Re: [Pan-users] Setting group preferences for multiple groups

[Duncan]

Robert Kochem posted on Mon, 15 Aug 2011 13:10:58 +0000 as excerpted:

> Hi,
> 
> I just tried to change the group preference (in detail the used profile)
> for multiple newsgroups. But the changes do only affect one newsgroup.
> I assume this is a bug - can someone confirm this?

I'd not call it a bug so much as a first iteration of the implementation 
that was never changed...  IOW, AFAIK (I've been a primary pan list 
regular for years but don't claim to be a dev) that's the way the 
implementation worked as originally designed, but I'm not sure it was 
intended to stay that way "forever".

As you will know if you've followed the list for awhile, tho, pan has 
recently found a new set of developers who are looking at things with 
fresh eyes, after the long time primary dev lost interest in newsgroups 
and thus in pan, a few years ago now.

So now that you've posted about it and brought it up, that might 
change... especially if you're actively interested in helping to develop 
and test a patch, as it seems you are based on this post. =:^)

> Combined with the fact that Pan2 does not select the correct profile by
> itself you have to configure each newsgroup to use the correct profile
> (that relates to the newsserver). IMHO Pan2 should implement a more
> intelligent way and always preselect the profile that belongs to the
> newserver that provides a newsgroup.
> 
> I already tried to find out in Pans source code which parts has to be
> changed - however Pan's source code contains very few comments and my
> GTK skills are at a beginner level. Therefore I did not got far...

One thing that helps is to configure the server you'll be posting from 
for most groups as your first server, since pan defaults to the first in 
the list for groups that haven't been individually configured.  Even 
after you've configured multiple servers, it should be possible to edit 
servers.xml (with pan shut down, of course) to change the order.  You may 
wish to change the names of the newsrc files at the same time, to reflect 
a reasonable server name instead of the arbitrary sequential numbers pan 
uses by default, since their names are stored in the same file.

For mass editing, since pan stores all its settings in human-editable 
plain text or xml files, including group-preferences.xml for the group 
prefs, you should be able to load that file in your favorite text editor 
and use its search and replace functionality to make the changes you 
wish.  If you're changing all of them (or almost all, so then you just 
have to change back a relative few manually), a sed command from the 
command-line or a script could do it.

IOW, it shouldn't be /too/ difficult to change either the default or 
multiple groups at once, you just have to think non-pan-GUI method to do 
it. =:^/

Meanwhile, while I can't help you in terms of explaining the source, if 
either hmueller or khaley doesn't pick up your suggestion immediately, 
once you get a bit more familiar with things and can suggest a multi-
group-prefs patch, it's quite likely to be picked up pretty fast.

You didn't happen to mention what sources you're hacking on, tho.  If 
you're using the latest tarball or even the gnome git repo, you're using 
recent but not absolutely leading edge current.  khaley's github repo 
(lostcoder on github) is "current upstream", with a number of branches to 
choose depending on how current you want to be, and hmueller's github repo 
(imhotep82 on github) is where the "alpha-level" development features 
(like the still very new and likely buggy but it actually finally 
exists!! binary posting feature) seem to be congregating at the moment.

-- 
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