[Pan-users] Marking Messages Read

[Paul Trevethan]

Hi,

I have been a long time user of Agent newsreader under Windows. Even
though I switched to Linux some time ago, I used Agent under wine. The
installation of my new SuSE v9.2 saw the removal of all Windows
partitions and I have decided to bite the bullet and go Linux only! Pan
is my reader of choice in making the transition. It handles my 8 binary
groups (out of 50+ total) the best.

However, I have a real problem getting it to behave as I would really
like - in terms of mimicking my trusted old Agent ways.

I like to download all new headers in subscribed groups - that's easy.
Then I go through each group and mark for retrieval those messages I
want to gather the bodies for - that's ok (M was more logical than J).

This is the important step though! - and the problem? Under Agent, when
I told it to then go and download all the bodies for the marked messages
I could set it to mark all messages that did not have a body ( i.e. any
I had not marked for download) to be marked read. This vital step is
what I cannot find a way to replicate in Pan?! It is vital to me because
it allows me to return to the groups offline and simply go through with
the N key (read next unread message). This makes the reading of the
messages a snack in that I can safely ignore any message that I have not
asked to see. In Pan, when the bodies are retrieved and the other
headers are not marked, using the N key goes and gets the body of each
message in succession which I have already decided I do not want because
I did not mark the message.

It seems that Pan mixes concepts of offline and online whereas Agent
clearly saw marking messages as an offline reading related activity?

If anyone has a clue how to achieve what I want, I would love to hear
from you. I have happily adapted to Pan's way of doing most other
things, but this is fundamental to how I like to read (lots of) news.

Cheers,
Paul.