[Pan-users] Re: posting server according to the group one?

[Duncan]

Matej Cepl <address@hidden> posted
address@hidden, excerpted below, on  Tue, 26 May 2009 21:23:04
+0000:

> Duncan, Tue, 26 May 2009 13:12:51 +0000:
>> because as a sysadmin and occasional IP networking troubleshooter,
>> I'm far too used to thinking of it at the IP routing level.
>> 
>> That's why I let it be...
> 
> That's apparently the problem we have. However, I have already wrote
> reply to this post, which was long, detailed, contained (among other
> things) The ultimate answer to life, the universe and everything (and
> no, it wasn't 42 -- detailed proof was included), but then alas, I have
> by mistake quit pan and it doesn't store drafts :( So, I will continue
> just briefly.

Ugh!  I've had posts "lost" like that (power goes out or whatever, or the 
server says it takes it but bit-buckets it) b4.  Now, if it gets too 
long, I try to remember to save it to draft some way along the line.

(I like the HHGG ref, tho.  =:^)  Way OT but FWIW, about time I was 
reading that series back in the 80s, I actually /had/ a brick hit me in 
the head, tho it wasn't gold and didn't have a lemon peel wrapped around 
it!   I worked for plant services at the college I was going to and some 
guys and I were cleaning up a college owned rental after the old guy that 
had lived there died.  We were throwing all the accumulated garbage from 
the yard in a truck, and one guy missed the truck with his brick and hit 
me, on the other side.  He said look out, but too late.  The brick had 
hit, and it sounded to me like llllooooooookkkk ooooutttttt!!!!  Yes, 
time /does/ seem to telescope under those sorts of crisis situations!  So 
the series has rather more personal meaning for me than I suppose it has 
for most!)

>> I see something about separating it from the posting profile,
>> which is all fine and good, but I don't see anything concrete about
>> where to actually /put/ it then!
> 
> What? Identity and networks (or whatever else may we want to call them
> -- newsgroupsets)? I don't think it matters that much ... just add one
> more item in Edit menu or under Edit/Settings* dialog.

Well, people /have/ been asking for some way to categorize their 
newsgroups.  Add at least one level to the tree between subscribed groups 
and the groups themselves, or better yet, make it a nestable hierarchy.

I can see it if that were done.  At each nest level, one could choose the 
default settings for everything underneath.  Any node could change the 
settings from the default of the node above, but if it wasn't changed, it 
would inherit, unchanged.

That would add a LOT of flexibility, and as I said, at least one more 
level in the tree is a very popular request, so it'll probably happen one 
of these days.  Unfortunately, with years off between development spurts 
sometimes, and with nobody really stepping up to make it a team effort 
(Chris L does help Charles some, but it's just those two, and AFAIK Chris 
doesn't do a lot on his own) like most of the popular projects, "one of 
these days" could well be a good fraction of a decade from now...

I wish I could code...

>> If I had a better idea of where and how you picture it as working, I
>> think I might agree.  =:^S

> What about the server where this message came from? Couldn't we expect
> (as a [first] guess) it to be the best where the reply should go to?
> I think that even on The Real USENET and if binary newsgroups are
> not taken into consideration (I don't know ... do people reply there?)
> people actually don't use plethora servers at once.

Do people reply in the binary groups?  It depends on the group.  The 
strictest ones have the binary group and then a <name>.d group, for 
discussion.  In those groups, posting non-binaries (or OT binaries) to 
the non-d group can be enough to get you turned in to 
address@hidden  However, other groups are more easygoing and/or 
just have the single group, where replies, more requests, general 
community discussion, etc, all happen in the same group.

There's even a few alt.binaries.* groups that really aren't binary at 
all, they just happened to end up there somewhat by accident.  
(alt.binaries.news-server-comparison is one such group.  It's very useful 
if you're looking for a better news provider, or it used to be, anyway.  
I learned a LOT there but I've not been subscribed for some years, now.)

But you're correct, to some degree.  Text groups are normally a low 
enough load on the servers and feeds that most servers, even the crappy 
ones, do reasonably decent on text groups, and there's much less need to 
follow multiple servers.

However, there's enough people that follow both binary and text groups, 
and that have multiple servers for binaries, that thus have multiple 
servers for their text groups as well, that no general rule could be made 
or assumed.

>> only one at first, but then he gets a new server with the group?  Does
>> pan need to detect that and ask for each such group which server he
>> wants to use to post?  What about when he sets up a new posting profile
> 
> I don't know, and even if I don't have answer for that we are not worse
> than now, aren't we?

Well, that depends on viewpoint.  Some people set what they want, and 
don't expect to be bothered again, even if they add a new server or 
three, unless the server they set gets deleted.

> Once again, do people really (binary newsgroups aside) often take
> messages from more than one newsserver at once?

