I'm trying to figure out how to use tin to read remote news but
there's a couple of things I don't understand. Namely:

(1) tin downloads the (large!) active file every time I start the
program

and

(2) tin tries to download every single header when entering a group,
even if I've previously marked the group as read and there are only
a few posts marked as unread. This takes a long time for some
groups -- too long for tin to be usable.

Comparing tin to slrn: in the first case, slrn only downloads the active
file if you invoke it with --create, and in the second case slrn only
downloads headers for posts marked as unread and prompts for a number
in any case.

I know about tin's -G option, but I feel like I'm missing something
here.

Am I doing something wrong or approaching things in the wrong way?

Thanks for your time

9 Way <9way@botnet.com> wrote:
> Am I doing something wrong or approaching things in the wrong way?

Try the -q option to tin and see if that eliminates the problems you've
been seeing. It should at least get rid of the newsgroup polling at
startup.

9 Way <9way@botnet.com> wrote:
> I'm trying to figure out how to use tin to read remote news but
> there's a couple of things I don't understand. Namely:
>
> (1) tin downloads the (large!) active file every time I start the
> program

I use
tin -Q

>
> and
>
> (2) tin tries to download every single header when entering a group,
> even if I've previously marked the group as read and there are only
> a few posts marked as unread. This takes a long time for some
> groups -- too long for tin to be usable.
>
> Comparing tin to slrn: in the first case, slrn only downloads the active
> file if you invoke it with --create, and in the second case slrn only
> downloads headers for posts marked as unread and prompts for a number
> in any case.
>
> I know about tin's -G option, but I feel like I'm missing something
> here.
>
> Am I doing something wrong or approaching things in the wrong way?
>
> Thanks for your time

--
William Park <opengeometry@yahoo.ca>, Toronto, Canada
Slackware Linux -- because I can type.