Some Guy

[Steve Hodgson]

I've been getting in to a debate with some guy over in news.software.readers
about PNews. He's looking for a 'Deluxe Newsreader for OS X' i.e. graphical.
None of the usual Mac fare as they don't work for him - a man of strong views.

I pointed him towards PNews and he provided some feedback, most of which was
far-off the mark but one that struck home concerned speed of downloading
headers, described as "EXCRUCIATINGLY SLOW" (his capitalisation).

I did a quick test, quoted below.

This one prompted me to do a test, downloading a new subscription containing
84 headers in both Hogwasher and Pineapple News. Hogwasher took 7 seconds and
Pineapple News took 15 seconds. For a larger group (500 headers) Hogwasher
took 40 seconds and Pnews required about 105 seconds. That does appear to be
some difference and I will try to check that out further, thanks. There is not
a lot of disk activity in each case but Hogwasher does not continually refresh
the thread view, waiting until all headers are downloaded first.

Any thoughts?

The guys other beef with Mac newsreaders seems to be that it is only possible
to sort by a single column. I reckon I have only seen one application that
supported multi-column sorting and that was Eudora on Windows quite some time
ago.

Cheers,

Steve

[Allen Brunson]

Post by Steve Hodgson
I pointed him towards PNews and he provided some feedback, most of which was
far-off the mark but one that struck home concerned speed of downloading
headers, described as "EXCRUCIATINGLY SLOW" (his capitalisation).

yeah, see, that right there makes me think i wouldn't want him as a user
anyway. i sense no end of nitpicky complaints.

Post by Steve Hodgson
This one prompted me to do a test, downloading a new subscription containing
84 headers in both Hogwasher and Pineapple News. Hogwasher took 7 seconds
and Pineapple News took 15 seconds. For a larger group (500 headers)
Hogwasher took 40 seconds and Pnews required about 105 seconds. That does
appear to be some difference and I will try to check that out further,
thanks. There is not a lot of disk activity in each case but Hogwasher does
not continually refresh the thread view, waiting until all headers are
downloaded first.
Any thoughts?

after five seconds' worth of downloading, you are going to have more messages
or headers than you can look at. the rate of download will far exceed your
ability to read them. what difference does it make if you have all of them
there right that second or not? and if you don't want to see the headers view
bouncing around while it fills up, why not go read another group that's
already downloaded?

in short, i think you're focusing on a stopwatch statistic, rather than on the
user experience at large. let the program do its thing in the background
while you look at something else.

Post by Steve Hodgson
The guys other beef with Mac newsreaders seems to be that it is only
possible to sort by a single column. I reckon I have only seen one
application that supported multi-column sorting and that was Eudora on
Windows quite some time ago.

the beos version of pnews actually did let you sort by more than one column.
that's the way the tracker worked, so i emulated its behavior. i think you
had to shift-click to set the order of secondary columns. i never used it,
and as far as i heard, nobody else did either.

on the mac, i'm reliant on the capabilities of NSOutlineView. i would have to
defy its usual behaviors to make multi-column sorts work, and cocoa tends to
get cranky when you go behind its back. it appears the finder doesn't allow
multi-column sort, so it seems incongruous for me to do all that extra coding
for it.

[Steve Hodgson]

Post by Allen Brunson
after five seconds' worth of downloading, you are going to have more messages
or headers than you can look at. the rate of download will far exceed your
ability to read them. what difference does it make if you have all of them
there right that second or not? and if you don't want to see the headers view
bouncing around while it fills up, why not go read another group that's
already downloaded?
in short, i think you're focusing on a stopwatch statistic, rather than on the
user experience at large. let the program do its thing in the background
while you look at something else.

I agree in principal, but the reality is not quite as simple. I just upgraded
to broadband and even with the increased speeds (2Mb), I was running down a
list of groups faster then they were updated. It has to be said, the list of
groups I keep in PNews is deliberately fairly small and there was nothing
exciting to read. I did have to wait for some of the later groups to update.

Cheers,

Steve