Re: [Pan-users] Multiple Server Question (possibly suggestion)

[Duncan]

On Sunday 06 October 2002 20:40, Frank Bruno wrote:
> I've been using Binary News Reader for linux since it came out, however,
> I am completely frustrated with the fact they dropped linux. I really
> like their format, but I cannot take the crashes any longer. On to my
> question:
>
> In BNR you can have one set of newsgroups related to all servers. This
> allows tagging of articles and BNR then downloads the article from all
> servers. Is this possible w/ Pan. It looks like you have to switch
> between servers and then download from a particular server?

Pan is supposed to eventually get multi-cross-server functionality similar to 
BNR2, but it's going to be a bit.  Pan is still rather immature, in that 
regard.

As for what it can do now... On the face of it, the servers are separate.  
However, I was thinking about that in regards to it's cache handling the 
other day and wondering...  I haven't investigated in detail, but at first 
blush, it appears Pan keeps the group data separate by server, but has a 
common actual message cache, which appears to be stored based on MsgID, which 
remains the same between servers.  Thus, it's likely that while a message 
read on one server won't show as read on another, because that's tracked 
separately, if you go to retrieve it on the second b4 deleting it off the 
first (IOW, while the physical message is still in the cache), it shouldn't 
have to d/l it again, and should immediately see it is there, already.

At a minimum, due to the unified cache organized by MsgID, it should be far 
easier to get it working that way eventually.  However, this thought is 
fairly new to me, and I haven't had a real chance to explore how far it 
works, by loading the same group on two different servers, so it's all 
supposition at this point.

> Also, it is possible to group multiple groups under headings, like
> "music", "movies" "games", etc. is this possible with Pan?

That, yes, although it doesn't appear that way at first, and it would be "per 
server, not across multiple servers.  Basically, one would use the same 
technique I used to use under MSWormOS on OE.  All it takes is the 
realization that there's nothing really preventing separate servers in PAN 
from ACTUALLY pointing to the same URL server address.  Thus, assuming a 
single real server, you could set up several servers in Pan, by topic, such 
that all *ix technical text groups, for instance, are grouped in one Pan 
server, your ISP's text groups in another, other text groups in a third, MP3 
groups in a forth, games groups in a fifth, movies in a sixth, still pRon pix 
in a seventh, etc, but they all could be pointed at the same real server.

Unfortunately, Pan isn't a real good multi-server binary harvester at this 
point, yet, so putting several groups from different real servers together 
isn't an option, yet, to my knowledge.

-- 
Duncan
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little
temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." --
Benjamin Franklin