Re: [Pan-users] Feature Idea - Download Priority By Posting Date

[Duncan]

On Sun 04 May 2003 00:42, lenny bruce posted as excerpted below:
> I had a feature idea for Pan that could set it apart from other
> newsreaders. An option to let Pan determine download priority based on the
> article's post date. This would ensure that the oldest articles would
> download first, regardless of the order you queued them. This feature
> wouldn't be turned on by default because it would confuse new people.
>
> take it or leave it -- it's just a thought

This has come up a couple times..  As you said, making it the default wouldn't 
be desirable.  I think the general feeling is that it's already possible to 
do it that way by sorting in date order and queing them up that way, and that 
an additional feature to do that would just be confusing.

One feature that MAY be added in the future, as it was discussed with a 
certain amount of approval, was allowing the task list to be sorted based on 
various characteristics much as the header pane can now be sorted.  Thus, one 
could leave it in as-added order, or at the touch of a button switch it to 
resort (and re-prioritize) by number of posts in task, order of groups in 
list, back to original added order, etc.  However, discussion did seem to 
resolve on it being not a heavy priority now, with the new behavior as you 
mention just below.

> I really like the new feature that attacks single articles with
> multiple (same) server connections instead of using those connections
> separately.

That's been a really appreciated boon to PAN's behavior here, as well.  For 
me, it's mainly because PAN now uses all the connections to the limit until 
the last possible second, rather than forcing the user to sort by task size 
to try to accomplish the same thing, or perhaps having one huge task get 
stuck last with only a single thread working on it forever and a day, with 
all the other threads idle, as USED to be PAN's default behavior.  I really 
appreciate it being able to use all four connections as long as possible, 
without any manual management necessary from me to do so.  Having them all 
working on the latest task added is also nice, but to me, that's just a 
bonus.

The one hitch in this is for dialup users, where a single binary part may take 
long enough to d/l that waiting for whichever thread to finish the part it is 
on and switch over to the latest task, updating the header pane or d/ling a 
text post, then going back to the binary task, that the deletion of the 
"reserve a connection for interactive use" or whatever the option was that 
was taken out, was a bit frustrating for such dialup users.  That's going to 
be put back if it hasn't been already.  (I don't use it as I'm on cable 
modem, and don't have PAN going now to check if it's in the latest beta or 
not.)

> Is there any plan to add a NewsBin-type feature to combine a user's
> different server accounts... to look at usenet from one combined
> view... with Pan assigning connections to different servers
> automatically? (I'm sure this is a nightmare, but it can't hurt to
> ask.)

YES!!  This *IS* in the cards.  However, it's not going to be right away, 
because as you said, it is a bit complex.  Basically, at some point, PAN's 
back-end data-base is going to be re-written to use a library such as SQLLite 
for it's post and server tracking database.  The more complex relationships 
and tracking that will allow, without having to code all that database stuff 
into PAN manually, will make it far easier to add virtual servers and virtual 
newsgroups to PAN's list of features.  Currently, or without such database 
management features, you are absolutely right, it WOULD be a nightmare to 
implement.

Thus, the answer is yes, but we've some work to do on the data-base back-end 
first.

BTW..  an extra bonus from all that will be MySQL (IIRC) compatibility.  MySQL 
itself is a bit overblown for the way most folks use their newsreader, but 
SQLLite will use a compatible format, so for those wishing to do all sorts of 
heavy duty categorizing and sorting and reporting and all that sort of stuff 
with the data outside of PAN, it will be very easy to do, once the back end 
gets ported over.  That porting is going to be a major project in itself, 
however, and tho it must be done to make PAN really worthy of its name as a 
"Pimp-Ass Newsreader", I've seen no indication that such a major project is 
in the immediate future.  

(Of course, the current project is scoring, which looks to be well on its way 
to a stable introduction with 0.14.0, judging by the last beta, 0.13.96.  
IMO, 0.14.0 has the potential to be the stablest and most bug-free version 
since the switch-over to GTK2 with 0.12.0, due to the extra betas necessary 
to get scoring stable.  As I said, that's been a pretty big project right 
there, but it looks to be shaping up really nicely!)

-- 
Duncan
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little
temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." --
Benjamin Franklin