Re: [Pan-devel] Re: RFC: Detecting multiparts

[Duncan]

On Sat 09 Aug 2003 17:53, Torstein Sunde posted as excerpted below:
> Charles Kerr wrote:
> > [...]
> >  * there are no standard headers, other than the Subject: header,
> >    to link multiparts together or even to denote binary attachments.
> > [...]
>
> Because of this, there will always be some cases that Pan will fail to
> detect automatically.  I therefore think Pan needs a way to manually
> decode multiparts, like in Gravity or (Free) Agent.
>
> I've filed a bug (enhancement) report:
> <http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=119518>

This is a good idea.  It would also be useful to be able to decode a post with 
parts missing, provided the first part is there.  Two reasons.  First, in 
some formats at least, one can get a preview of the entire post with just the 
first part or parts, and decide if they want to bother with the rest.   This 
is especially useful for dialup users, but it can also come in useful for 
large multi-parters on broadband, especially when PAN only downloads the 
first part by default when it's in "as single post" mode and one selects the 
posts and hits download.

Second,  sometimes, as in an mpeg, if one isn't a serious collector, it's 
better to get the entire movie sans whatever parts are missing and just have 
it go to static for a moment when it gets to and skips that section, than it 
is to miss the entire movie.

BTW, I should file this as a feature request, but it would be nice to have an 
option for that behavior I mentioned above.  It would be nice to be able to 
tell PAN that when I tell it to d/l selected posts, and a multi-parter is 
selected but displayed as only a single part thus only has a single part 
selected, that yes, I STILL want all those parts d/led.  That doesn't work so 
well with small caches, as I found out way back when I first started with PAN 
on 0.11.x, but I do have a 4 gig cache now, and keep it less than half full, 
so I can do this sort of thing and not start losing other stuff I want to 
keep out of cache.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little
temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."
Benjamin Franklin