From: keld@login.dkuug.dk (Keld J|rn Simonsen)
Subject: Re: how to avoid old subjects?
Organization: DKnet
Date: Mon, 21 Dec 1992 03:01:39 GMT

kbibb@maui.qualcomm.com (Ken Bibb) writes:

>>>>I have been somewhat tired of seeing the same subjects again
>>>>and again, and would be interested in just seeing new
>>>>subjects plus the old ones that I cared for.

>>>Then kill the subjects that you aren't interested in--though I would recommend
>>>only killing them for 30 days or else it will take nn a while to compile
>>>the kill file...

>>But that is a lot of subjects!
>>I cannot kill all of those by hand.

>When you use K for kill, it will prompt for a subject.  There is usually
>a key word that you can use if you don't want to kill every single subject.

Well, I subscribe to about 100 groups and if I should kill the subjects
that I do not want to see anymore, I would be very busy - thinking
of which keywords I want to kill and really looking at each
of the subjects that show up, then use the K key, select the
articles and then specify the keyword for killing.

It is much faster saying: there were no interesting articles, please
nn, dont show articles with these subjects next time around.
Just show the new ones. Oh, BTW, please gont forget to show me the
ones I have auto-selected.

I understand from your writing that there is no way of automatically
doing this. You must either kill subjects by the K command or edit
the kill file for each subject or keyword that you want to kill.

>And if you don't want to visually skip a subject, it shouldn't be *that*
>hard to skip the threads visually.  I currently subscribe to over 100
>newsgroups and can go through a day's worth of news in less than an hour
>with nn (mainly because of the high level of noise in each group).

Well, I want to skip the subjects visually, if it did not interest me...


>>>>The other idea was to automatically see articles, that were followups
>>>>to my own articles, and also to automatically select followup
>>>>articles on those I have selected for reading.

>>>Have nn automatically select on the subject line of your own msg (for
>>>30 days, once again) and it will auto-select the articles.

>>>>Is this possible with the current nn?

>>>Yes.

>>How? I would like to have the selection automatically
>>when I have selected it for reading, or when posting a new article.

>By doing as I suggested earlier by using the kill function.  nn's Kill
>allows auto-selection or auto-killing.

I know the kill/select function, but I believe it is nessecary to enter
the K key and do further specification eg each time I have posted 
an article. Then I should wait till it turns up, or enter the
subject etc by hand. Why not save time and have nn do this 
automatically? - normally I would like to see every article that
is a response to my own article.

>>>>I have planned two new variables:


>Many people do not use the followup capability of their newsreaders, so the
>only way of guaranteeing that you've killed the thread is by including the
>entire subject line in a special kill file as I've suggested.

and this is actually what nn will be doing for me automaticaly,
with the few patches I made.


>>>>auto-select-rw (boolean, default false)
>>>>If set, a subject of an article read or posted is automatically 
>>>>used for subsequent auto-selecting.

>>>Where would it keep the subject lines?  How would it handle the number
>>>of possible subject lines?  (128^40 ?)

>>in the kill file. I do not read and post that many articles.
>>say 500 subjects in a month.

>You may not personally post/read that much, but if a feature like this
>was to be added to nn, it should be able to handle people like Ron Dippold
>too!  

nn is a very costomizable product, and nn users need not use all
of the features available. My initial feelings about these
features are that I save reading about 2/3s of the subject lines, 
and 20 % of the groups are completely ignored.

On the other hand I am not afraid that I will miss followups to my
articles and the auto-selections are about just right, saving me
a lot of time getting the noise out. I fear how big the kill file
will be and how this will affect nn's  performance - time will tell.

>If you do not post many articles, then why do you think it's too hard to
>kill-select those subject lines that you post?

I find it convenient that nn remembers automatically which
responses there are to my articles.

I do read quite a few articles. So there doing selection each
time a new subject comes up would be burdensome.

Keld
Newsgroups: news.software.nn