[Pan-users] Re: Pan downloads & combines multi-part msgs

[Roger T. Imai]

There may be other ways to download and combine mult-part messages in 
Pan 0.120, but I've found the following method works for me.

Set View - Header Pane - Match Only Complete Articles.

Shift-Click or Ctrl-Click to select a range or multiple groups of 
articles, which may include multi-part messages.

Right-click on the highlighted area and select Save Articles. A second 
window will open to allow you to select or de-select Save Text and Save 
Attachments. I de-select the Save Text option unless I expect it to 
include special instructions. Save Attachments, of course.

Pan's Edit - Group Preferences window allows you to set the default 
folder for saved attachments. I think the default is
/home/<username>/News. You can find it in the Gnome Places menu.

I've successfully highlighted a range of several multi-part messages, 
and found all the attachments properly combined, decrypted, and saved in 
my target folder. Pan is the only binary newsreader for Linux that I 
know of that handles the controversial yEnc encoding. If you newsgroup 
includes binaries marked yEnc, you'll find Pan much easier to use than 
to have to decode these binaries by hand.

About Saving messages, I don't know what the difference is between 
Saving a message and Caching a message is, except that Saved messages go 
in the Downloads folder which I created, Cached messages are saved in 
the .pan2/article-cache folder when they're opened to be read. I think 
"Delete Group's Article" (in the Group Pane, when you right-click on a 
read Group's listing,) deletes the cached messages, but not messages 
you've saved to a user-defined location.

Some newsreaders allow you to download incomplete multi-part binaries 
and will watch for the rest. I think Pan will do this with the message 
scoring feature. Documentation on how scoring works hasn't been posted 
yet, and I'm waiting anxiously for it myself!

FWIW: News readers have had to evolve with advancing encoding techniques 
as well as posters who violate conventional Usenet protocols, so binary 
newsreaders especially have had to go through constant revision to keep 
up with user practices, and their menu structure reflects their upgrade 
path. Pan is supposedly modeled after Forte Agent of which I'm a user, 
and believe me, Pan is much easier to use. Keep exploring all the 
configuration windows, and you'll eventually find out how to get what 
you want.

BTW, I'm also using v0.120, and I'm a Linux newbie.

HTH,

Roger

address@hidden wrote:
> Message: 2
> Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2007 10:51:06 -0700
> From: Travis <address@hidden>
> Subject: Re: [Pan-users] Multipart Messages
> To: <address@hidden>
> Message-ID: <address@hidden>
> Content-Type: text/plain;       charset="iso-8859-1"
>
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Michael Satterwhite" <address@hidden>
> To: <address@hidden>
> Sent: Sunday, July 29, 2007 10:38 AM
> Subject: [Pan-users] Multipart Messages
>
>
> > Does Pan have the ability to download / combine multipart binaries? If so, how 
> > is this done - and where is the content saved?