D <
nos...@example.net> wrote:
>. . .
>Another question... when it comes to keeping track of the messages of
>usenet I can either select
>[ ] News Approximates New Status
>or leave it unchecked.
>If I select it, all messages are marked as new every time I reload the
>newsgroup, _except_ if I delete one message. Then all messages earlier
>than that message are not marked as new. But it is a bit weird that I
>have to delete a message in order to mark the older ones as not new.
>If I leave it unchecked on the other hand, no messages are marked as
>new, so I only have the date and time to go on and nothing else.
>Is there a way to mark all messages as read, and then get _only_ the new
>ones marked as new, just like in my imap mailbox?
No.
It cannot work like alpine's presentation of a mailbox or folder of archived
mail messages because there is no concept of articles newly received on
the News server since your last Usenet session without checking the Date
headers.
There is no concept of articles that are "new" or "not new", only
articles that are "read" or "unread".
The original pine was a Mail client. It became a newsreader later. I
never cared for pine as a newsreader because it wasn't a threading
newsreader. Threading was added much later. I think Eduardo was the
programmer who wrote the code. Also, while I like the layout of the
index screen for Mail messages, I don't care for it for News articles.
fwiw, I use pine/alpine newsrc file naming convention, which is
convenient to allow the user to become a user on multiple News servers.
Because original pine didn't begin life as a newsreader, it used the
newsrc file format to keep track of News articles. The intent was to
allow UWash students to migrate to pine from the newsreaders they were
already using if they cared to.
I have no idea which newsreader originated the newsrc file format.
Perhaps it was nn.
The newsrc file format has no concept of flags that alpine uses to mark
Mail messages. It maintains a list of newsgroups that the user has
subscribed to, one line each. On each line is a range of article
numbers used by the News server. These are articles that the user has
read, that is, gotten to the end of the article without marking it as
unread.
That's how other newsreaders that use the newsrc file work. In pine and
alpine, the user marks the article as "read" with D Delete, but this is
a misnomer as the user cannot delete the article from the News server
and pine/alpine can pull it up again if the user looks for it.
The newsrc file has no concept of "new" and "not new", only "read" and
"unread". Any article number not in the range of article numbers is
"unread".
[x] News Approximates New displays a New indication of any News article
newer than the last article the user marked as read with the D key. This
state cannot be maintained between sessions by updating the newsrc file
because, again, the newsrc file format has no concept of "new" and "not
new".
I don't know if this is done with article number or the timestamp in the
Date header, but "greater than the article number of the highest
numbered article marked read" is probably simpler to program.
My suggestion to you, when using alpine as a newsreader, given the
limitations of the newsrc file, is to ignore New entirely as it's not a
flag that can be stored in the newsrc file and the state isn't preserved
between sessions. Instead, select articles that are newer than a certain
date.