[Pan-devel] Re: Couple of feature requests

[Duncan]

Pekka Tiittanen <address@hidden>
posted address@hidden, excerpted below, on  Wed, 21 Jun
2006 22:21:52 +0300:

> Hi all!
> 
> 
> 
> Nice to see Pan evolving again. But there are couple of things I do miss
> from the old pan.
> 
> 1) separate server-profiles.
> 
> With new pan you can't really know from which server it is downloading
> messages. Old behaviour was much, much better. I have a leafnode
> downloading some binaries on my own server 'cause my ISP holds only few
> days of messages over there. With new pan I can't control where pan
> downloads those binaries. (or can I? Haven't tried 0.100 yet)

The unified newsgroup view was one of the things that has been planned for
PAN for a long time, with PAN automatically managing connections to the
various servers.

That said, with .100, you can set server priority levels.  The server
prefs only have primary/secondary, but by editing the config file you can
add as many levels as desired (I think, that's what was discussed,
anyway).  It won't try any of the secondary servers for a post unless none
of the primaries have it.  Similarly with additional priority levels if
you set them up -- it won't go on to the next unless everything at a
specified level doesn't have the post.

Depending on your exact needs, that will likely solve your problem there. 
It would be nice to be able to temporarily disable a server entirely, but
that's not yet possible unless of course you simply set it temporarily to a
non-existing server, then set it back when you want to use it again.  That
works.  =8^)

> 2) ctrl+shift+U "Get new headers in subsribed groups"
> 
> Please, please, please bring this back. I really, really miss it.

.99 was missing the button for that, even.  It was a regression in that
and a couple other ways, but .100 brings at least the button back.

It would definitely be nice to have a hotkey for that again, as reaching
for the mouse all the time, for those of us that use the keyboard only
much of the time, is a pain! A bit longer term, Charles has mentioned that
he'll probably bring back configurable hotkeys, which would be even
better, provided one can configure hotkeys for entries not in the menu,
only available by button. Configurable hotkeys rule!  =8^)  I haven't the
foggiest when either a pre-assigned hotkey for download headers for
subscribed groups, or configurable hotkeys, will appear, but as Charles is
in favor of configurable hotkeys, it'll almost certainly appear eventually.

> 3) Group preferences.
> 
> Possibility to default one groups messages to one directory and other
> group's messages to another directory.

If you note, current pan has /no/ retained group state (other than message
state, of course, nothing for the UI).  I believe this won't be back until
after 1.0 (next stable, later this year, perhaps August).  There are
several missing features dependant on retained group state, and I expect
that to be one of the big improvements for 1.1, along with a number of
features depending on it.

Charles has mentioned that certain things, in particular how the per-group
posting profile choice retention worked, wasn't entirely intuitive to many
users with old-pan.  He has said he'd like to change that, making it a bit
more obvious.  Based on that, I think the most likely UI solution when
group state retention returns will be a group properties dialog, with
selectable settings for things such as default posting profile and save
location.  Given the number of computer users familiar with the concept of
a properties dialog for all sorts of things, and the fact that it's
decently intuitive even for those not yet so familiar with the concept,
this seems about the most sensible possibility I can come up with, anyway.

> I myself know that before these three things are implemented I won't be
> using new pan. I'm sticking with the old one at this time.

That's a very reasonable choice, as long as you aren't a regular in groups
with millions of headers, therefore running into the infamous old-pan
memory scaling issues, and don't deal with multiple servers that work much
better entirely automated.  For those with either of those issues,
both of which are worst for heavy binary downloaders, the new pan is
likely much better even with the still-missing features.  For those who
don't normally run into either issue, the old PAN is likely to be the
better choice currently, and may remain the better choice until a few more
missing features return, likely with 1.1 stable, or pre-1.1 for those
willing to try the betas.

FWIW, I'm mostly a text group user at this point, and would certainly be
sticking with the old pan ATM, if I wasn't a primary list (group thru
gmane, as I view it) regular and thus needed to retain familiarity with
the latest version, in ordered to answer questions and provide feedback to
Charles on it.  (I do binaries sometimes, but haven't done any lately, and
was using klibido for awhile before the new PAN came out due to its
automated multiserver handling that PAN was missing.)



-- 
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