[Pan-users] Re: killfile not working in Pan?

[Duncan]

Steven D'Aprano posted on Wed, 26 Jan 2011 11:46:20 +1100 as excerpted:

> Steven D'Aprano wrote:
> 
>> If I use Articles > Ignore Author instead, how long will that apply
>> for?
> 
> Ah, I was fooled by the lack of ellipses ... in the menu command. I
> expected it would just apply the rule immediately, but in fact it opens
> a dialog box and lets me choose the length of time the rule will apply
> for. Nevertheless, it still doesn't seem to be working for me.

(This first bit based on the 0.131 version number in the first post, 
snipped in the one I quoted.)

0.131?  AFAIK that was from before the security issue reported on AFAIK 
0.132 (and earlier in the 0.xxx series) and fixed for AFAIK 0.133.  
Perhaps your version has the patch backported, but if you don't know that 
for sure (check your distro's changelog, assuming that's where you got 
it), I'd recommend upgrading.  Even 0.133 is years old now, and well 
tested.

To answer your question, meanwhile...

What both of these options do is set the score to -9999.

Depending on your view settings, that may or may not hide the posts in 
question (in addition to the "match scores of -9999" option, if you have 
show matching article threads or subthreads instead of only matching 
articles set, that will override the match -9999 option for those (sub)
threads, showing them regardless of score status).

Also, depending on your color options and whether you have the score 
column set visible or not, if the post is visible, you may get color-coded 
scores in the score-column.  (Years ago this was the entire line, not just 
the score column.  I wish it still was... or that it was an option, if 
someone has an objection to color-coding the entire line, because coding 
the score column only is far too easy to miss... especially when one would 
like to hide the score column for display-size reasons.)

Thus, if you have the wrong view AND score-display settings, "ignoring" a 
post won't change visible status /at/ /all/.

Meanwhile, the "Edit article's watch/ignore/score" function (article menu) 
pops up a dialog with all the scores pan believes applied, with the 
ability to add/remove individual scoring rules and both a simple "close" 
and a "close and rescore" button.  If you want to debug scoring on an 
individual post, that's where to look.

You can also edit the scorefile itself.  It's reasonably simple text 
format based, making it easy enough to edit in a text editor, if desired.  
Pan uses the semi-standard slrn scorefile format, primary documentation 
here: http://www.slrn.org/docs/score.txt ,
with xnews using a modified version of the same format, documentation here:
http://xnews.remarqs.net/scoring.txt .  Pan uses nearly the original slrn 
format minus a couple of the fancy bits and defaulting to case insensitive.
(Of course if you edit the scorefile with pan open, you might want to use 
that rescore option mentioned above to trigger pan to rescore existing 
posts.)

But I'll bet it's your view, header-pane settings, likely combined with 
not having the score-column shown, so you can't see the color settings if 
you have them.  I know I certainly got thrown for a loop once, when I 
forgot I had match my own posts (only) marked, and wondered why I was 
suddenly so lonely in my regular groups!  So it's not just the newbies 
that find that arrangement challenging at times (tho I was much closer to 
a newbie at that time then now, having used pan for only a couple years, 
back then, not the near decade I have under my belt now).

-- 
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