[Pan-users] Re: batching new header retrieval

[Duncan]

oldschool <address@hidden> posted
address@hidden, excerpted below, on  Mon, 13 Nov
2006 16:13:25 -0800:

> I check in on many groups only occasionally.  The header download for a
> seldom visited mp3 group can take a dozen minutes or more.  I realize
> juggling 300,000+ articles in a group will ALWAYS be slow, but would a
> batch script that retrieved new headers for subscribed groups save some
> of that time?

You say seldom visited, then mention retrieving new headers for subscribed
groups.  You /are/ aware of the pan action to do just that, right?  You
don't have to visit the group to get new headers.  In fact, I have both
get new headers at pan start and get new headers when entering a
group preference settings turned off, and /only/ use the on-demand get
headers functions, usually the "for subscribed groups" function, but
occasionally just the "for selected group" function, when I'm just wanting
to update one particular group.

The get new headers buttons are the second (subscribed groups) and third
(selected group) on the toolbar, while the corresponding menu entries are
on the Groups menu.  The preference settings I mentioned are on the first
tab (behavior) of the preferences dialog.

> Can I off-load (pre-load?) any of the wait?

Depending on what exactly you mean and how fancy you want to get,
absolutely.  Using the preference settings and get new headers functions
discussed above, you can set things up fairly flexibly.  Beyond that, see
below.

> Does anyone know of another program/script that fetches header info in a
> form pan can use?  OR any reasonable form, I'll try to hack something
> together if there's interest.

The pan tasks list file is the standard nzb format.  It's possible to feed
pan an nzb file at the command line (pan --help for the details) and have
it load and run that rather than the default (which will normally be empty
unless you quit pan with pending tasks).  There's also a command line
option that tells pan not to load the GUI when fetching from a nzb file in
this manner.  Thus, it's possible to setup a cron job or the like,
scheduling pan to download <whatever> at set times, so it's already there
when you run pan normally.  This had actually been a requested feature for
some time, but it was only implemented with new-pan (>0.90).

-- 
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