[Pan-users] Re: Creating NZB files

[Duncan]

Adam Moorhouse posted on Tue, 15 Mar 2011 19:21:40 -0700 as excerpted:

> Is there (or could there be) an option to create an NZB file from a
> selected set of articles?

Actually, there is... but it's not exactly obvious or direct...

See, for posting, pan is only really designed to handle text, altho it 
handles downloading binaries quite well.  Creating nzbs would normally be 
for posting with binaries, and since pan doesn't really handle posting 
binaries (with the exception of manually encoded UUE format, or use my pan-
attach-kd script, tho I've not actually tested it for awhile and don't 
really know that it actually still works with kde4's kdialog, etc)...

But as it happens, pan uses the nzb format for its own task list.  Thus, 
all you have to do is make sure nothing else is queued up, set pan offline 
so it won't actually start downloading, then queue up the download, and go 
harvest pan's tasks.nzb file.  =:^)

You may have to close pan to get it to save-state including the nzb, I'm 
not actually sure.  And I'm not familiar with the full nzb format, so 
don't know if it can save all pan's tasks natively or if the format was 
extended a bit to be able to do so, in which case you might have to 
manually clean up the file a bit, as you would if you got other tasks in 
the nzb as well.

IOW, I've not actually tested it myself, but from what others have said it 
works, and the theory certainly says it does since pan's tasks.nzb is just 
that, an nzb file.  But take a look at the raw format a few times and test 
it with other nzb clients, before posting them publicly and finding they 
don't work, or worse yet, have a download for an unrelated and possibly 
embarrassing group queued as well.

-- 
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