[Pan-users] Re. how should pan let users sort by active threads?

[crglur]

address@hidden wrote:
> On Tue, 4 Jul 2006 Charles Kerr wrote:
>
> >>Right now the header pane's date column shows that row's article's date.
> >>This is straightforward, but when sorting you get the date of the first
> >>post in a thread.  But what if you're looking for active threads?
> >>In that case, you really want to sort by the newest followup's date.
> 
>  > What is an 'active' thread ?
>  > On my v 0.14.2 the sequence of displaying the headers, also of
>  > threaded headers, is independant of whether the article has been
>  > fetched or not.  Or does 'active' mean it's still on the NewsServer?
> 
> No.  By "active" I was referring to threads that have had articles
> recently posted to them.  (Articles no longer present on the
> news server are referred to as "expired".)

Why would pan even consider articles no longer on the news server ?
What happens when the NewsServer purges, ie. previous numbers
allocated to particular articles are [reset] no longer valid. 
I've had that happen several times.  

> >> Can anyone think of a cleaner, but still obvious, way to do this?
> 
> > Don't do it.   Beter just make a note in the 'HAND-BOOK'.
> > Resist the temptation to fiddle unneccesarily.
> 
> There is no Pan manual because only about one person per year asks
> for it and nobody would read it anyway.
> 
A FAQ which 'self evolves' like a wiki would be a good start ?

> Besides, I'm talking about being able to sort a thread by the date
> of the thread's latest article -- something Pan can't currently do.
> I don't see how making a note of that would help anything. :)

 The structure which you've got: list of thread trees,  which is good,
doesn't allow the 'consistency' which you want. Life is not perfect.
But a 'note/warning' of danger/inconsistency ahead is a good
work-around.

Once you raised the issue of the list of headers/threads & thread-trees
being in reversed order, I too apreciated this novel fact. But previously
as a user it felt completely natural.  I suspect that your urge
to change it comes from an insider's data view.  The users view must
take precedence.

> > PSSS. I'm still waiting for someone to suggest that "if my
> > v 0.14.2 installation doesn't 'go to the first [or any] of the
> > last downloaded [as a result of being previously flagged]
> > articles, via <shift> 'n' or the 2 mouseable commands, then
> > it must be broken".
> 
> AHA, I know you. You're the person who keeps posting on the
> readers newsgroup with subjects like "Pan: unlucky?",
> "Pan: spyware", and "Pan: unfocused development?".

Good ! If you don't succeed at first, use a bigger hammer.

> Pan doesn't have a button for "Next Fetched Unread Article".
> However, as I've explained to you already on the readers newsgroup,
> set your filter to "Match Cached Articles" + "Show Matching Articles",
> then the 'next' button will work as you want.

This raises a number of issues:
* Yes ! Such settings seem to percolate the wanted articles towards 
 the top of the displayed list of headers.
* I'd very much like to understand the underlying logic/mechanism.
* The fact that all of your other users gave other than this/your 
 advice, means that they too don't understand it !
   ========

> In http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/pan-users/2006-07/msg00040.html
> I asked for suggestions on user-friendly ways to sort threads by the
> date of the thread's newest post, rather than (as Pan does now) by the
> date of the thread's oldest post.
> 
> But stating it in those clear terms, though, I realized:
> I can't think of any /need/ to sort by the oldest post.
> Maybe the cleanest fix is that, when sorting by date in the header pane,
> threads are *always* sorted by the date of the thread's newest post.
> IIRC this is how Thunderbird behaves, too.
> 
> Can anyone think of a reason for Pan to /not/ behave that way?

I can't see how it's possible to navigate down the list of 'subjects',
and open a thread-tree which has its root at the bottom, and 
be at the 'latest post'.  Besides the root is unique and the [eg.]
3 latest articles may be on 3 different branches.

Ie. when you open the thread, you want to be at the root, not
the latest article, which is actually a post of a random sub-thread.

The newsest post might not be in the branch/sub-thread that is
most important to you.

I can't remember how Agent did it for Win 3.1.
I don't even know that it expanded to a tree or just a 
date-ordered-list.  Of course if you only had a date ordered list,
you could [should perhaps] do what you seem to want.
Your existing tree structure is more 'intelligent' and stuborn to
re-ordering.

> Charles



== Chris Glur.

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