[Pan-users] Re: Manual manipulation of the groups list

[Duncan]

Alan Meyer <address@hidden> posted
address@hidden, excerpted below, on  Wed, 28
Jan 2009 19:16:32 -0800:

> In the meantime, I'm wondering if I can work around the problem. Perhaps
> there's a way that I can subscribe to a group by manipulating some file
> with a text editor.  Is there a way I can place the name of the group in
> a configuration XML file, or do something like that, that will cause Pan
> to treat that group as one that I am subscribed to?
> 
> In looking at the configuration files in $HOME/.pan2 and in
> subdirectories, I was impressed that they are all human readable files -
> which I believe is the best approach for robust programming and
> debugging.  And because of that, I'm encouraged to think that there may
> be a way for me to do this.

Yes, there's a way to do it, and yes, pan's files are all human readable 
(and yes, that's a good thing =:^).

As it happens, pan tracks subscription (and read messages) information 
using files in the semi-standard (on Unix/Linux, anyway) based newsrc 
format, so they can be shared between clients and/or used for import/
export.  The newsrc format is however apparently only single-server 
aware, so if have several servers configured, pan must use several newsrc 
files.  These are mapped to their specific servers in the servers.xml 
file.

A quick google says there's even software out there to help manage or 
access newsrc files.  newsrc-care, the top hit, appears to be a set of 
shell scripts designed to help you maintain your newsrc files.  Its 
freshmeat project page hasn't been updated since 2003, but if the scripts 
work (I don't know, just sayin' if), it probably hasn't needed to be 
updated.  There's also perl modules, etc, tho they may be more for use 
with perl-based news clients, I'm not sure.  Anyway...

http://www.google.com/linux?lr=lang_en&hl=en&q=newsrc

Courtesy of that google, here's a bit of documentation on the format.  
Note that what it says about pan is somewhat dated -- pan thru 0.14.x 
(aka old-pan, aka pan1) did indeed use a different format, but the C++ 
rewrite starting with 0.90 now uses standard newsrc files.

http://www.linuxtopia.org/online_books/programming_books/
art_of_unix_programming/ch05s01_1.html

(I'm using pan to post thru gmane and pan doesn't have a URL no-wrap 
mode, wrap is either on or off, so that's wrapped.  Modify the link to 
kill the wrap before attempting to use.)

-- 
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