Re: [Pan-users] Mark Thread Read/Unread

[Duncan]

On Mon 30 Dec 2002 07:48, Bobby D. Bryant posted as excerpted below:
> A good while back I asked about support for sub-threads.  It would be
> very nice to be able to set up a bozo filter that says "ignore
> sub-threads headed by this bozo's posts".
>
> There are some insane (literally) and/or anti-social people in
> talk.origins and I normally 'ignore' all the threads they start.  But I
> can't just ignore any thread they post to, because they sometimes post
> to good threads that someone else started.  An "ignore subthread" that
> could be invoked by a filter is something I've wanted for a long time.

Now that's a very useful feature...

Actually, when PAN gets proper filtering, the likes of KMail, thus, filtering 
on any header individually, a subgroup of headers, all headers collectively, 
the body, or the entire post, sub-thread filtering would be possible to do by 
just filtering on the references header for the msg-id of the post starting 
the sub thread.  (If JUST done that way, it'd expire if the sub thread got to 
long, if the references header was shortened, but it'd work in the majority 
of cases, and could be reapplied if necessary.)  At that point, a GUI option 
would be fairly simple to add to handle all the dirty work, or it could 
always be done manually.

To be able to automatically filter sub threads based on author (as per your 
bozo suggestion) would require a bit more specific coding, as it would entail  
looking at the references header of anyone on the sub thread-bozo list.  
Hmm..  Now that I think about it, that functionality could again be 
generalized, such that subthread filtering could be done on any other header, 
not just author, or even further generalized such that conditional filtering 
based on two separate headers was possible.  However, the latter gets pretty 
complicated, and looks an awful lot like scoring already, so it would 
probably be more efficiently handled with real scoring.

However, it all comes back to PAN lacking real filtering ability at this 
point.  On that feature at least, it's embarrassingly close to OE4, the first 
OE version.  OE's got better filtering than what many call the best 
newsreader Linux has to offer, our own PAN, and that *IS* bad!

This is just my opinion, but the two features PAN is most sorely lacking at 
this point are even trivial (one-shot, single part) attachment posting, and 
decent filtering ability on more than just the subject and author headers.  I 
do wish I was a bit more advanced at coding, so I could contribute myself to 
that, and because I am not / cannot yet, I cannot criticise either, but they 
certainly ARE opportunities for enhancement!  <g>  Put them down as my two 
most needed missing and requested features.

-- 
Duncan
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little
temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." --
Benjamin Franklin