[Pan-users] Re: Aggregating servers (was Re: choosing news server)

[Beartooth]

On Tue, 04 Jul 2006 19:51:07 -0500, Charles Kerr wrote:

>> I'm sorry to say I found it so contrary to the way I work, that I gave up
>> entirely, until the new version reaches 1.0 -- which, I hope, I hope
>> (pretty please with sugar on it?) may make it an option whether to
>> aggregate them. Is there hope?
>>
>> Both just feel so wrong, somehow, that they keep me from holding my
>> attention on what I'm trying to do -- forcing me to concentrate on
>> stuff I don't even want to know about.
> 
> I have to admit this thread baffles me.  For the most part,
> aggregated servers will "just work" without any hoops to jump through.
> David's complaint makes sense, but I have no idea why aggregation
> distracts you, Beartooth.

Probably my fault : what I don't know makes trouble, but it's nothing to
the trouble I get from what I think I know that ain't so -- in this case,
perhaps, the definition of 'aggregating'. I *think*, having learned a
little caution, that something Jeff Berman and Brad Rogers are talking
about lower in this thread is related. 

Not the idea of server preference, which they also talk about -- I don't
even know which of my servers average faster than others -- but what Jeff
seems (to me at least) to be saying in these words : 

> I like to segregate certain newsgroups into different sets. [...] a
> small front end launcher for pan that merely swaps out
> various .pan2 directories for the one containing the groups you want to
> work with.

Is that better called "grouping"??

Let me try again, in case it's not. 

As it is now, I choose any of four servers before I do anything else -- as
it is on 0.14, and has been for years. (I don't remember where I came in.)
All the Opera stuff (well, nearly all) is on news.opera.no; all the Steve
Gibson & Co. stuff is on news.grc.com; Gmane stuff is on Gmane; and the
big Duke's Mixture is on giganews. OK so far?

So if I just want, say, to check for answers to something I've asked about
linux opera, I choose that server, and then the linux group. By now I know
that kind of thing without stopping to think about it.

If I have more time, I can choose the Gmane server, and come to this list
or even (if I have *plenty* of time) to the fedora.general one -- which is
way down there, since I at least skim a lot more lists on Gmane than
elsewhere.

The point is that I try to keep each server's lists down to few enough to
obviate the kind of scrolling a/o searching that I have to do if for
instance I hear of some new list and have to go through the All Groups
list on Gmane or Giganews to get to it.

If Jeff & Brad (and maybe others, so limited is my command of jargon) are
talking about is "grouping," then maybe that's what I should be asking for. 

It's not that I particularly want to group what I follow by server; I
could work up something that would arrange groups first by how much time I
spend on them, then by how important they are to me, then by whether they
relate to browsers or mailers or newsreaders or OSs -- and several other
ways -- into groups and subgroups.

If I can choose the groupings, so much the better -- preferably with sub-
and sub-sub-groupings chosen for each.

What I saw, and couldn't adjust to, when I tried 0.100, was one single
long list, arranged in no way that made enough sense to me so that I
could, for instance, open Pan, go straight to gmane.org.infinite ink or
bburg.forsale or comp.mail.pine, do what I needed, and get out.

If there *is* a way, maybe I just missed it. If so, what's its name?

Parallel Example: I keep all my permanent bookmarks in Opera and
export them to other browsers from there -- and don't use bookmarks in
Epiphany at all. (Others, of which I run half a dozen, from Dillo to
Firefox, are in between with respect to how, and how much, I use their
bookmarking.) 

The big difference is that Opera has an option to "sort by my order" --
whereas Epiphany at the other extreme tries to do what a good library
does, and sort them for me, into some sort of order intended to be
optional for everybody.

If *I* get to arrange them, I have some hope of being able to find them
again. Some other way -- including a single alphabetical or chronological
list -- may be 'better' somehow, at least once you learn it; but life is
too short for that at my age.

Am I making sense yet? 

-- 
Beartooth Staffwright, Wordcrafty Squirreler
FC5; Pine 4.64, Pan 0.14.2.91; Privoxy 3.0.3; CXO 5.0.1
Dillo 0.8.6, Opera 9.0, Firefox 1.5, Galeon 2.0.1, et al.
Remember I have little idea what I am talking about.