[Pan-users] many pan 0.12 questions, suggestions (LONG)

[bergman]

I'm a new user to Pan, but I've used a succession of rn/rrn/trn and friends for 
at least the last 10 years, so that's heavily influenced my view of how I read 
news and what I'd like from a newsreader. I've got a long list of questions
and suggestions for Pan.

I've got some questions about performing different actions in Pan:

        * Is there a way to display the number of articles in a thread? (If
          not, please consider this a feature request.)

        * Is there a way to sort the header pane by the number of
          articles per thread? (If not, please consider this a feature
          request.)

        * Is there an option to hide previously read articles in the
          header pane? (If not, please consider this a feature request.)

        * Is there somewhere to specify the default sort order for each
          newsgroup? I'd suggest that this could best be done in the "Display
          - Header Panel" preference dialog.

Here are some feature requests. Please let me know if there's already some way
to do any of these functions within Pan v0.12:

        * Allow the use of existing KILL files
                I think that this is a natural extension to the use of
                existing .newsrc files.

                Ideally, the KILL files could be read dynamically for
                each newsgroup from an existing directory hierarchy
                (such as ~/News/news/software/readers/KILL).  If that
                is not feasible, than an import/export of KILL files
                could be used.

                I understand that KILL file formats tend to be very
                specific to individual newsreaders, and I don't know if
                an API for translating between them exists, so this may
                be a very large job. However, this would be a huge win for
                people transitioning to pan from other newsreaders, or for
                people who use multiple newsreaders. It may be possible
                to just implement a lowest-common-denominator parsing
                of KILL files by recognizing the simplest case--lines
                that define the pattern for killing an article.

        * Allow the use of multiple .newsrc files, each associated with a
          particular server.
                When a server is chosen, the specified .newsrc file
                is imported, when the user exits pan or changes servers, the
                .newsrc file is exported.

                It's not clear to me as a user whether this automatically takes
                place right now.

        * Add the ability to do set operations on newsgroups from multiple
          servers.
                If you've got multiple news servers, give the user the ability
                to do a union or intersection on the combined set of
                newsgroups.

        * Show newsgroups from multiple servers together.
                This is a feature that would be closely linked with the
                previous feature. The combined set of newsgroups from all the
                servers would be shown at once in the newsgroups panel.
                
                I am envisioning a user process where:
                        Users set up multiple news servers to be accessed
                        automatically (simultaneously or serially, but within
                        a single Pan session news would be gathered from all
                        defined servers without manually switching servers).

                        Users define what newsgroups they want shown in the
                        combined newsgroups panel. The choice of which server
                        provides which group could be made manually, or by
                        doing a set intersection operation. A set union would
                        duplicate newsgroups from different servers.

                There would need to be a way to differentiate which server is
                providing which newsgroup. This could be accomplished by added
                a column to the newsgroups panel, by color-coding each
                newsgroup name based on server, or by adding icons for each
                newsgroup based on server.

        * Implement a "read-ahead" of articles
                When the user reads an article in a thread, automatically
                begin downloading the next N articles in that thread
                (where N is user-defined, and in the current pan
                implementation would equal 0) under the assumption that
                the user will read the following articles in the thread.

                If the natural action is to read articles in a thread in
                succession, this will speed up the process for the user
                without the overhead of downloading every article in a
                newsgroup.

        * Allow the specification of arbitrary commands before a connection is
          made to a news server.
                For example, I've got a shell wrapper to trn that sets up an
                ssh tunnel to my ISP, so that my password (which is also my
                shell login and POP password) is never sent in the clear. Once
                the tunnel is established, trn on my machine connects to port
                9119 on the localhost, which is transparently tunneled to my
                ISP.

                I could wrap pan in a similar script, but it would be nice for
                the user to have the ability to specify an arbitrary
                pre-connection command (on a per-server basis), with the model
                that if the command exits with a non-zero status, the
                connection is not made.

        * Allow the user to choose whether the groups pane shows:
                # of unread articles
                # of total articles
                # of new articles

                I'm subscribed to many groups with a lot of unread articles,
                where I may never catch up, but I'm much more interested in
                knowing (via the groups pane) if there a lot of new articles,
                rather than just the number of unread articles.


I'm not sure whether to properly classify this as a bug report or an
interface feature request, but there's a problem for me with how the
shortcut keys are shown in menus.  The shortcut keys listed in the menus
appear to all be in upper-case. While the <SHIFT> key is explicitely
specified as a modifier when it is required, the presence of a upper-case
letter when the lower-case character is the actual command appears to
be a conflict. For example, under the "Articles" menu, the command to
mark an article as being read is listed as having the keyboard shortcut
of "M", yet on my machine, the correct command is "m" (lower case).
I don't know if this notation is part of the Gnome (or any other) human
interface guidelines, but I personally find it confusing.

----
Mark Bergman    Biker, IATSE #1 Stagehand, Rock Climber, Unix mechanic
'94 Yamaha GTS1000A
address@hidden

http://pgpkeys.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&address@hidden

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