[Pan-users] Re: An "alias" feature for group names

[Duncan]

Benjamin Esham <address@hidden> posted
address@hidden, excerpted below, on  Thu, 21 Jun 2007 18:33:36
+0000:

> I've recently started to use Gmane to view most of my mailing lists
> (including this one).  I also have "abbreviate group names" turned on. 
> As a result, my group pane shows a number of group names like
> "g.c.a.p.user", "g.c.g.g.users", "g.c.g.i.user", and so on.  Obviously,
> this isn't very helpful or informative.
> 
> Would it be possible to implement an "alias" feature, so that each group
> has an alternate name that is shown when "abbreviate group names" is
> turned on?

Alias might work, but a different solution has been discussed.  I believe 
Charles proposed it so he obviously agrees, but it remains to be 
implemented.  The solution?  When abbreviated names is turned on, expand 
the last TWO sections, not just the last section.  Thus using this group/
list on gmane as an example:

g.c.g.a.pan.user

Pretty much everyone agreed that would suffice, and from a developer 
perspective, it'd be a very minor change to already debugged code, 
instead of adding new code, possibly complete with new bugs.  As such, 
the two-field solution could possibly be implemented before 1.0, while 
the alias solution isn't likely to be.

The down side against aliases as you proposed is that since pan orders 
groups alphabetically, aliases would allow one to rearrange groups 
entirely to their liking, while the last-two-fields-expanded approach 
doesn't change that at all.

However, another often requested feature, custom categories, implemented 
as a third tree level between Subscribed groups and the actual group 
names (whether nesting would be allowed isn't known, that'd be worked out 
at implementation), with the ability to put groups in the desired 
category, would pretty much eliminate that as a problem, while solving 
the problem of the huge subscribed group list as well.  If a user 
arranged categories right, it'd also solve the aliasing issue, altho the 
two-field abbreviated groupname expansion seems to me to be a more 
"natural" solution.

-- 
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