Re: Question for Agent (and other news reader) users

On Sat, 10 Dec 2005 20:33:50 +0000, Peter Duncanson
<mail@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> said:

> On 10 Dec 2005 19:28:56 GMT, Dena Jo <me@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> > Can Agent filter by specific words in a post? I'm
> > looking for a news reader that has that capability.

> Agent 3.0 (the latest release) and earlier can filter
> only on header data: Subject and Author.

But, as you probably know, Agent will search on content
(called "Global Search"). For example, you can search for
all postings that contain the word "pronunciation", display
a list of hits, then delete all of them without ever having
brought any of them up for reading.

The global search string can be a Boolean expression, like

pronunciation and ASCII IPA and not (John Wells or
Henry Sweet)

which will give you a list of all postings that have both of
the strings "pronunciation" and "ASCII IPA" except the ones
that mention either "John Wells" or "Henry Sweet" or whose
author is one of them.

(Did I cross to another thread by saying "ones ... whose
author is"? I wouldn't write it any other way.)

> > (I tried asking such a question in news.software.readers,
> > but the people there assume you're a moron who doesn't
> > know what they're doing and they get snarky, and I don't
> > respond to snarky well.)

Every newsgroup has a few smartasses who think it's clever
to be snarky. I usually assume they are teenagers or
preteens and mark subsequent postings from them "already
read" (my closest approach to a killfile). There's no
minimum age for Usenet posters, so far as I've heard.

This newsgroup has a few who delight in doing everything but
be responsive, but for every one of them there must be four
or five who will try to provide helpful responses.

> Snarky is bad.

Fortunately, so far as I've noticed, it's not the
predominant characteristic of this newsgroup's posters.

To see predominant snarky, look at
alt.possessive.its.has.no.apostrophe, also known as "A Posse
of Idiots Heading Nowhere Apace". Tell them Sideshow Bob
referred you to them.
.

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