Enough do (if only because they use the same servers for binaries) that 
no assumption to the contrary could/should be made.

Consider for instance the microsoft.* groups.  While many servers carry 
them as they are popular, servers other than MS are unauthorized "suck" 
feeds, with questionable propagation one or both ways.  MS recommends (or 
did, years ago when I cared about them) that people subscribe to their 
servers directly.

As such, anyone following MS' recommendations will have strong wishes to 
reply to the MS servers, regardless of how many other servers they have 
configured that carry the groups, or in what order they subscribed to 
them.

MS isn't alone in this regard.  There's a number of other businesses that 
have their own newsgroups that are unofficially propagated and carried on 
other server.  The symantec newsgroups are in this category I believe; 
there may be some carrying the grc groups; I'm sure there are others.

>> Alternatively, you're throwing a whole new level of complexity into
>> things, by now requiring that people configure each server they setup
>> into some level of subnetwork, creating at least one more level in the
>> hierarchy, if not a whole multi-level tree.  Certainly, I see no way
>> for pan to automatically deduce that any particular server is intended
>> to be in a different "network" from the others, or in the same one, so
>> it'd have to be setup manually.  I don't see how that makes things
>> simpler at all!
> 
> I have to add newsserver to the posting profile now, don't I? So, what
> if, instead of scroll-down box in the posting profile could more than
> one server. I thought something similar to
> http://mcepl.fedorapeople.org/tmp/network-editor.png (that's
> xchat-gnome), but I am not sure how that would work in context of
> somebody filling his internet pipe with binary junk from binary
> newsgroups. What's exactly the matter and use case of such folks?

Well, pan connects to all configured servers at once, and pulls messages 
from all servers that have a particular group.  So if more that one 
server has a group, individual messages can come from any of them.

But a message gets posted to just one of them.  The question is how to 
decide which one.  Right now (as you now know), when you choose a posting 
profile, you choose to post to the server selected for that profile.

But I may be comprehending your idea now.  As in the last panel of that 
picture, which shows what could be a server list, one could rank the 
servers in priority order, and pan could try them in that order until it 
got one that had the group in question.

That would /sort/ of work, PROVIDED one could change the priority (and 
delete some servers from the list entirely if so desired) for each 
group.  IOW, as long as it wasn't a single global setting only, it could 
work.

And as importantly, I don't believe it's too complex to reasonably code, 
so it's a solution that could get done in a reasonable timeframe.  The 
above nested groups solution would be fairly easy once the nested groups 
is done and may be a better solution yet, but it's harder to do from 
where we're at now, since we don't have the nested groups yet.

Since pan is a gnome family app, it's reasonably likely Charles is 
familiar with that xchat-gnome dialog.  Perhaps when we're done here, you 
could file a bug with this as a wishlist item.  Given that the posting 
profile posting server selection idea was never claimed to be the best, 
only the best we could come up with at the time, there's a fair chance 
Charles will like this well enough to run with it the next time he goes 
into a pan programming spurt.  There's still no telling when that will 
be, but it does improve the chances of getting it in something like a 
reasonable timeframe, anyway.

>> Surreal USENET?  I hadn't heard those terms used together like that
> ....
>> If I'm correct in guessing what you mean, "artificial", maybe?
> 
> Well, a) English is not my first language (as you have probably guessed
> already),

You speak it better than I speak your language, guaranteed! =:^)

But... I really do appreciate the alternate viewpoint, sometimes.  
Actually, that's one of the things I like about the newsgroups (mailing 
lists) -- just when I think things are getting boring, along comes 
something /entirely/ new, like this.  Being forced to "think outside the 
box" is GOOD for one, once in awhile! =:^)

> b) I thought more like non-real Usenet (i.e., the other use of
> NNTP protocol; servers and clients are more likely to be one-to-many,
> not many-to-many as with the real USENET). And of course, I was teasing
> a little bit.

Yeah, "artificial" or "pseudo-Usenet" (better than artificial, as the 
nuances are more correct), is the type of description most native 
speakers would have used themselves, and therefore expected, I think.

Surreal USENET.  That was /entirely/ unexpected.  I could see it being 
used in a conversation between geeks doing a joint, or otherwise drug 
induced, but the only other context I could see it coming up in (between 
native English speakers) would be in an allusion (perhaps joking) to some 
dream, or drug induced state.  As in, "Whatever they were on when they 
came up with the USENET scheme, I want some of it!  It's just too 
surreal, man, too surreal!"  (Or something like that.)

Anyway, you certainly stretched my mind, much like HHGG did, now that I 
think about it! =:^)

> 
> It is incomplete, but rather to post something little now to keep
> discussion flowing ...

Back at ya! =:^)

-- 
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