Re: Newsreader: Best of the bunch?
Ron Johnson said...
> On Sun, 2005-10-16 at 19:24 +0100, marc wrote:
> > marc said...
> > > Sorry for the cheesy question.
> > >
> > > Until now, I've retained Gravity on XP for my usenet use. Now, I'm after
> > > a Linux replacement. I use multiple servers, but I'm only interested in
> > > text-based ngs, so threading and tracking threads that I've contributed
> > > to are important. The less mouse use the better, but unless it's uber-
> > > functional, I'd prefer to avoid a curses-bases usenet reader - may the
> > > nix-gods forgive me.
> > >
> > > I welcome your suggestions, advice and experience.
> >
> > Sorry for not having responded to this thread yet, but I'm still trying
> > out all the suggestions. I thought that Pan would do, but it has a
> > couple of flaws that I can't live with.
>
> What are those flaws?
One is visual: displaying threading via indenting the subject is
horrible. The only other option is to switch off the threading! Gravity
allows you to display the threading structure in the author field - I
place the author column immediately to the left of the subject column
for just this purpose. It's one of those things that isn't geek-logical,
but, once you've seen it is obvious.
In practice, it's great because you can easily spot small changes in the
subject, should folk make them. It also means that the subject doesn't
disappear off to the right, and in thus invisible when paging through a
long thread. I'd call that a bug!
I didn't find the option for automatically downloading the articles for
a group until today. That should be in the group properties - because
that's what it is! I also initially failed to find the initial headers
download limit. But, in this case, I think Pan's way is good :-)
Watching and ignoring have been integrated into scoring, which I
consider to be completely different things. Ignoring is not a big
problem, since you rarely reincarnate one, and Pan allows you to switch
the appropriate filter off and adjust the thread's score should you
wish.
However, watching is different and requires a visual cue. Skimming for
9999 scores is not ideal. In fact, my solution to this would be to limit
watched threads to four digits and score other threads from 0 to 999.
But the scoring system doesn't appear to be very flexible. For example,
there are only four usable colouring options. I already use twenty or
so, and four is woefully inadequate.
My biggest problem is the way that purging is handled. In Gravity you
can purge the news database at any time, with rules for read and unread
articles. You can override these global settings for each group. This is
very important, since you may wish to build a repository of some groups
and not of others.
In addition - and this is key - you can mark articles (and threads) as
permanent. This means that they are never purged. In this way, you can
build up a repository of useful stuff from any thread.
I used this last feature when learning Debian. I scanned and read a lot
of ngs, and marked permanent articles that I though would be useful
later. Since they were hidden in normal use, they didn't keep grabbing
my attention day in, day out. As my knowledge grew, I would review these
permanent articles periodically, and either use the information, mark
them as deletable, or leave them for later.
I can't see a way of replicating this functionality in Pan. I can't even
get close, but perhaps I missed something.
Pan is definitely the direction I would like to go, but it is very
limited in what it can do and not vert configurable. Don't get me wrong,
it has some great features, but it misses some essential elements of a
good newsreader. I can see that it's been modelled on Gravity, but I
suspect that the progs include their favourite features and missed the
bigger picture.
--
Best,
Marc
Reply to: