view docs/FAQ @ 496:a5a37849dc04 noffle

Fix man page ugliness. Debian bug Bug#432392.
author Jim Hague <jim.hague@acm.org>
date Tue, 10 Jul 2007 18:25:21 +0100
parents 5d32ceec7f25
children
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NOFFLE FAQ
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Q: What is the difference between NOFFLE and leafnode?

A: NOFFLE uses less resources (disk space and bandwidth). Downloading groups
   in overview mode is several times faster, because it uses the XOVER command
   instead of HEAD. In addition, there is the quasi-transparent mode, when
   online, which allows to browse through groups and cache everything without
   subscribing. NOFFLE is GPLed, leafnode isn't.

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Q: I subscribe to groups, but get a "Retreiving failed" message for every
   requested article.

A: Some news server do not allow retrieving articles by message-ID. You cannot
   use NOFFLE together with these servers presently.

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Q: I changed the server in the config files, but the new groups do not appear.

A: You should run 'noffle --query groups' again. If you want all old group
   information deleted, you should remove the file data/groupinfo.gdbm in the
   spool directory before.

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Q: The Emacs news reader GNUS hangs while getting active list from server.

A: This is a known phenomena and I believe that it is a bug with GNUS, because
   the log files show correct handling of client commands by noffle.

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Q: What is the NOFFLE 'online' mode?

A: NOFFLE can be optionally switched into 'online' mode. When in
   online mode any newsgroup can be read and the selected articles are
   fetched immediately from the remote server if not present
   locally. Regardless of the settings in noffle.conf, NOFFLE will not
   automatically subscribe to any newsgroup when in online mode. Online
   mode is therefore useful for quickly sampling the content of
   potentially interesting newsgroups.

  To enter online mode, run 'noffle --online'. To return the regular
  offline mode, run 'noffle --offline'. If you net connection is via
  dial-up, you may find it convenient to do this in your ip-up and
  ip-down scripts, though if you do you'll have to remember that NOFFLE's
  behaviour will be subtly different when you are dialled out.

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Q: Can I read any article in 'online' mode?

A: No. You cannot read groups that are not known to NOFFLE, or articles
   that NOFFLE has already expired. NOFFLE will not refetch expired articles.

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Q: What are the possible values of the X-NOFFLE-Status: header that
   Noffle adds to messages?

A: The X-NOFFLE-Status: header can contain one, two or all of the
   following, separated by spaces:

     INTERESTING
     - This message has been read, or a message referencing it has been
       read and the group is in 'thread' more. The full message body should
       be downloaded on the next fetch, if it has not been downloaded already.

     NOT_DOWNLOADED
     - The article has not yet been downloaded.

     RETRIEVING_FAILED
     - An attempt was made to retrieve the article from upstream, but
       the attempt failed.