GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 442140
Automatic Posting Profile Selection Doesn't Work
Last modified: 2011-12-03 18:15:06 UTC
Please describe the problem: This is in release 0.131. After a discussion on the pan-users list, it seems that the expected behaviour is for pan to select a posting profile based on the news server the group comes from. This doesn't actually seem to work at all - instead it picks the first posting profile listed alphabetically in the list of posting profiles unless a profile is saved in the group's preferences. Steps to reproduce: 1. Create more than one posting profile 2. Set up more than one news server 3. Post a message to a group and see if the proper posting profile is selected. Actual results: The first profile listed alphabetically seems to be usually selected (perhaps not always). Expected results: A sane posting profile to be picked - one that can at least post to the news server in question would be a good default. Does this happen every time? It seems to be intermittent, but even when it seems to work, the selected profile is often not appropriate for the group/server in question. Other information:
Don't blame me; I tried. :) The rewrite originally behaved exactly as you described, but many people on pan-users complained about the dangers of the computer picking what news server to use. Here's the ticket that prompted the current approach: http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=348667 It was filed by Duncan, who I'm cc'ing to this ticket. What I'd like to see is for you two to come to some agreement on the best way for Pan to handle this.
Had a look back at the original bug, and what's listed there makes sense to me, however the result seems to be that Pan will frequently pick a totally inappropriate server for replies. The original bug covers situations for users who use pan on multiple servers with a single set of shared groups. There is a second use case to consider in this feature, though, and that's the case where someone has multiple news servers that host entirely different groups. For example, news.gmane.org and news.povray.org. There's no overlap between these two servers at all, so it's entirely inappropriate for Pan to auto-select a Gmane posting profile for POV-Ray and vice-versa. The current implementation, however, results in that for every group on either server. Perhaps a solution would be to do this: 1. If there's one server listed for a particular group, use a default posting profile determined (perhaps at the server level - ie, when I set up the news server, I pick a "default" profile for the groups on that server). 2. If there is more than one server that is the source for a group, pick no default, and when posting prompt for "which server do you want to post this message through" and/or allow this to be set in the group's preferences. The result would be intelligent profile selection at the server level that can be tweaked at a per-group level, with a default behaviour that prevents the situation Duncan indicated could be a problem in bug 348667.
How about some sort of "comprimise" solution? Note I haven't fully thought this thru so it may be (probably is :-) full of holes. If there is no specific posting profile for the group the user is trying to post to, ask (via dialog box) which posting profile to use. Then do the equivalent of "edit selected groups preferences" and set that profile as the default posting profile for that group.
I would like to echo Bruce's "compromise" suggestion! I have just run into this issue/bug when I added a second posting profile. Currently, whenever Pan guesses the wrong posting profile, the following things happen: (1) it fails to post a message with the "Warning there were problems with this post dialog box" (2) I have to select a new posting profile and hit the Post button again. (3) After posting, I have to go into "Group preferences" (which is hard to find if you don't know what you're looking for) and permanently change the posting profile for the group. It would be a lot easier for new users if Pan *always* asked to set a default posting profile for a group the first time you posted to it. Also, thanks Charles for trying to do this the right way! Frankly, I don't see how it's any more "dangerous" for Pan to pick the wrong posting profile by guessing intelligently than by guessing stupidly... and just picking the first one in the list. Any thoughts?
I'd go with Bruce's suggestion; I have 180 groups in my list, and my posting profile that appears first (with a descriptive name that has meaning to me) covers only about a dozen of those groups. If the compromise were implemented, that would allow me to select a default for each group once, rather than having an error message pop up telling me the group doesn't exist on the server in the profile it selected, and I go "yes, I need to remember to set that", change it on the message, and then go on to the next group and forget until the next time, when I go through it all again. Using multi-select in the group pane to allow for the setting to be adjusted would also help - with 180 groups in the list, I could easily default those 25 that use one profile, 25 that use another, and so on and set it once. Doing it group by group is very time consuming. I like the idea that if one hasn't been selected, ask. That solves both problems - the one I raised, and the one raised in the original bug.