[Pan-users] Re: Filtering/Scoring

[Duncan]

Rolf Leggewie posted <address@hidden>,
excerpted below,  on Sun, 10 Jul 2005 17:34:22 +0200:

> how do I
> 
> * kill a sub-thread faster than going to "Filter Score".  
>   Ctrl+I kills the whole thread.

I'm not quite sure what "Filter Score" refers to, here, so I'm not sure if
it can be done "faster" than doing that, or not.  There is no "Score"
action in the "Filter" menu, unless you created your own filter called
"Score", and if so I'd assume you'd not reference it obliquely like that,
without explaining your reference.  I don't see any score related dialog
named "Filter Score", nor any submenu entry of that name, so it's
impossible to tell precisely what you were referring to with that.  As
well, since I long ago customized my PAN keyboard shortcuts, your
reference to Ctrl+I means nothing to me either. However, I can take a
couple guesses...

First, it's helpful to know that, as I mentioned above, you can customize
your keyboard shortcuts, deleting, assigning, or reassigning, any
accelerator key combo, to any action appearing in the menu, including
those you have created yourself.  Normally, the easiest way to do so is to
hover the mouse over the desired action as if to click on it (but don't
click), then hit the desired key combo.  You can hit delete, to delete the
existing combo, to reassign it elsewhere.   One caveat is that if you want
to use a single key with no modifiers, and it's already used as a menu
accelerator on that menu, it'll simply trigger the menu accelerator action
rather than reassigning the key as you intended.  To work around that,
edit the accels.txt file directly (with PAN closed).  Its normally under
the usual PAN dir, ~/.pan/data/.  The entries there aren't sorted and
rescramble each time PAN is closed, so the easiest way to find the entry
you want to edit is to use your editor's "find" command.

As mentioned, this works for any menu item, even those you create yourself
such as the custom filters you create that are listed under the filter
menu, or the entries to switch servers if you have more than one news
server setup, in the servers menu.  Thus, I happen to use the Filter,
Match Read Articles, toggle entry, fairly frequently, so I assigned it the
"R" key, for instance.  Now, if I'm viewing only unread articles as
normal, and want to see a parent post that I read a couple sessions ago, I
can simply hit "R" to toggle the view-read filter, then space to move to
the next message and by so doing center it in the overview pane so I can
find where I am again after the toggle, then select the parent of the post
I was originally reading.  When I'm done looking at the previously read
message(s), I it "R" again to toggle it back to my normal view unread
messages only mode.  Additionally, I have several servers setup, and have
assigned the Shift+Fx (F1-F4, for my four servers) combos to switch
servers.

With that in mind, back to guessing what you were trying to describe with
the above.  Likely, you are trying to setup a new score on the references
header, effectively scoring the subthread.  If that's the case, I believe
the fastest way to do it is to ensure that the Articles, Create Score
entry, has an appropriate accelerator (remapping using the above technique
if desired, here, I have that mapped to simply "S", which I think is
normally the accelerator for File, Save Attachments, but I've remapped
that to something else).  Unfortunately, I believe there's no shortcut
to what I'm assuming you want to do, faster than invoking the score dialog
and manually selecting the references header radio button and setting an
expire if desired, then hitting Add and Rescore.

If instead you meant applying an existing score using the score filtering
actions on the filter menu, in particular, toggling the Match Scores of
-9999 (Ignored) filter, then again, the shortest way to do that would be
to assign that filter a custom accelerator key combo.

> * kill all messages x-posted to another group that I do
>   not read?


> Just another quick question.  Why is CPU usage increasing so rapidly
> (going from around 0% to 50%) just because I start to type in pan?

I'm not sure if PAN's engine can score on it or not, but what you want to
score on is the xref header, matching the other group name.  There isn't a
method for setting up such a score from PAN in any case, so if the scoring
engine /will/ score on it, you'll still have to manually edit the score
file to add that match criteria.  Try it and see if it works, is all I can
say.  

While editing the score file, this should be self-evident, but in case
it isn't, any line beginning with the % sign is a comment, so can be
safely deleted or ignored as desired.  I routinely delete most of the ones
PAN puts in my score file, in ordered to keep the file smaller and more
manageable, but that's just me.

The easiest way to manually setup your score is to create a "fake"
one using an existing post, then change whatever criteria line you setup
to base on the xref: header instead, safe in the knowledge that PAN
ignores those comment lines, which will be most of the entry PAN created. 
Most of the rest of it is ordinary regular expressions, set within in an
easily machine-parsed format, so if you are familiar with regular
expressions and are careful to keep the appropriate formatting, you should
have no trouble successfully editing the file without "breaking" it.  You
can base the score line on an xrefs header from an existing post (toggle
PAN's view all headers function to see it).

Again, I'm not sure PAN's scoring engine can successfully score on that
header, but with the above info, it should be easy to manually setup a
scorefile entry to find out!

-- 
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 in
http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/pub/a/linux/2004/12/22/rms_interview.html