[Ham-Linux] Anyone using . . .

[Bob McConnell]

Wayne Dahl wrote:
> On Fri, 2005-08-12 at 07:26 +0000, Bob McConnell wrote:
> 
> 
>>I have a Win98SE desktop running Agent, for which 
>>I have not found an acceptable replacement.
> 
> 
> I haven't used Agent since my Win95 days, so I have no idea what the
> newer versions look like or what their capabilities are.  Have you tried
> Pan?  I've found it a very acceptable news client and works for most of
> the things I've tried on Usenet, although, I do admit I rarely do the
> Usenet thing.
> 

Hi Wayne,

Yes, I have been playing with Pan for a while. There are several things 
I don't like about it.

1. It takes three actions to download a message (select, flag, download 
flagged). In Agent it is only two (select and Ctrl-D).

2. It takes a different three actions to download and save an 
attachment. In Agent it is the same two.

3. Pan does not keep downloaded messages after they are removed from the 
server. After I download them, I will decide when to delete them. I 
don't care what happens to the the copy on the server.

4. Pan has one keystroke to move to the next message, but you need a 
different key to move to the next group. In Agent, 'N' will do both.

5. Incomplete binaries show up as the individual sections, which makes 
it much more difficult to mark and delete the whole set. It's even worse 
when section 1 is missing.

6. There is no way to limit the number of threads and connections it 
will try to open. Roadrunner news servers will only accept four 
connections from a single IP address. And when Pan has more than two or 
three connections open, it forgets to check for keyboard/mouse input and 
update the screen, sometimes for several minutes.

There are other differences, but they are mostly irritations. These are 
the problems I have on a day to day basis. It does work well for 
binaries, as long as I don't want to read any messages without 
attachments. I want to look at some other news readers, but not until 
things slow down a bit at home and work, probably after Holloween.

Thanks,

Bob McConnell
N2SPP