[Pan-users] Re: Pn 0.97 won't start

[Duncan]

"Alex van niel" <address@hidden>
posted address@hidden,
excerpted below, on  Thu, 18 May 2006 14:32:07 +0200:

> in fear of sending another HTML formatted tekst, I would like to explain
> a couple of things and am glad and understand that you only would like
> to point out and help me on reporting and using the mailing list.
> 
> First off I had no idea I was sending out HTML formatted text, for this
> I humbly apalogize so everyone on the list. [] At work I use Gmail to
> send e-mail and I think Google should make their "Convert to plain text"
> button a bit bigger or more obvious... or I need glasses :)

Others have said it, but good this time!  =8^)  I thought it might be
Google, as that has taken the place of evolution as the biggest offending
mailing agent, recently.

I don't really like "tearing people a new one" and /hate/ coming across
that way, but for someone who blames HTML mail for much of the spam and
malware problem we have out there today, and who might otherwise simply
have a rule that says automatic kill file, this is the best solution I've
been able to work out, however much it hurts.  Lately, I've been a bit
more careful to stress the "don't take it the wrong way" thing, and that I
/am/ providing the answers (to the best of my ability) as well.  That
seems to have helped compared to the way it was before, when I fear I
didn't accomplish much sometimes besides scaring people off and making
enemies, which wasn't the intent at all -- especially when I'm spending
time answering the questions, too.

Anyway, thanks for taking it right. =8^)

> Second, I have been searching the list and the bug report list and could
> not find anything related to this. Otherwise I would not have filed a
> bug report. Again, ignorance is no excuse (do understand I am talking
> about myself here :-) ) and thus I will close the bug, and am looking
> forward to the new Pan.

I think it was the compounding seeing a repeat (that wasn't after all PAN
anyway) and the HTML thing that got me off on the wrong foot.  Looks very
good, and closing the bug NOTABUG was the right thing to do.

> The older stable Pan is no option since it does not support NZBs (or at
> least I have not found it in the stable version) and it is exactly that
> which I use often.

Correct, NZBs are a new feature of the still-very-beta version. =8^|  At
this point, you get one with the other.

[Darren wrote...]

>> This is a problem with my builds,

Looks like you found the right thread for that bug now.  =8^)

> So, again I am not taking this wrong, no worries. It's better to be told
> calmly and politely what the rules are rather then having sworn at for
> being ignorant of the rules. :)

Cool. =8^)  As I said, it's not pleasant and not really in character doing
that, and I always worry I'm being counterproductive, so it's good to see
someone coming back w/o the HTML and having taken it the way it was
intended.  =8^)  I'd much rather simply help with the problems, but
sometimes there's /other/ problems to try to help with too, besides the
ones asked about, and if I get the lot of them, then I figure I've done a
good thing, even if it was a bit temporarily unpleasant for both sides.

> Furthermore, I don't mind using an unstable version. I admit that
> "playing russian roulette with my payed account" is a stupid remark
> especially considering I was using an unstable version.

Good to see you still up for the bug testing, then.  =8^)  As I briefly
mentioned earlier, ideally, you can install the weekly versions (which
normally come out on Sat or Sun) early in the week, and use them enough to
find and report bugs by Tuesday or Wednesday.  That gives Charles a bit
more time to work in the fix to the next version, and even post patches
for those wanting to test them between versions.  The last patches (from
him) seem to come out on Wed or so however, so after that, it's wait for
the next release to see if it's folded in or not.  Obviously, if you have
the talent (I don't) to get in and read the code and generate your own
patches, reports with patches attached as late as Thursday or Friday are
often included in the next version, where new reports on Friday that don't
include patches often end up waiting for the second weekly update after
report.

