Re: [Noffle-users] Re: 1.1.4: problems marking newsgroups for fetching

[Jim H. <jim...@ac...>]

On 05-May-2003 Miernik wrote:
> In article <200...@ml...>, Mirko Liss wrote:
> 
>>> That change (dummy messages only in offline mode) makes sense when 
>>> NOFFLE is used in a larger environment. But when I use NOFFLE only for 
>>> myslef, I would prefer the old behaviour. Might it become a config 
>>> option?
>> 
>> Sorry, I'm not sure if I understand.
>> Do you want an option in noffle.conf to disable the online mode?
> 
> No, I wanted an option to allow automatic subscription also in online 
> mode (as it was in 1.1.2).

I'm happy to consider this idea, but note that Noffle has *never* done auto
subscription in online mode. Not deliberately, anyway. :-)
> 
> And BTW, I still do not understand te concept of not providing dummy 
> articles for automatic subscription in online mode. Say we are all the 
> time in online mode, and do not want to swith online/offline (or even 
> do not have priviliges to do that).
> 
> What we are supposed to do when we want to read a new newsgroup (not 
> previously read by anyone on this NOFFLE)?

The idea of online mode was that while you were connected on dial-up you could
browse through unscubscribed newsgroups to try them out. If you're just
dropping into a newsgroup to see if it contains anything interesting, you don't
want to auto-subscribe and collect the past few hundred messages before you can
see any content in that newsgroup. In online mode you should be able to visit a
newsgroup you've not subscribed to and read articles in that group, and only
the articles you actually read will land in the local article database (i.e.
Noffle becomes a pure caching proxy).

I recently removed references to online mode from the INSTALL instructions - it
causes so much confusion. I've never used it myself, either on dial-up or with
a cable modem, and given that it complicates the code somewhat I'd cheerfully
remove it.

Would anybody like to make a case for keeping online mode?

-- 
Jim Hague - ji...@be...          Never trust a computer you can't lift.