[Pan-users] Re: Several issues with version .120

[Duncan]

Mark Healey <address@hidden> posted
address@hidden, excerpted below, on  Thu, 18 Jan 2007
21:09:20 -0800:

> I just installed FC6 which came with Pan version .120,  It seems to be 
> lacking some features form whatever version came with earlier versions 
> of Fedora.

Probably old (like two years, longer since anything serious was done) C
coded pan 0.14.x.  New pan (0.90 was the first public release) is an
entirely new ground-up rewrite in C++.  Yeah, some of the features of
old-pan have yet to make it into new-pan, while others simply haven't been
found to be requested by enough people yet.  Still, the new features and
HUGELY improved memory scaling make new-pan worth the trouble,
particularly for heavy binary group users.

> It seems that you can only add  filtering (scoring) rules.  I can't find 
> out how to name them or modify them later.

There's no pan interface for it, but it's simple enough to just open up
the Score file (by default, ~/.pan2/Score, but ~/news/Score I believe it
is, will be used if it's there) in your favorite text editor and edit the
text! =8^)

Pan's score file format is compatible with slrn, with the exception that
pan's format is case insensitive (there's a way to make it case sensitive
if necessary, but insensitive is usually preferred anyway). Here's the
slrn doc:

http://www.slrn.org/docs/score.txt

Note that if you've been doing all your management thru pan, there'll be a
lot of extraneous info in there, mostly comments, but even what's real
scoring info will be all sorts of disordered.  Using the above
documentation, I was able to cut something approaching 100 rules down to
... pan now reports six rules in two sections.  The rules are compound,
with multiple triggering matches per rule.

Here's an edited version of my current score file, including comments.  I
deleted many individual entries leaving a few to show the style, and
changed email addresses to email.deleted as necessary (the ones in the
kill are trolls and apparently munged anyway, so I left them as-is, tho of
course those on gmane aren't likely to see them that way due to its
munging).

-----
% PAN scorefile
% Very close to SLRN's format at http://www.slrn.org/docs/score.txt but with 
case
% insensitivity (not other differences) from xnews at 
http://xnews.remarqs.net/scoring.txt

% [newsgroup.*] wildcard (not regex) format (~ negates).
% header lines regex. (~ negates).
% Score conditions, single : and, double :: or.
% Expires: immed. below score if present.
% Leading % indicates comment, leading whitespace and blank lines  ignored.
% Regex and newsgroup matches case insensitive with keyword:, sensitive with 
keyword=.
% Newsgroup change delimits section, Score delimits "rule", multiple rules per 
section allowed.
% Comment after score becomes rule "name".

% Score levels: <=-9999 kill, -9998 to -1 low, 0, 1 - 4999 med, 5000 - 9998 
high, >=9999 watch

%###############################################################################
%###############################################################################
[alt.*]
Score:: =-9999 %Alt kill
        From: voyeur only
        From: amateur
        From: SEXmag

        Subject: Use critical pack from Microsoft Corporation
        Subject: R/-\\PE
        Subject: R/-\|PE
        Subject: britney spears

%###############################################################################
%###############################################################################
[cox.*]
Score:: =9999 %Cox Watched (Cox employee)
        From: <email.deleted>$
        From: ^Jay Munsterman <email.deleted>$
        From: ^Steven Flynn <email.deleted>$
        From: CoxTech1
        From: ^David Knight <email.deleted>$
Score:: 100 %Cox Med
        From: ^Conrad J\. Sabatier <email.deleted>$
        From: ^Jim Rusling <email.deleted>$
        From: ^Todd Knarr <email.deleted>$
Score:: 5000 %Cox Hi
        From: ^Lenroc <email.deleted>$
        From: ^Mag® 2º.. <email.deleted>$
Score:: =-9999 %Cox Kill (repeat-kill)
        From: ^"John Smith" <address@hidden>$
        From: John Shocked
        From: You Got Punked\, Bitch
        From: address@hidden>

%###############################################################################

%2006.02.10
Score: =-9999
Expires: 2/10/2007
        From:: ^Vegas <address@hidden>$

%###############################################################################
%###############################################################################
-----

As you can see, I start with a some terse format reminder comments and a
pointer to the doc.  The sections are offset with ### comments, and the
temporary entries kept separate from the others for easy tracking and
deletion when they expire.  As I said, there are way more entries than
that, I just edited them here for appropriateness and space reasons.

> It also only highlights the score column according instead of the whole
> line.

I think this was intended as a "feature", but it bothers me too, tho not
enough to have filed an actual bug on it.  I'd not be surprised to find
someone else had done so, however.

> As for the score filtering in the header sub menu under the view menu I
> don't under stand why there isn't just a dialog where the user can input
> a range.

Because the preset ranges are the same ones pan uses for coloring. 
Consistency in GUI. =8^)

> The other changes all seem to be improvements.

The biggest feature a lot of folks still miss is the ability to setup
rules.  However, the most common use of rules was for auto-download on the
one hand, or auto-mark-read and/or auto-delete on the other.  Charles
decided the rules implementation was too confusing, and in previous
discussions it was basically agreed that at minimum, checkbox preferences
for scoring actions to automatically: * delete ignored, * mark-read low
(below zero) scored, * download watched, should be added.  Since it would
be easy to do if that's implemented, additional options to download high
and medium scored posts and to mark-read instead of delete ignored posts,
would likely be added at the same time, assuming Charles hasn't decided
that makes the preferences too complex.

Talking about complex preferences, be aware that there are a number of
advanced options not available in the GUI precisely to keep down the
complexity, but still exposed to the advanced user in the config files
themselves.  Examples are cache size (default is 10MB, I have my binary
pan instance set to 12 gigabytes since I prefer to download to cache than
clear it manually, and my text pan instance set to 5 GB, since I want to
keep stuff around), expiry (the GUI lists only a few options, the config
file setting is in days), connections per server (GNKSA says max of four,
some pay services allow at least eight, so if you want >4, set it in the
config file), and pan's config dir (~/.pan2/ by default, setting taken
from the $PAN_HOME environmental variable, this is how I keep separate
binary and text instances of pan, with separate settings for each).

-- 
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