Re: [Pan-users] More on 0.11.4 --> 0.13.2.91

[Charles Kerr]

On Sat, Dec 07, 2002 at 07:43:17PM -0600, Bobby D. Bryant wrote:
> Here are some more things I have noticed after upgrading.  Mostly 
> little stuff, but the old way was really convenient in a lot of cases.

Wow, this is quite a list... I'll go through each item here,
but since I can't fix all of these tonight, most of my answers
will involve bugzilla, to make sure your suggestions don't get
lost in the shuffle.

(The Pan team uses bugzilla for most everything it does now; the
`open 0.13.3 bugs' page comes up first thing when I start Mozilla. :)


>  o In the task manager you can no longer select multiple consecutive 
> entries by dragging the mouse across them.

That would be nice to have back.
File a bugzilla report and I'll look into this.

>  o When using ^s for the save dialog, you no longer get the drop-down 
> list of recent save locations.  (You only get the single most recent 
> one, or the default if you just started Pan.)

Yes, this is a result of dropping the Gnome requirement -- Gnome has the
dropdown list that automatically stores histories; gtk2 doesn't.
According to bugzilla we'll try to add this back in 0.14:
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=85973

>  o If you download an article by clicking it, it shows up in the task 
> manager as "downloading 1 articles" rather than giving the article's 
> subject line as it previously did.  (Articles being downloaded as the 
> result of ^s _do_ still show the subject lines in the task manager.)
> 
>  o If you download an article by _either_ ^s or by clicking it, the 
> status bar at the bottom of the main window shows the article's cryptic 
> ID string rather than the subject line.  Having the subject line was 
> really helpful.

These two are small, helpful, and low-risk -- file a single report for
both of these, and I'll add them before 0.13.3 next week.

>  o Maybe I just haven't found it yet, but the new Pan seems to be 
> missing the previous function that would let you select a posted image 
> and type 'o' to download, decode, and pop it up in an external viewer 
> such as Electric Eyes.

Another victim of droppping Gnome requirements.
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=99721

>  o When all three panes are showing and the group or article header 
> panes need a horizontal scrollbar, clicking on the bar between the 
> slider and the arrow does not jump-scroll the pane.  (However, it 
> _does_ work correctly on the vertical scrollbars.  Is this perhaps a 
> GTK issue?)

This is scheduled for 0.13.3...
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=84621
It looks like I'd better get off my butt and fix this one. :)

>  o In some situations Pan does not properly put an X beside an article 
> that gave "bad article number" when you tried to save it, so when you 
> next visit the newsgroup you cannot tell that you tried to download it 
> and failed.  I _think_ this only happens if you move on to another 
> newsgroup before the error occurs.  (I think the icon that indicates 
> that a file has been saved to disk is misbehaving in the same way.)

This is a side-effect of a design decision to not keep loaded the
articles in groups of all queued tasks -- that was an _enormous_ memory
hog in <= 0.12.x.  I don't want to go back to that, so a different fix
needs to be found.  Most likely it will involve replacing Pan's current
file format with a relational database so that we can tweak article
flags without having to load everything in the group.[1]

> BTW, the new version is noticably more stable, and of course I 
> appreciate the spellchecker.  Keep up the good work!

:)

cheers,
Charles

[1] ramblings about adding a database backend to Pan:
    http://mail.gnu.org/pipermail/pan-devel/2002-October/000220.html