Re: Newsreader usage in this group

In article <1h3l4s8.m4fb0r3hcn5yN%pd.news@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
PeterD <pd.news@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> Given that a lot of us are on broadband, I don't really get
> the distinction between offline and online.

Online *requires* a connection, whereas offline doesn't.
This could be important to me with a laptop as one of the best
times to read stuff is when travelling on a train, bus, plane, etc,
or when waiting for one, or when waiting in the waiting room of
the dentist, doctor, psychiatrist, parole review board...
Err, I think you get the idea. ;-) Offline is good for this.

On the other hand, offline, when done badly like Marcel does it,
can introduce a considerable delay while articles for fifty high
traffic groups are downloaded, unbatched, expired, and indexed.
This restricts how often I can fetch news, and introduces an
awkward lag between the articles I can see and the current point
of conversation.

I sometimes use KNode over on my Linux box which is configured
for online reading because it downloads only the headers for a
particular group when I click on that group, and then the article
bodies only when I click on that article. This has the advantage
of less lag when keeping up with a currently active thread of
conversation, but introduces small and irritating delays with
every mouse click (at least it does over 56k). It also has the
disadvantage I mentioned of not keeping a complete local spool
for access when a connection is not available.

So I'd say online and offline are very different, and each has
its benefits over the other. This is why I was hoping to find a
newsreader that would handle both interchangeably at whim.

I haven't looked closely enough at Leafnode to see whether it
will allow me the best of both worlds, online immediacy, with a
complete offline spool. Will it pass through the newsreader's
NNTP requests immediately, while downloading and caching the
rest of the news in the background? If anyone is using it in
that way and can confirm this I would be most grateful.

> I press "1" and the article list updates with any recently
> downloaded headers. That's real-time enough,

Sounds good to me.

> in fact it annoys me in Eudora that the message lists update in
> real-time, especially if I'm just about to click on a message to
> open it, the list updates under my pointer and I get the wrong one.

Yuck! You'd have thought it would give some indication that it
was about to refresh the list so that you can pause and click a
second or two later.

> Groups like ucsm I download all articles anyway, so there's no
> delay opening individual articles. Other groups where I choose
> which articles and threads to read, I mark them, hit Cmd-Opt-K
> and a second later they're downloaded and I'm reading them.
> How is that markedly different from an "online" newsreader?

Yes, a fast connection and keyboard shortcuts certainly compensate.

> Things like when you write a reply, closing the compose window
> automatically queues the article.

Nasty. I expect closing a window without explicitly saving or
pressing a send button to offer me a Save/Discard/Cancel
dialogue. Is this behaviour configurable?

> I find this way of working suits me, since usenet is more like
> conversation and less like finely tuned literature so my posts
> don't get worked and reworked before sending.

Oh, well mine do. Everything you write on Usenet is archived for
all time. That seems to me to be a good enough reason to take
care over what one writes. I'd be horrified if MacSOUP sent
something embarrassing whose window I'd accidentally closed.
Is there a way to view the outgoing queue, select an article for
continued editing, or delete the article before it goes out?

--
James Taylor, London, UK PGP key: 3FBE1BF9
To protect against spam, the address in the "From:" header is not valid.
In any case, you should reply to the group so that everyone can benefit.
If you must send me a private email, use james at oakseed demon co uk.

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