dummies" and
I'm all set.  I just happened to subscribe minutes before Charles posted
his "Four Ways..." message (which went right into my permanent Howto
folder in Evolution) so at least I know where to find Bugzilla.

3) Allow customization of User-Agent header and Message-ID domain
This goes back to my paranoid desire for privacy in issue (1)... if I'm
posting to alt.whistleblowers, I don't want the domain name in the
message ID or pan's, uh, colorful descriptive text to give me away so
easily.  Sure, my friends at the NSA can sniff out the IP address and
demand login records from my ISP to get a positive ID on me, but I'd at
least like them to have to work at uncovering my secret identity.

4) More font choices for different categories
Specifically I was looking at the message titles window and thinking,
"It sure would be nice if threads with unread messages were in a
completely different font or at least a different color".  You can flag
different scores in different colors in the header pane, why not do the
same for other message statuses... stati...whatever?

I think that covers everything I'm losing sleep over.  Is any of that
stuff already in the development version and I'm just missing it, or was
it taken out of 0.9x deliberately?

-- 
Peter B. Steiger
Cheyenne, WY