Re: [Pan-users] Pan needs some serious fixing

[Charles Kerr]

> Installing Pan requires for some reason that gtkspell thing, and that
> by itself took me over an hour to work out to satisfy the missing lib,
> Pan wouldn't even start without it ( I installed the 12.9 rpm for Mandrake).
> Since I've had a lot of experience working out the dependency crap and 
> hunting down libs I manage but I can't see less experienced users ever 
> succed without some serious time and effert investment. If I wasn't so 
> stubborn I wouldn've given up on Linux and it's library dependency crap
> long time ago.

Have you not been paying attention?  I've put an unreasonably
large number of hours into reducing Pan's library dependencies
to make installation easier.

     Pan 0.12.90 uses:         Pan 0.10.0 used:

     * gtkspell (optional)     * libgtkhtml
     * gtk2                    * libgal
     * pango                   * libcapplet
     * atk                     * gnome-print            
     * glib2                   * gnome-vfs
     * libxml2                 * libglade
                               * libgnomeui
                               * libgnome
                               * libart_gpl
                               * GConf
                               * Orbit2
                               * libcrypto
                               * gnome-mime-data
                               * libesd
                               * audiofile
                               * bonobo
                               * gdk-pixbuf
                               * libdb
                               * libxml
                               * gtk
                               * glib

> But back to Pan.
> The main problem I have with Pan is that it fails misserably in downloading 
> multipart binary posts. If I flag a post and then say "downlad flaged" it 
> only retreaves the first part and only starts retreaving the rest of the 
> parts when I choose to save the binary to disk. I have not tried to expand 
> the multipart binary post into it's individual parts yet and see if it'll 
> work then but I shouldn't have to do that. This is a basic feature and 
> should work flawlessly!

AFAIK you're the first person to ask for it.  Typically flagging is used for
reading messages offline, and people saving binaries typically just hit "save".
I guess one could argue this would also be useful in offline reading of
a.b.p.* groups, where the pictures are split into 2 posts.  I'll make "flag"
multipart-savvy like "save" already is.

<em> I won't have time for this until after the Followup-To bug is
     fixed and 0.12.91 is out.  File a bug report for this at
     bugzilla.gnome.org or the request will probably get lost. </em>

> The other problem that made me reboot from Linux and go do my News stuff in 
> Windows/Agent after a few hours of struggling is that when working in tabbed 
> layout, and selecting an already downloaded article, it will keep coming to 
> this first article in the article window and not to a newly selected, 
> different article. Only by double clicking an article will it display a 
> correct article in the article tab. So, the way it should work, is when I 
> click an article in the headers tab to select it, and then click the article 
> tab, Pan should display the article that was selected, just like Agent on 
> Windows does. That's the whole point of having the tab layout! Without that 
> functionality the tab layout is only usefull for viewing lists in expaned 
> manner.

I'm trying to reproduce this, but can't.  Every time I select a different
already-downloaded article in the headers pane, it is shown in the body pane.
Could you walk me through the steps to reproduce this?

> I have not tried to post any binary attachments with Pan yet but from 
> reading the mailing list I understand this feature is somewhat limited right 
> now?

Yes: it doesn't work at all. :)

> Well, at least Pan lists the news posts with binaries in a somewhat useable 
> manner as opposed to Knode, which is totaly useless for any binary news 
> usage because it download everything I click (and that can be a problem when 
> there is a 15mb binary attachent as is the case in many video and audio 
> groups, lol).  Anyway, enought of my rant. Good job with Pan otherwise.

Erm, thanks? 

Just an aside: maybe it's just me...  but starting off with "Pan needs some
serious fixing", and whining about "and this drove me back to Windows..."
while complaining about Pan and KNode -- both of which are pretty good programs
done on a volunteer basis -- makes you look petty.

You should try contributing some code, or putting money in the tip jar, or at
a minimum train yourself to be civil in your bug reports.

-- 
cheers,
Charles