[Pan-users] Re: automagic cache

[Duncan]

Thufir <address@hidden> posted
address@hidden, excerpted below, on  Mon, 04 May 2009 01:08:10
+0000:

> feature request:  please add an option to automagically cache articles.

That's on the list to be added along with the other auto-* options (total 
of four, auto-cache, auto-download, auto-mark-read, auto-delete) that 
were formerly possible in old-pan using its rules feature.  That's the 
only major old-pan feature yet to be implemented in new-pan and it's 
definitely missed, but Charles thought the old implementation was too 
complicated (and we /did/ get people asking either directly about how 
rules worked, or how to do stuff rules covered, relatively frequently, so 
he does have a point).

The proposed new implementation would add a automatic actions tab to the 
preferences dialog, with the ability to assign score levels to each of 
the actions.  Thus, you could either use scoring to upscore your desired 
posts and set auto-cache for the desired level, or set auto-cache to 
match at the zero level (or even negative or ignored, for that matter) so 
all normal posts would be auto-cached.

Do note that pan's default cache size is only 10 MB, however, so this 
wouldn't work too well for binaries unless you increase the cache size.  
That's possible by editing preferences.xml, but not from the GUI, as 
again, Charles decided that was too complex an option to expose to "mere 
users".  Well, I guess pan /is/ a GNOME family application, even if it 
only requires GTK not all of GNOME installed.  As such, I suppose it's to 
be expected that it gets infected with the "users are scared of too many 
options" meme that so frustrates many power and KDE users trying to use 
Gnome and Gnome family apps.  OTOH, there's others, the "I just want it 
to work as it is, I get confused if there's too many options" folks, that 
do just that, get confused, by all the options typically exposed by a KDE 
app, so whatever.

-- 
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