Have you not been paying attention? I've put an unreasonably
large number of hours into reducing Pan's library dependencies
to make installation easier.
Pan 0.12.90 uses: Pan 0.10.0 used:
* gtkspell (optional) * libgtkhtml
* gtk2 * libgal
* pango * libcapplet
* atk * gnome-print
* glib2 * gnome-vfs
* libxml2 * libglade
* libgnomeui
* libgnome
* libart_gpl
* GConf
* Orbit2
* libcrypto
* gnome-mime-data
* libesd
* audiofile
* bonobo
* gdk-pixbuf
* libdb
* libxml
* gtk
* glib
Hehe, I do appreciate it. However that spelling thingy did not work out for me.
In order to install gtkspell, I needed Pspell, which was meanwhile superceeded by Aspel. So by
installing Aspell, I did not satisfy the dependency, Pan wouldn't start, complaining about missing
pspell.so.2. Only by hunting down pspell I managed to install the lib and Pan started. Although the
lib ended up in /usr/local/lib and not /usr/lib so I had to add /usr/loca/lib to my path. Sigh.
And when I start Pan from teminal I still see an error message from the spelling component not being
able to load something, but at least Pan is running. Needless to say, I'll have to avoid spelling
to avoid possible crash.
AFAIK you're the first person to ask for it. Typically flagging is used for
reading messages offline, and people saving binaries typically just hit "save".
I guess one could argue this would also be useful in offline reading of
a.b.p.* groups, where the pictures are split into 2 posts. I'll make "flag"
multipart-savvy like "save" already is.
<em> I won't have time for this until after the Followup-To bug is
fixed and 0.12.91 is out. File a bug report for this at
bugzilla.gnome.org or the request will probably get lost. </em>
Ok, now you struck a nerve. Call me a criminal, but like a lot of people out there, I download music
and movies from the Usenet. Worst yet, I don't feel guilty about it at all, hehe. (hardened criminal?)
Now, most of those movies are posted in 15Mb chunks, which are multipart. Pan only gets the first part
and ignores the rest. It may take a while to download 15Mb chunk and if there is about 50 of them,
which is typical for a CD size post, it will be tedious to sit there and click save for every article.
Another reason for that feature is that I may want to download a whole bunch of binaries but don't want
to decode them just yet for a number of reasons, disk space and processing of previous downloads for example.
So in other words, being able to flag a bunch of binaries for download and having them retrieved without
intervention is absolutely a must for binary groups.
I know I'll get into a big flaming mess, but I'll have to say this. You being a developer of Pan, have
you actually used Pan for anything else but reading "news"? Usenet these days is much more than just for
"reading articles". Binary groups are probably the bulk of Usenet and a newreader has to handle them to
be of any use.
As for filing a bug report, well, I'll try, but that bugzilla form looked pretty scary, I'm not a programmer
and don't know if I'll do it right. But I'll try. Although it's not realy a bug but a lack of feature.
I'm trying to reproduce this, but can't. Every time I select a different
already-downloaded article in the headers pane, it is shown in the body pane.
Could you walk me through the steps to reproduce this?
Ok, I retrieve headers, I'm in the tabbed window layout. I have my mouse configured to select an article
on mouse button one click. It highlites the article in the headers list. The article is not downloaded yet.
I then click the article tab and am presented with a different (already downloaded) article (previously
viewed one). What I should be getting is an empty window, since the article is not downloaded yet, or Pan
should go and get the article and display it (depending how it's configured).
Getting a totaly different article realy throws me off and confuses me. It does work on double click though.
But what I mean the tabs don't behave acordingly to what is highlited.
Erm, thanks?
Just an aside: maybe it's just me... but starting off with "Pan needs some
serious fixing", and whining about "and this drove me back to Windows..."
while complaining about Pan and KNode -- both of which are pretty good programs
done on a volunteer basis -- makes you look petty.
You should try contributing some code, or putting money in the tip jar, or at
a minimum train yourself to be civil in your bug reports.
You got it bud, I'm an ungratefull, loudmouth s.o.b who will bith, moan, and whine when things don't
go his way. LOL.
Don't feel singled out though, just the other day I fired off a nasty email to the KDE dev team
titled "KDE devs you suck!".
(they never include a simple readme file with the distro to help people to install that damn monstrocity).
Now, let me be clear about my posts though. I am a big Linux fan. I see Linux as the last hope of preserving
our freedom from mega corporations like Micro$oft and their desires to control information.
I have outmost respect, gratitude and admiration for all developers who work on software for Linux.
I wish I could help but I'm not a programer and I'm afraid I'm not going to become one any more.
If I could go back about 20 years I would've made different choices and learned how to program and be
helping with Linux now. As for putting money in the tip jar, that's also not possible since I'm strugling
to make ends meet right now. Yes the bad choices from 20 years ago caught up with me, hehe.
Maybe when I get back on my feet but for now I'm in the poor house.
That said though, it doesn't mean I am going to deal with issues concerning Linux in white gloves and
dance carefully about everything I want to communicate. If I think that something is not right I'll say
it outloud and wave my arms and kick the chairs around to make it count. Hehe.
Even if it makes me look bad.
I am an everyday computer user, and actually I work with computers for living. And I see badly designed
software more often than well designed one. One of the few extremely high quality, well designed programs
is Agent for Windows, I've been using it for years and it never failed me, it handles huge groups and
even monstrous binary posts extremely well. It's just as good for reading articles.
I don't want to unfairly compare Pan to Agent, but some minor comparison must be made since in my opinion
Pan should strive to be somewhat like Agent. I can see from your design of the app that that's the case.
I don't expect Pan to be of the same caliber as Agent which is a commercial app but after following Pan
for almost two years I find its progress slow. specialy since it's the last application I need to
complete my transition to Linux.
Regards
Horacus
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