[O] Oracle - OE Failing To Display Posts
Geoff Field
Outlook Express 6.00.2900.2180. I also have OE-QuoteFix
installed. After about 50-60 posts, the colouration from
OE-QuoteFix disappears, the "unread messages" count
stops counting down and eventually the "next" message
comes up with a notice saying "Unable To Display The
Message". Restarting OE enables a few dozen more
messages to be read, then it happens again.
I tried uninstalling all plugins to no effect.
I update my system regularly, scan with both SpyBot S&D
and Ad-Aware (as well as my McAffee virus scanner).
Any ideas on what might be causing this (or should I
search the MS Knowledge Base)?
Other than switching to ThunderBird or some other
client (which I plan to do as soon as I've caught up),
what should I do about it?
Geoff
--
Geoff Field
Professional Geek,
Amateur Stage-Levelling Gauge
Geoff Field
I've just installed Thunderbird. How the heck do I
make it stop asking me if I want to subscribe to
alt.fan.pratchett?
I keep hitting "Yes", then it shows ALL the messages
in the group as new. When I hit "No" it shows nothing.
Is there a better client? (Yes, I know this has been asked
before, but part of my attempts to get OE working properly
caused all messages to be lost.)
Richard Heathfield
<snip>
> I've just installed Thunderbird. How the heck do I
> make it stop asking me if I want to subscribe to
> alt.fan.pratchett?
>
> I keep hitting "Yes", then it shows ALL the messages
> in the group as new. When I hit "No" it shows nothing.
Why not just hit "Yes" and then select all the messages, and mark them as
read? Okay, you might mark a few that you haven't actually read, but you
could sort on date to give you a chance to play catch-up if you feel the
need. But afp is relatively quiet right now, so I don't think you'd miss
much if you simply grabbed the lot, marked them, drew a line (so to speak)
on the calendar, and started reading articles from that point onwards.
> Is there a better client?
All the clients you're not using are better than the one you *are* using,
because they aren't giving you any trouble right now. :-)
Thunderbird is a good client - better than OE, at any rate - and it's worth
persevering with it.
--
Richard Heathfield <http://www.cpax.org.uk>
Email: -http://www. +rjh@
Google users: <http://www.cpax.org.uk/prg/writings/googly.php>
"Usenet is a strange place" - dmr 29 July 1999
Geoff Field
> Geoff Field said:
>
> <snip>
>
>> I've just installed Thunderbird. How the heck do I
>> make it stop asking me if I want to subscribe to
>> alt.fan.pratchett?
>>
>> I keep hitting "Yes", then it shows ALL the messages
>> in the group as new. When I hit "No" it shows nothing.
>
> Why not just hit "Yes" and then select all the messages, and mark
> them as read?
I tried exactly that several times, but Thunderbird *keeps* asking
me if I want to subscribe and _continues_ re-displaying ALL
messages as unread.
> Okay, you might mark a few that you haven't actually
> read, but you could sort on date to give you a chance to play
> catch-up if you feel the need. But afp is relatively quiet right now,
Yes, only about 200 messages a day ;-)
> so I don't think you'd miss much if you simply grabbed the lot,
> marked them, drew a line (so to speak) on the calendar, and started
> reading articles from that point onwards.
That's an idea
>> Is there a better client?
>
> All the clients you're not using are better than the one you *are*
> using, because they aren't giving you any trouble right now. :-)
Silly question, wasn't it? ;-)
> Thunderbird is a good client - better than OE, at any rate - and it's
> worth persevering with it.
I do enough geeking at work. I was hoping to avoid doing too much
more at home.
Nigel Stapley
>
> I've just installed Thunderbird. How the heck do I
> make it stop asking me if I want to subscribe to
> alt.fan.pratchett?
>
> I keep hitting "Yes", then it shows ALL the messages
> in the group as new. When I hit "No" it shows nothing.
> Is there a better client? (Yes, I know this has been asked
> before, but part of my attempts to get OE working properly
> caused all messages to be lost.)
>
Geoff, try deleting the news server account and setting it up again.
--
Regards
Nigel Stapley
<reply-to will bounce>
Len Oil
> I tried exactly that several times, but Thunderbird *keeps* asking
> me if I want to subscribe and _continues_ re-displaying ALL
> messages as unread.
Not sure if this is what you want (it's a while since I migrated) but
try Right-click on group, Properties, Offline tab, Select this newsgroup
for offline use, Download now. This might solve your problem, or it
might be something completely different/that you have already done.
