Re: Don't waste time on offline newsreaders...

[Alan Shutko <ats acm org>]

>>>>> "M" == Michael Alan Dorman <mdorman@boxster.law.miami.edu> writes:

M> famrom@ran.es (Guillermo S. Romero / unnamed / Familia Romero)
M> writes:
>> With Free Agent I download _only_ what I want. I choose which
>> headers and article bodies. Nothing more.

M> Yes, they behave in exactly the same way.  You get nothing but what
M> you're interested in.

No, they do _not_.

With Agent, you look at a list of headers and choose exactly which
messages will come down the pipe.  With leafnode (and I'd guess
NewsCache, as well), it downloads the groups you're interested in, but
there's no way to specify specific articles or threads.

The difference can be illustrated by looking at c.o.l.advocacy.  An
Agent user could read one thread from it and only download that
thread's articles.  A leafnode user will have whole thing come down
the pipe.

This is a big difference in paradigm between leafnode type solutions
and Agent.  The Agent paradigm is inherently single user.  It's also
very hands on.  Many people may not like this (like me... I like
leafnode) but many people do and they will not be happy with leafnode.

-- 
Alan Shutko <ats@acm.org> - By consent of the corrupted
Brain fried -- Core dumped