[Pan-users] Re: General questions about Pan

[Duncan]

Douglas Bollinger <address@hidden> posted
address@hidden, excerpted below, on  Fri, 29 Dec 2006
18:19:58 -0500:

> On Fri, 29 Dec 2006 12:41:33 +0000 (UTC)
> Duncan <address@hidden> wrote:

DB wrote...
>> > What exactly does delete article do?  I'm sure it removes the article
>> > from the cache, but anything else?
>> 
>> No, it does NOT remove it from the cache (tho old-pan, <0.90, did), so it's
>> a good thing you asked.  It removes the entry in pan (for that group) for
>> it, but it stays in the cache.
 
> OK.  So this command deletes the selected article in the currently active
> group from Pan's article index.
> 
> So then there's not a way to manually delete data from the article cache?  And
> the only way cache entries are deleted is when Pan itself deletes articles
> when the article cache limit is hit as defined in Preferences.xml?

Well, by default, the pan cache is only 10 MB (plus whatever is needed to
complete the task at hand, pan doesn't erase parts that belong to
something actively being saved until it is saved).  Thus, there's not a
huge need for specific delete from cache with it at the default size.

For people like me that like to download to cache and then work on things
when everything's already local, however, who therefore run a rather
larger cache (~12 GB here for example, on my binary pan instance), a
selective cache deletion ability may be useful, however.

Here, my workaround is to simply do a bunch of downloading, then process
everything before downloading new headers again.  That way, when
everything's processed, I know the cache is safe to delete, and I do so by
deleting it in the filesystem, not from pan.

So delete of the cache at the filesystem level is the manual delete.  It
works.

>> > How are Supersede Article and Cancel Article supposed to work?  Am I
>> > right in assuming that most news servers will not honor these commands?
>> 
>> Some will, some won't.
> 
> So, how do you use these commands in Pan?  I've tried both of them and nothing
> happens.  Do you need select a previous post?  I've been on Usenet for well
> over a decade, but I don't believe I've ever canceled a post.

Well, I've not used them either, as I mentioned, but yes, I think you'd
need to select a previous post, in ordered to cancel/supersede it, since
those work on previous posts.  I believe I read in the code itself (while
looking for something else, I'm not a C/C++ coder but I can sort of read
it if it's not too complex) a comment to the effect that pan then matches
the post to be canceled/superseded against your posting profile, and will
only actually try do it if it matches, presumably posting an error if it
you try it on someone else's post (as determined by the posting profile
match).

I'm not sure if it matches against ALL profiles or just the currently
selected posting profile, but it shouldn't cause problems in either case,
unless folks have changed their posting profile for the group from the one
used to post the original message.

> <snip>
>> Thus, treat everything you post as impossible to take back, because in
>> effect, it is.  It's can still be symbolically useful in some instances to
>> say I apologize and I canceled that post, but for the most part, the
>> effect of the cancel is just that, symbolic.
> 
> That's always a good way to look at it.  In fact, I just made that a tip in
> the posting section. :)

I think that's the approach a number of news clients have taken, and it
really is the best one.  With news and mail, unlike actually talking to
someone or IRC/IM, there's the ability to give the message one more
once-over before hitting send.  Given the opportunity, it's a good idea to
make a habit of using it, especially given the potential risks of getting
it wrong, that can be mostly avoided if one only takes that extra moment
to think whether it's actually something one /really/ wants to send, or
not.

> After some more editing, I'll post a link to the docs file so that the list
> users can review it and make more suggestions as it definitely needs more
> work.

I'm /very/ glad to see folks finally doing it, both your work and the
wiki.  I had thought I might do something about the lack of help at one
point, but for whatever reason, I just seem to work better with the
stimulus of other posts I can reply to, and just couldn't get the personal
motivation even to format some of the same stuff I was posting for a wiki
or whatever, so it never happened.  I'm therefore /very/ glad someone else
is pitching in to help.

I expect Charles ought to be pretty happy with it too.  He has always
encouraged folks to pitch in with patches and the like, and I think it's a
bit of a dream of most FLOSS community developers that their little
project will be found useful enough to build its own little community, but
for years, it seemed Chris was the only other major code contributor, and
I did what I could on the lists/groups (groups thru gmane, so I can use
pan to read and reply =8^), and a few others contributed here or there,
but there really wasn't a community.

In a way, then, the 2-3 year break while Charles worked on the rewrite,
before making it public, seems to have been what pan must have needed, as
with Charles to all appearances MIA, a small community seemed to develop. 
K. Haley and a couple others started experimenting with the database
backend stuff, and Charles took much of that work and integrated it into
his rewrite, thus setting the foundation for the huge memory footprint and
scaling improvements.  Then, after the rewrite was announced and the betas
started coming fast and furious, as it got closer to 1.0, DarrenA and now
you are finally working on documentation, and others are actively
contributing l10n (localization, l-10-letters-n, other language
translations) stuff our little community is beginning to grow a bit. =8^)

After ignoring pan for some time, the GNOME folks seem to be waking up to
it again as well, as some of the interface folks are actively involved in
bringing pan's icons and the like into full compliance with the GTK/GNOME
HID guidelines, at times bringing in icon artists and the like too. =8^)

Thus, Charles ought to have a budding sense of real pride, not only in his
hard work, but that there's actually a bit of a community developing
around pan, now.  Your contributions in the documentation area are thus
appreciated not just because they are sorely needed there, but also
in the way they add to the budding community! =8^)  I know it' has
certainly been nice watching the recent community development from here,
after all the time I've put into pan, yet that pales in comparison to what
Charles has done, so it must be even more gratifying for him, after all
this time and all that hard work, particularly after the 2-3 years in
virtual isolation doing the C++ rewrite while we all thought pan was all
but dead and abandoned.

-- 
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