And I sort of miss the same "synch all" functionality[1] as OE had.
There's an icon in the extreme left of the lower status bar that
(currently, for me) says "You are offline. Click to go online." which,
when pressed will send any messages waiting in the Outbox,
appropriately[2]. Then when online, click again to go back offline and
it gives you an option[2] to download everything. Which you can read
'offline', regardless of your net status.
That's the way I do it (which explains why sometimes my messages
sometimes come through even more asynchronously, compared to the
time-stamp, than you would expect from general propagation times),
though Ctrl-Shift-T is apparently one (not-going-offline) alternative to
getting all messages refreshed.
I like Thunderbird, but you may /have/ to get used to some niggles, only
some of which have ended up in (long, I'm so sorry) footnotes to this
post. This is one reason why it took around 12 months from when I first
experimented with Thunderbird to give it a serious go, and even then I
was mainly reading in parallel with OE to get used to the various ways
it differs.
[1] For which I've never quite found the same kind of thing via inbuilt
options or plugins, plus it has other annoying habits[3][4][5][6] that I
can't seem to resolve, but that I get around.
[2] Unless you have configured it to always/never do so, in the options,
and not to ask.
[3] A downloaded message, perfectly readable, /cannot/ be opened as
"View | Message Source (Ctrl-U)" while offline, because it ignores any
local copy (that normal reading will use) and tries to look at the
server. (This proven by disconnecting the whole computer, while
Thunderbird thinks it is still online and getting a "cannot connect"
message instead of a 'blank' source.)
[4] If, while still in the middle of 'synching' a group, in the midst of
"going off-line", you click on that group, it stops downloading messages
from that, and leaves you with "This message is not available" on any
remaining ones. To resolve, you need to re-open (or re-preview) the
message whilst Thunderbird is (knowingly) online again, it downloads
permanently and all is sorted.
[5] The absolutely most annoying habit is that it treats the ABP
download completely different from the AFP one. Despite being exactly
the same in all settings I have checked (including "Don't delete any
messages" in the Retention Policy for the group, it /still/ manages to
perma-delete, and disavow all knowledge of, any message that has been
marked read and then disappears from the online tree (change to new
group and back, or even collapse the thread that it is buried within and
then expand once more).
[6] The editor has a funny little quirk. You expect that when you
cursor beyond the end of the visible part of the pane that it scrolls
the extra line(s) it needs to. But sometimes there are 'points' in the
document[7] where a sudden scroll can occur (quite disconcertingly)
without any need to.
[7] In this one, somewhere in the "not-going-offline" mentioned in the
penultimate non-footnote paragraph, also "plugins" in the first
footnote. The former seemed to (generally) want to scroll when there
are less than six lines above it when you cursor (forwards) through it,
while it is near the top, the latter created a lot more space below when
scrolling up through it (and it was near the bottom). Though it's hard
to duplicate. Lengthening this message seems to have removed this
behaviour, though while the "n-g-o" quote within this very footnote was
the very bottom line, scrolling through it 'juddered' the editing
canvas, as if it was trying to scroll down (giving it a few more lines
visible beneath it) but then reverted because there /were/ no more
lines. Now it isn't so strictly at the very bottom, having written
this extra text, but if there are less than seven full lines below it,
and you cursor across it (from the '"' to the space, cursoring right, or
from the 'o' to the '-' cursoring left) it will jump to give you those
seven lines. Only now it has stopped again. It has not escaped my
notice that "plugins" and "offline" are words that the spill-chucker
underlines, and thus I suspect some kind of causal link between the
editing and spill-chucking sub-subsystems. Although the phenomenon
comes and goes, repeatable at times, then vanishing for no immediately
obvious reason, so it's hard to pin down whether it would/could happen
to /every/ unrecognised word, and I haven't ruled out whether it could
happen to words that are not highlit.
Thomas Zahr
...
> Is there a better client?
Xnews, http://Xnews.newsguy.com
--
Ciao
Thomas =:-)
<Mine Horn Is Exalted In Om>
David Chapman
> I've just installed Thunderbird. How the heck do I
> make it stop asking me if I want to subscribe to
> alt.fan.pratchett?
Uninstall Thunderbird.
Geoff Field
> Geoff Field wrote:
>
>>
>> I've just installed Thunderbird. How the heck do I
>> make it stop asking me if I want to subscribe to
>> alt.fan.pratchett?
