[Pan-devel] The Blue Sky Becomes Clear - part 01: Basic Thoughts - revision 00

[Bas Mevissen]

Here is a list of things that Pan should be able to do. The list is in quite 
general terms. The details will be filled in later "parts".

* Pan should become fully newsgroup-oriented. It should become unimportant to 
the user from which server a newsgroup originates. The idea is that the user 
only selects which newsgroup he or she wants to read and Pan will find out 
which servers can be used. 

* All configuration should become profile-controlled. But overrides should 
always be possible. Think of of the user identity: you configure one or a 
few. There must be a default for every newsgroup, but per posting you should 
be able to alter the settings.

* Pan should be available for both Unix and Windows. Multi-platform will help 
acceptance outside the Linux world. Acceptance in the Windows world will give 
a huge user base and that is cool by itself. Multi-platform support is also 
important for people using both Unix and Windows (dual booting etc). 

* Pan should support dial-up and permanent internet connection both very well. 
Think of batch-wise posting and retreiving, automatic dial-in/disconnect and 
timed updates. Per-newsgroup settings should be possible for retreival of 
headers-only or bodies too etc.

* Article database: more fine tuning of the article cache, purging and the 
like. Think of what to do when purging cross-posted articles.

* Internationalisation: support newsgroups in different languages (spelling!), 
support help in a different language that the program itself (a common 
practice is to have the program in English, but the help in the local 
language).

* Documentation: proper user documentation in different languages. More 
comment in the code and some general document about the inner workings of 
Pan. One reason is to attract more developers to Pan.