Re: [Pan-users] Something to pass along

[Duncan]

Joe Zeff posted on Sun, 24 Jun 2012 17:50:12 -0700 as excerpted:

> On 06/24/2012 05:17 PM, Duncan wrote:
>> That's actually configurable, now (barring bugs)! =:^)
> 
> Right now, I'm house sitting at Chaos Manor.  My laptop has Pan 0.135
> and I don't see anything like what you describe.  In fact there's no
> Action tab.

Correct.  0.135 is too old for that.  Checking the changelog, Heinrich's 
commits didn't really enter the picture until 0.135 was deployed and 
0.136 was in development, and that was one of the many new features and 
fixes he's responsible for. =:^)

Talking about changelog, here's what's new since 0.135 (the Auto-
Cache/... entry under 0.136 is actions, log abbreviated for posting, 
omitting author credits, bug refs, l10n updates, etc):

0.138 "Der Geraet"
* Hotkey for showing/hiding signatures in the article body.
* Keep position on selected item on re-order.
* Remember last read post.
* Open url in browser.
* Signature printed double when line needs to be wrapped.
* Tasks marked "Stopped" should also remain stopped when pan restarted.
* "Save at" options other then %g and %G.
* Filter Cross-posters.
* 136 using secure ssl and get continuous popups for certs but no 
connection.
* Pan crashes while fetching new headers.

0.137 "The Mattel and Mars Bar Quick Energy Chocobot Hour"
* Bugfix release for errors regarding segfaults etc. with thread handling.
* Colorize group names.
* Fix three-horizontal-pane layout between sessions.
* Stop tasks when there is no space left on device.
* Honour default attachments folder setting if group folder is not set.

0.136 "Far too busy being delicious..."
* Support for uploading attachments (with NZB creation) to Usenet. 
* Selectable Content-Transfer-Encoding.
* Selectable GtkSpell default language.
* Support for encrypting and signing articles with a public/private PGP 
key.
* Connections can now be encrypted with TLS 1.0.
* Various bugfixes/enhancements from Bugzilla.
* Auto-Cache/-Download/-Delete/-Mark read based on scores.
* D-Bus support for automatic batch addition of new files to the Download 
Queue.
* Status Icon support.
* GNOME Keyring support for safely storing server passwords.


So yeah, 0.135 is OLD and missing a LOT of new toys including binary 
uploading, secure connection support, and actions!


FWIW, implementing actions took care of the last item on the list of 
stuff in 0.14 that hadn't made it into the C++ rewrite in one form or 
another.  

The 0.14 version was "rules", but they were too complicated for a lot of 
folks to figure out on their own and often required explaining, so 
Charles thought (and I agreed) that the old 0.14 rules setup wasn't ideal 
to try to implement.  After discussion on the list, someone (it was long 
ago and I honestly don't remember who, might have been me, more likely 
someone else) came up with the basic idea for actions, which Charles (and 
I) agreed should work far better.  Unfortunately, by that time Charles 
wasn't working on pan much any more, and he never actually implemented it.

But I re-described the idea a number of times as the various requests 
(auto-download especially, but also auto-mark-read, not so much the 
others) appeared and reappeared on the list over the years, and...

The last time it happened, Heinrich saw the idea apparently for the first 
time, and presumably liked it as well as I (and presumably Charles, given 
his earlier approval in principle) had.

It seems such ideas inspire him, as (not so unusual for him) he had a 
first implementation out in git within a day or two (it may have actually 
been hours).

Unfortunately, I've only done text groups, mostly on gmane (with little 
reason for ignore), for some years now, so haven't had a chance to really 
test actions myself, and there hasn't been a lot of comment on the list 
about them either.  It may be that many on this list have their setup 
already done and so seldom go into pan's prefs that they haven't even 
seen it yet.  Then of course there's the many running lagging distro 
versions.

The one comment there was, did hint at a possible problem in the auto-
cache action.  However, that requires a much larger than default cache-
size (at least for binaries) or the messages will just disappear again as 
the cache will be full and they'll be deleted to make room.  I thus asked 
if the reporter had checked cache size, and (IIRC) never saw a reply, 
so...  But since pan's assumed default seems to be download-and-direct-
save, rather than pre-cache to go thru later, I'd guess fewer use the 
auto-cache action than the other three actions, so it probably has less 
testing.


But anyway, yes, if you're still on 0.135, you DEFINITELY have a lot to 
look forward to with future pan upgrades, including but certainly not 
limited to actions! =:^)

-- 
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