[Pan-users] Feature request: additional download option

[Jim Reiss]

Haven't generated any interest with my past feature requests, but
undaunted I present my latest suggestion: a new download option to
select a range of recent headers instead of just the XXXXX most recent.
For example, instead of the 50000 most recent, download the first 10000
that you would get from a "50000" most recent.  This might look like
50000-40000 as a range, or it might be implemented as "sample 10000
headers starting 50000 back".

What is this good for?  My ISP's news server (giganews) has a fairly
small download limit, so I only use it when I can't fill missing posts
elsewhere.  With their retention many groups may have hundreds of
thousands of articles, and I usually only want the past couple of days
worth.  So I grab, say, 50000 most recent.  Then I find out I needed the
70000 most recent.  So I ask for that and then abort the download when
it looks like I've filled in the headers I need.  A new download option
would be more precise and allow downloading smaller samples to get a
feel for where in those thousands of headers is the group I'm looking
for, so maybe I'd only need to sample 5000 headers.