Of course, requests and similar don't always get fixed right away, but
outright bugs usually are.  One of my biggest irritants, PAN not
remembering per-group what posting profile to use, Charles has said will
likely be a post 1.0 fix, so it's a bit away, still.  That's a huge
irritant for me because I use a munged mail address for general USENET
posting, but I read my various mailing lists (including this one) thru
gmane's list2news gateway (http://gmane.org for details), and that
requires a valid mail address.  Fortunately, PAN's default (the first set
up I believe) is my munged address, and gmane errors on an unregistered
address so I get reminded to switch.  If it was the other way, I'd be
posting my unmunged list address all over USENET by mistake, and probably
be getting more spam by now and enough to make it unusable in a couple
months, forcing me to change the address.  Naturally, I'd be /very/
unhappy with that.  Anyway, as I said, that's an example of a request that
I'll have to wait on for a fix, as irritating as it may be to me
personally.

> Mmm, you would think that all I do is apologize here today, but then
> again, there is reason enough for me to apologize for. Looking from your
> point of view this must be something like stepping on a white freshly
> vacuumed carpet wearing muddy shoes and walking through the whole house
> without noticing it.

Yeah...

As for apologizing... I once read some sociologist remark that for a guy
in Western culture to apologize, without conditions, is virtually
impossible.  Since reading that, I've noticed it's definitely true for me.
 I've had to work very hard at just being able to say "I apologize",
without making excuses, without trying to explain it away.  So often, all
that does is seem to look like justification, and it ends up making things
worse.  As that guy said, it's almost /impossible/ for me to do, and I've
had to work on it /very/ hard.

Anyway, given that, I find it very meaningful when I see apologies from
others, particularly guys.  I know how I've had to struggle with it, so it
means a great deal to me to see others apologizing.  Thanks again for
taking it in the spirit I intended.

Oh, if you have any suggestions in how I might make the message easier to
take, by all means, mail me!  (This is a sort of new idea too.  I should
work on incorporating it into the main no HTML thing too.)  If there's a
way to say it less painfully and more effectively, I'd sure like to know
it!

> [On klibido] I don;t have KDE by the way, I am more of a Gnome user
> myself. Besides, it does indeed only do binary downloading and I do read
> newsgroups now and again. :-)

Understandable. =8^)  I happen to prefer KDE, and as it happens, PAN is
about the only GTK app I use regularly and I don't have GNOME installed. I
know how I'd react to a suggestion that I install GNOME for one app, so
declining to install KDE to try klibido is understandable.  =8^)

As for actually reading a mostly binary group... from my observations,
it's very hard to create a news client that can do both text and binaries
very well -- if PAN pulls it off as it looks to be in the process of
doing, it'll certainly deserve its original (but now de-emphasized as not
"politically correct") moniker as the "Pimp-Ass Newsreader!"

I too like being able to read and reply to text in a mixed-binary/text
group, however.  That's one reason I've been such a supporter of PAN since
I found it, despite the fact that I normally prefer KDE.  There's
basically nothing else that does what PAN does (and until klibido, nothing
else fully open source that even semi-properly worked as a yEnc capable
GUI binary reader on Linux, text capable or not, BNR2 and 3 were good
binary news harvesters, but while the code was itself open, it required a
closed source and no longer supported Borland Kylex compiler, and BNR2/3
didn't do text either).

> Don't get me wrong either: I love Pan. It is quite small compared to all
> the M$ stuff out there, not bloated [], it is quite fast and looks great
> in Gnome :) So please keep up the good work. I will be looking forward
> to the new version and hopefully I can give GrabIt the old
> trascan-one-way-ticket treatment at some point.

I'm a full four-freedom freedomware guy here.  In most cases, I
legally couldn't run slaveryware even if I wanted, because I couldn't
agree to the EULAs.  That's definitely the case with MSWormOS.  When I
switched, I thought I might use WINE, but it turned out there were native
and free/libre/open-source Linux alternatives for the stuff I needed to do,
and where there weren't, I didn't actually need to do it as much as I
might have previously thought, so I was able to do without WINE as well.
(In the spirit of full disclosure, I should mention I still use the
freedomware DOSBOX to play one very old slaveryware game, the early '90s
Master of Orion, original edition.  I admit the guys controlling the
source to it are still my masters, but everything else I run is
freedomware.)

So... yeah... I make it a point not to demand that others believe and do as
I do about freedom, but I'd definitely agree that being able to give GrabIt
the heave-ho would be a desirable outcome. =8^)

-- 
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