This file contains a list of things that people have asked about,
or that still need to be done. There are several classes of things:
bugs, enhancements, and features. Bugs should always be fixed,
enhancements correct or enhance already existing features. They also
have a large chance of being fixed. Finally, features add new
functionality to xvnews, but they also have the smallest chance of
being done. (Unless you send in a patch...)
This list is currently a bit of a mess, and many items have remained
on the list. I hope to have this cleaned up with the release of 2.4.
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Bugs:
o When using the command-line options to change the geometry weird
things can happen, such as scrollbars disappearing.
The same thing happens when different size fonts are being used.
From: Leif Neve.
o BUG: Properties->Font->Othertext->size doesn't change anything.
In fact, it isn't connected to anything. This fits with the rest of
the font stuff, which doesn't take well against changes.
Reported by: Bob Campbell.
o There seems to be a bug with SunOS 4.1.3_U1 (and possibly other
versions as well). This problem manifests itself whenever text is
appended to an already existing text-window. In this case the
text-window will become unreadable. An example of this behaviour
can be seen when the article in included during a forward or reply.
A work-around is to use the postEditor resource, which can be used
to define a different editor.
Another work-around, reported by Lawrence Rogers, is to get XView 3.2
in source distribution, and use it to compile xvnews with.
o There are problems with the way xvnews saves its properties:
When you do an apply in the properties window, apparently all your
current resources get put back onto your .Xdefaults. This tends
to screw a lot of people up. For example, some people here use xvnews
running on a sun and remotely displaying on an hp. The hp does not
read its resources from .Xdefaults. When someone does an apply
in xvnews, all the hp resources blow away anything in .Xdefaults,
which screws them up when they get on the sun.
By: Andrew Tefft
Saving the configuration to .Xdefaults saves things like
window.x: 25
window.y: 40
icon.x: 1085
icon.y: 237
Placing these generic, unqualified resources in the .Xdefaults file
effects all applications. This piles all icons on top of each
other, for instance.
By: Mike Jipping, Norman Pieniazek
o There still seem to be font problems.
By: Eckhard Rueggeberg
(Check Leif Hedstrom's code with -DFONT_FIX)
Also, some of the selectable fonts (e.g. Times) don't display special
characters correctly. Should look into this as well.
By: Richard Chen.
It should also be possible to use several different fonts (e.g.
cyrillic or kanji) in the text window. This should be user-definable.
o Applying defaults can cause a core dump such as:
> #0 0x21db0 in apply_props (item=748736, event=0xdffff05c) at xv_props.c:187
> 187 apply_font(bw->article_window, Props.listfont,
> (gdb) bt
> #0 0x21db0 in apply_props (item=748736, event=0xdffff05c) at xv_props.c:187
> #1 0xdf749b64 in SAVE_POPUP ()
> #2 0xdf7494d8 in SAVE_POPUP ()
> #3 0xdf753aec in SAVE_POPUP ()
o xvnews sometimes just hangs when posting. The article gets out ok,
but xvnews never returns from its loop. Some evidence seems to
indicate disks filling up while this happens. Other people have reported
a large number of nntpd's or inews processes popping up.
By: Leif Neve, Vidiot, and several others
o Long group names (over 70 characters or so) can cause crashes in xvnews.
Unfortunatly, this isn't easily solved. Some of the problems have
been fixed, but a complete fix requires a thorough rewrite of xvnews.
o xvnews shouldn't trash the .newsrc file, or at least it should keep a
backup around. [A patch is received]
o Printing might not work, check the defaults for different platforms.
o A catchup to the selected article will not do the right thing when
reading articles sorted. It should catchup all articles upto the
selected as they appear in the list, not as they are numbered. [
Pete Koch ]
-------------
Enhancements:
o It would be good to have a way to control the geometry of
sub-windows, such as the Deleted Articles window, without mucking
with the code.
From: Leif Neve.
o Post-window is currently about 84 characters wide. Would be nice if
this would be 80 instead.
From: Geoff.Ballinger@edinburgh.ac.uk
o The XView text-window appears to be inserting new-lines in
postings, but this doesn't actually happen. People who don't know
this often get flamed for using overly long lines. xvnews should
cope with this one way or another. I don't have a good solution yet.
From: Dave Brown <dbrown@cgs.c4.gmeds.com>
o Articles are saved as they appear on screen, which means they miss
some headers that would make it possible to read through them with a
mail-program (e.g. elm).
The main problem with this is the incorrect timestamp, which causes
the mailprograms to not read the folder. The new local time code
might help to solve this problem.
o Keep .newsrc in the same format as rn/trn (this probably means to
not include the unsubscribed groups). Also allow for bogus groups
to stay in the .newsrc (optionally), and clean the .newsrc when
desired.
o The From: line is built in a strange way. Sometimes a host is added
to the domain, and sometimes it is not. This might introduce some
problems. Look at the code, fix things if needed, and document the
correct behaviour.
