Re: [Pan-users] Opening multiple messages at once?

[Duncan]

jimbach13-Wuw85uim5zDR7s880joybQ posted on Mon, 28 Nov 2011 17:06:12 +0000
as excerpted:

> I just started using pan a few weeks after upgrading to a windows 7 pc. 
> In the past I just used outlook express to read newsgroups and to view
> picture groups.  In OE, I could combine and view multiple messages at
> once. Can I do this with pan?  I can highlight a bunch of headers, but
> can't find away to combine and decode them.

You can, but pan will normally do it for you -- automatically, you don't 
even know it's a multi-part that would need combining and decoding on 
OE!  That is, pan has an algorithm that looks for messages posted in 
several segments, and combines them into a single entry in the headers 
(actually overviews, as it only shows a relatively limited number of 
headers corresponding roughly to those in overviews) tab.  Thus, when you 
see a single entry there and click to display it, pan may be combining 
multiple articles "as posted split" and combining them back into a single 
message for display.

However, pan's algorithm has a few limitations.  First, there's two types 
of splitting, pre-post splitting, where a usually quite huge file (think 
hundreds-meg CD ISO or several-gig DVD ISO) is split into several files 
before posting, and while-posting splitting, where an individual message 
may be split by the posting client into several individual articles.  For 
still pictures (as opposed to video, or ISOs, music can go either way) 
and other reasonably small attachments, this latter method is normally 
used exclusively, while the pre-post file-splitting into multiple files 
for posting method is normally used only for much larger attachments.  
pan handles while-posting-split recombining automatically, assuming it 
detects it, but as pre-post-split files actually appear as multiple 
files, that's the way pan leaves them -- you recombine those yourself, 
using par2 or cat or whatever.

Second, pan's algorithm depends on post titles appearing in a semi-
standard format that it understands.  Not all posters use a format pan 
understands, and it can't recombine those automatically.  However, it 
does surprisingly good considering all it is using is the subject header, 
and there's several ways of indicating a multi-part post, conflicting 
with the way posts that are part of a series are sometimes marked.

One form of this, in combined binary and discussion groups, pan's 
algorithm sometimes gets in wrong on replies where the poster (or posting 
client) didn't change the subject appropriately.  Thus, text messages are 
sometimes considered parts of a binary, and pan, thinking there's more to 
it, won't download it automatically.  It's possible to read these text 
messages by forcing pan to download and display them.  Choose articles 
menu, read article, or context-click (aka right-click) on the entry in 
the overviews (aka headers) list and select read article from there.  
That forces pan to download what it can and display it, which in this 
case would be the whole article since pan thought it was a multipart with 
only one part available, but it was instead a text response to a 
multipart.

The same force-read technique can be used when it really is a message 
with a binary attachment but only some of the articles for it are 
available.  In this case, it forces pan to download what it can get and 
create the attached file(s) with some gaps in it (them).

Meanwhile, as a last resort, you can have pan save the raw articles, and 
use another tool to combine and decode them, manually.  yencode is useful 
for this, or uudeview (part of uuenview), or uudecode (uuencode), or...

Talking about which... on many binary groups most attachments are posted 
as yEnc.  I haven't used MS software for years[1], but last I knew, it 
didn't handle yenc at all, and on encodings where it did work (uuencode 
and base64), would often mess up on recombining parts, ordering part 
10-19 before part 2, etc, unless you manually sorted things out in the 
combine-and-decode dialog first.

Pan handles all that automatically, too. =:^)

Finally, while the current official pan release (0.135, if you're still 
on something earlier, you or your distro is behind!) doesn't have binary 
uploading, current builds from Heinrich Mueller's experimental pan 
repository do. =:^)  There's also a number of other useful additional 
features in these builds, including (still quite experimental but works 
for me) SSL support, automatic score-based actions (auto-delete, often 
used for ignored, auto-mark-read, often used either for ignored if not 
auto-deleted, or low/negative-scored-but-not-ignored, and auto-download, 
often used for watched), etc.

However, these features are only in hmueller's experimental repo at 
present, and are normally only available if you download the sources and 
build them yourself, altho someone (Steve D?) might be making them 
available pre-built for MSWormOS, I haven't kept track.

Oh, and aside from Steve, Travis is the regular here who normally uses 
pan on MSWormOS.  If you're running pan on MS, therefore, he might be 
able to provide help, there.

.....
[1] I ran the betas for MSIE and MSOE 4, 5, and 5.5, back before the turn 
of the century. I also ran 6 before I switched to Linux, but not the 
beta, as by that time the nature of the still-coming eXPrivacy was known 
and I was throwing all my time into researching a switch to Linux.  I'm 
not going to ask MS' permission before I run software I purchased, on my 
own computer, thankyou!  Of course that was before I switched to all 
freedomware... no black-box binary-only servant-ware for me!

-- 
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