[Pan-users] Re: Feedback, Please: sorting threads by date of newest article

[Duncan]

walt <address@hidden> posted
address@hidden, excerpted below, on  Mon, 10 Jul 2006 12:42:47
-0700:

> The subject of threading in binaries groups has always confused me anyway,
> and I've never figured out how to do exactly what I really want:  i.e.
> sort posts in roughly chronological order, yet not intermingle multiparts
> which were posted by different people during the same time period.  I can
> 'de-mingle' the parts by sorting on Subject, but then the chronology is
> destroyed.

I've had this problem too.  I've learned to handle it with a couple of
strategies.

While my default would be sort by date, and I'll start processing the
group that way, when I hit an intermingled patch, I'll flip to sort by
subject or author, such that the first of the intermingled series is
grouped, and process it.  When I'm done, I delete that set and switch back
to date to get the next of the intermingled series.  Eventually, that 
leaves a generally unmingled series because all the others have been
processed and deleted, and I go from there.

I also tend to download almost everything (save for obvious spam and stuff
I'm obviously not interested in) to cache first, and then process
everything locally.  That's why the delete steps above.  Removing the
obvious rejects first both reduces clutter and saves downloading. 
Deleting series as they are processed  again frees the cache space.  This
requires about 4 gigs  of cache (with the stuff I download) to manage
correctly, or stuff ends up deleted right after it's downloaded, without
me even having a chance to look at it!  Downloading to cache first means I
can do that while I'm at work or sleeping, and the processing is all with
local data.  It also means I get the benefit of the full post metadata
(date/time, subject, poster), as well as the filenames, when I'm doing the
processing.



-- 
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