By: Dennis Flaherty
o xvnews always rescans when uniconized? This can be a problem when
scanning takes a lot of time. [ Chie E. Tse ] It is caused because
xvnews detects that it is no longer connected to the newsserver. It
then rescans automatically. I could make an option out of this.
o It would be nice to be able to select a newsgroup using the middle
mouse button, instead of double clicking. This is also identical to
the way xrn operates. [ Wessel Kraaij ]
o It would be nice if the attribution line could be adjusted, for
instance with something like "In article %a, %u at %o (%m) posted
the following for all to read:", where the variables get filled in
by xvnews.
[Syed Zaeem Hosain]
o Not all people like xvnews to log their postings. I should make an
option to turn this off. [ noted by Greg Cisko ]
o Some of the actions currently require a confirmation. It might be
nice to make these confirmations an option. [Syed Zaeem Hosain]
o The current rescan strategy isn't great. Some people don't want
xvnews to stop scanning, other do, some people don't want xvnews to
scan when opening, others do. It should make some configurable
options out of those possibilities, and create widgets for them in
the properties sheet.
Also, hitting rescan doesn't update the rescan timer, so it is
possible to hit rescan, and be surprised by an automatic scan only
instances later. [Alec Muffet]
o xvnews should tell the user to expect shift/reduce warning in getdate.y.
o When sorting by subject replies should be sorted after their
original articles. Maybe use date: or References:, if possible.
By: Andrew Tefft
o It seems "Kill Subject" and "Search subject" use different search
strategies. This means searches with either method will be
inconsistent with each other.
o The new groups/view groups panel can be coming confusing (and
confused itself) when a larhe number of near-identical groups are
selected.
o When you are in "all news groups" mode, and you select a group with
no articles, then you are moved back to the list of subscribed
newsgroups.
o The file requester doesn't show any dot-files. Maybe it should show
them, or provide an option to toggle this.
o When adding KILL entries to the KILL file it should also be possible
to indicate that these should be case-insensitive.
By: John Durand.
o When an article is posted in a moderated group xvnews might not
report this well. Should look into this.
Based on report by Richard Chen.
o It should be possible to few full headers for particular articles on
a article-by-article basis.
By: me and Graham Robertson.
o Some sites would rather have just a username in the From: address
of mail, allowing them to do neat expansions and such. This is a
bit conflicting with posting, where a full address is needed.
o Stop displaying articles at ^L (page break), because this is often
used for spoilers and the like. [By: Vidiot]
o Should check whether all kinds of headers are handled
properly. Most notable, headers with additional lines preceded by a
tab might cause problems. For instance, when showing only selected
headers the continued headers also slip through. [Bertrand Decouty]
o Currently errors or problems when posting through inews are
silently ignored.
----------
Features:
o FEATURE: support for custom headers in the default post window.
E.g. XVnews.replyto: resource, but also user-defined headers.
o Use arbitrary filters (using shell commands?) instead of just
ROT13.
o FEATURE: Use NOV support (XOVER NNTP extension).
o FEATURE: prefetch one or all articles
o Select multiple articles for saving or filtering
o Virtual groups mode (a la strn)
o Use authinfo NNTP commands to supply a bit more information to the
NNTP server (e.g. for counting interest in articles). Brad
Templeton suggested this on the newsgroup.
o A way to hide read articles without exiting & re-entering a group
might be handy. exiting and re-entering can be slow on a big group.
Just to elaborate on this, a general "update" button inside a group
would be a possible implementation of this. This would update the kill
file rather than just updating the display to exclude read articles.
By: Andrew Tefft
o When doing a catchup, it doesn't seem to mark crossposts read in
all groups in which they appear. This kind of makes sense, since you
would have to scan each article and do something, rather than just updating
the current group's newsrc pointers. In fact I believe this is normal
rn behavior too. But I would like an option to mark all the cross-references
when I catch up.
By: Andrew Tefft
o Do the keyboard accelerators really work? Yes, but focus is always lost
from the command panel, so the accelerators don't really have the effect
intended.
o If an NNTP-connection is lost it has to be initiated again. If this takes
a long time (e.g. via PPP), then the system is locked, because the callback
doesn't return fast enough. Maybe put the NNTP code in a thread? (Shudder)
o Allow moving of newsgroups, such as in xrn. [Bertrand Decouty]
o Make xvnews behave like mailtool, with each article its own pinned
window. [Bertrand Decouty]
o Add an option to reply through mail, and followup to the newsgroup
with just one command.
By: Andrew Tefft.
o Clicking on a URL in a news article might take you to a
Web-browser, and look up that particular URL. Some Mac news reader
does this. [Mike Blandford]
o Be able to read/write remote .newsrc files (either through rcp or
ftp). Some people need to read news from two different sites, and
this might be a nice shortcut. [Mike Blandford]
o How about a news file reader/browser that reads in News files saved
by xvnews that allows you to search them as if they were actual
news posts. That way, you could reply, goto, and cut paste from
saved articles much easier.
By: Bob Campell
----------
Known problems that probably won't get fixed:
o xvnews doesn't update the descriptions when new groups arrive.
This won't get fixed because it would be very inefficient to do so.
If you have an NNTP server which supports the XGTITLE command (such
as INN), then you won't see this behaviour anyway.
o The article list flickers when clicking the next article button. This
is caused by the update of the line (the [read] indicator is added).
This also happens when clicking directly on an article, although it
is much less noticeable.