>>
>> I keep hitting "Yes", then it shows ALL the messages
>> in the group as new. When I hit "No" it shows nothing.
>> Is there a better client? (Yes, I know this has been asked
>> before, but part of my attempts to get OE working properly
>> caused all messages to be lost.)
>>
>
> Geoff, try deleting the news server account and setting it up again.
Thanks Nigel. When I did that I discovered that I had multiple
accounts set up. Deleted the lot. Seems a lot better now.
I just have to catch up on OE now.
Geoff Field
Len Oil wrote:
> Geoff Field wrote:
>> I tried exactly that several times, but Thunderbird *keeps* asking
>> me if I want to subscribe and _continues_ re-displaying ALL
>> messages as unread.
>
> Not sure if this is what you want (it's a while since I migrated) but
> try Right-click on group, Properties, Offline tab, Select this
> newsgroup for offline use, Download now.
That's in progress now - about a third of the way through AFP.
> This might solve your
> problem, or it might be something completely different/that you have
> already done.
Probably the multiple accounts I tried to set up on the same server.
> And I sort of miss the same "synch all" functionality[1] as OE had.
File->Get New Messages For->Get All New Messages ?
Or is that just for mail?
> There's an icon in the extreme left of the lower status bar that
> (currently, for me) says "You are offline. Click to go online."
> which, when pressed will send any messages waiting in the Outbox,
> appropriately[2]. Then when online, click again to go back offline
> and it gives you an option[2] to download everything. Which you can
> read 'offline', regardless of your net status.
Cool.
> That's the way I do it (which explains why sometimes my messages
> sometimes come through even more asynchronously, compared to the
> time-stamp, than you would expect from general propagation times),
> though Ctrl-Shift-T is apparently one (not-going-offline) alternative
> to getting all messages refreshed.
I'll watch out for that.
> I like Thunderbird, but you may /have/ to get used to some niggles,
> only some of which have ended up in (long, I'm so sorry) footnotes to
> this post. This is one reason why it took around 12 months from when
> I first experimented with Thunderbird to give it a serious go, and
> even then I was mainly reading in parallel with OE to get used to the
> various ways it differs.
I suspect I'll do something similar, frankly.
> [3] A downloaded message, perfectly readable, /cannot/ be opened as
> "View | Message Source (Ctrl-U)" while offline, because it ignores any
> local copy (that normal reading will use) and tries to look at the
> server. (This proven by disconnecting the whole computer, while
> Thunderbird thinks it is still online and getting a "cannot connect"
> message instead of a 'blank' source.)
I doubt I'll be doing much source viewing.
> [4] If, while still in the middle of 'synching' a group, in the midst
> of "going off-line", you click on that group, it stops downloading
> messages from that, and leaves you with "This message is not
> available" on any remaining ones. To resolve, you need to re-open
> (or re-preview) the message whilst Thunderbird is (knowingly) online
> again, it downloads permanently and all is sorted.
I'll try to bear that in mind, too.
> [5] The absolutely most annoying habit is that it treats the ABP
> download completely different from the AFP one. Despite being exactly
> the same in all settings I have checked (including "Don't delete any
> messages" in the Retention Policy for the group, it /still/ manages to
> perma-delete, and disavow all knowledge of, any message that has been
> marked read and then disappears from the online tree (change to new
> group and back, or even collapse the thread that it is buried within
> and then expand once more).
Eurgh. Oh well, I won't be doing a lot of backtracking. I barely have
time to keep up with the new messages.
> [6] The editor has a funny little quirk. You expect that when you
> cursor beyond the end of the visible part of the pane that it scrolls
> the extra line(s) it needs to. But sometimes there are 'points' in
> the document[7] where a sudden scroll can occur (quite
> disconcertingly) without any need to.
I tend to do manual line breaks anyway.
> [7] In this one, somewhere in the "not-going-offline" mentioned in the
> penultimate non-footnote paragraph, also "plugins" in the first
> footnote. The former seemed to (generally) want to scroll when there
> are less than six lines above it when you cursor (forwards) through
> it, while it is near the top, the latter created a lot more space
> below when scrolling up through it (and it was near the bottom). Though
> it's hard to duplicate. Lengthening this message seems to
> have removed this behaviour...
Thanks.
Geoff Field
> Geoff Field posted:
>
> ...
>
>> Is there a better client?
>
> Xnews, http://Xnews.newsguy.com
Got it (yesterday). Tried it. It seems OK. I'll compare
the three tools for a while, I think.
Thanks Thomas,