[Pan-users] Re: Re: Re: Bold Header Pane

[Duncan]

Vigil posted <address@hidden>,
excerpted below,  on Sun, 12 Oct 2003 13:58:30 +0100:

[attribution not specified]

>>I think that all you need to do to get Pan to act the way you want is not
>>download headers for a group unless you are ready to read them. ;)
> 
> That is what I am doing, but Pan seems to think that I read all groups every
> time I use it, and only shows new-since-last-Pan-session messages bold :-)

What he was saying, and I'll reinforce it, is that if you do it right,
the only fresh overviews (aka headers even tho that's not quite accurate)
in a group unread WILL be the "new since last session overviews"!  If they
aren't downloaded until you your current session, they are all new IN this
current session.

IOW, somewhere, you are (presumably, or there's some sort of bug that
hasn't yet been mentioned) downloading overviews (aka headers) for more
than the groups you are reading, so that when you close PAN, those new
messages even tho still unread and new because you've not entered the
group, are being marked as old.  If you don't download them until you
enter the group, they'll all be fresh when you DO enter the group.

(a) Try this.  Kill all automatic overview download altogether.  Thus, the
only time overviews are downloaded is when you press the button to
download them.  Go about your normal business in the group you want to
read that session, only b4 closing PAN, (b) go visit another group and
ensure new overviews have NOT been downloaded.  Now, you can quit PAN.

(c) When you start PAN up again, go visit the last checked group again. 
There should be no "fresh" overviews now marked as old, NOR any "fresh
overviews AT ALL, because no overviews have yet been downloaded for the
group.  The only "unread" overviews should remain unread from the last
time you quit the group after reading messages, but they will of course be
validly "old" but unread messages.

(d) If you now download fresh overviews, ALL the new ones should be fresh,
since they are all newly downloaded.  When you leave the group, any
remaining overviews not yet marked read will become "old", but again, no
new overviews will be downloaded until you actually download them in the
group again, so now "new" overviews will come in until then.

AFAICS, that's the desired behavior.

If at some point that's not what's happening, when are the new overviews
arriving?  If new ones have arrived when you check them at either b or c
above, you must have retrieved overviews for more than your active group
under a, or PAN isn't obeying its settings and retrieving them only when
you tell it to, one of the two.  You shouldn't get any new overviews for
that group until d, since you didn't tell it to d/l until then.  At that
point, all the new ones WILL be new.

Again, if that's not happening, something's wrong.  Where did the new
overviews appear, b or c, or are some of the overviews downloaded in d
indeed not showing up as new, EVER?

BTW, I keep PAN set up to ONLY download new overviews when I tell it to,
not automatically, either at PAN start, or at group entry, as I like the
extra control of being able to leave a group and come back to it with
exactly the overviews I left it with, such that it doesn't get new ones,
OR EXPIRE THE OLD, until I'm ready and I TELL it to do so.  I'm not so
much interested in "new" count, which doesn't matter to me, but in keeping
possibly expired messages around until I process them.  Since PAN only
expires when it fetches new overviews, the old ones, with their downloaded
messages attached, stay around until then. sometimes long after they've
expired on the server, if I seldom fetch messages for a group (and of
course provided my cache is big enough to keep the messages from being
dumped to make way for new ones even if they overviews haven't expired
yet, but I deliberately keep a 4 gig cache when I only normally need two,
to keep such an event from occurring).

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little
temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." --
Benjamin Franklin