Re: [Pan-users] Re: Folders: gone forever?

[Charles Sullivan]

On Mon, 19 May 2008 15:06:34 +0000 (UTC)
Duncan <address@hidden> wrote:

> Charles Sullivan <address@hidden> posted
> address@hidden, excerpted below, on  Sun,
> 18 May 2008 15:38:57 -0400:
> 
> > With older versions of PAN I could move Usenet newsgroup messages or
> > threads of special interest to folders for later reference.  They
> > appeared in these folders the same way as in the newsgroup.
> > 
> > This feature was lost somewhere along the way - can we ever expect to
> > get it back?
> 
> That was in old-pan as you said, but has not been added to the newer, 
> recoded from scratch (and in C++ instead of C, so different language now) 
> versions, 0.90+.
> 
> However, previously, pan deleted post headers/overviews when they expired 
> off the news server.  The default cache size was (and still is) 10 MB so 
> at default, the messages themselves were long gone by then anyway, altho 
> one could at the time set the cache to a different size.
> 
> The way pan works now is much different.  It has a single list of groups 
> regardless of the number of servers configured, and normally fetches from 
> all of them as it can, instead of only one at once unless you manually 
> switch servers and setup more connections as it used to do.
> 
> While the expiration is still per server (something that doesn't really 
> make sense now), if a group exists on more than one server, the posts 
> seem to expire at the /earliest/ setting for that group.  However, the 
> expiration is set locally, and is no longer dependent on the server.  If 
> you have all servers carrying that group set to never expire, the message 
> remains listed in pan until disk corruption or something kills it.
> 
> The cache can still be set manually, altho there's no longer a GUI option 
> for it.  Charles decided that was too complex an option to put in the 
> GUI, so it's now only changeable by editing the preferences.xml file 
> directly.  (There are a number of other, similarly non-GUI but manually 
> changeable configs, too.  You can set >4 connections per server, if your 
> server allows it, for instance, by editing servers.xml as appropriate.)
> 
> It's possible to run a multiple gigabyte cache if you want.  I have a 12 
> gig cache here.  It works fine.
> 
> Thus, with a manually settable cache size and with no expiration if 
> that's the way you want it, you can actually leave posts in their 
> existing group, and they don't disappear on you any more (save for disk 
> corruption or the like), as long as you don't ever let the cache get 
> full.  I run separate binary and text pan instances (set the PAN_HOME 
> environmental variable to point to a location other than the default 
> ~/.pan2, and you can run different instances pointed at different configs 
> and caches), with separate caches so the binaries don't flood out the 
> text cache, and I've been saving all posts in my text groups since I set 
> it up that way, August 2006 for one server, which definitely doesn't have 
> posts still on the server from back then.
> 
> So it's now possible to save them in-place, while it wasn't possible 
> before.
> 
> Of course, one can also save the raw text posts as *.msg files if 
> desired.  Pan doesn't do anything with them, but you can open them in a 
> text editor or whatever, or for binary posts, put them thru a decoder.  
> If it's just a few reference posts, you could try that.
> 
> Or... do what I do with reference posts (in addition to keeping them 
> around in pan now), and forward them via mail to yourself.  Actually, you 
> don't even have to go that far.  Just pretend you're mailing them, and 
> since pan now uses your configured mail client to send the message, it'll 
> open there, and you can save it off to a mail folder without even sending 
> it anywhere, if you'd like.

Thanks for your response Duncan.

I'm afraid Charles has thrown out the baby with the bathwater if folders
are gone forever.  With the old PAN I had a collection of helpful Usenet
posts dating back several years in well-organized folders.  It was
especially handy for saving related posts from different newsgroups
into the same folder, and there was nothing simpler than right-clicking a
post (or the entire thread) and saving it to the appropriate folder.

The latest PAN on my FC6 system is 2.3.1 and I don't see any "mail" option
other that "reply to author".  I suppose I could type in my email
address for each post to be mailed, but that's not particularly convenient.

Leaving the post in the original newsgroup isn't much of an option for me.

Regards,
Charles Sullivan
-- 
Charles Sullivan <address@hidden>