Newsreader on-off line (RE: Mix of Ideas ....)

[famrom ran es (Guillermo S. Romero / unnamed / Familia Romero)]

>>         - the possibilty to search for something in the news server (don't
>> know if this is possible) and download the articles that matter or even the
>> threads that include those articles.
>I am not sure that this can be a good choice forwho have a connection via
>modem to internet (and pay bill phone based on the time)

Well, with the propossed way (copied from FreeAgent, and then improved) it
can be done:
- Connect and download the groups list (or refresh if you have an old one).
Hang connection.
- Search and mark interesting groups (by hand or by computer search function).
- Connect again, dowload all headers of groups those which seem interesting.
Hang again.
- Search and mark interesting messages (by hand or by computer search function).
- Connect again, download all bodies that have interesting headers. Hang again.
- Read and reply when & what you want.
- Connect (again?), send your replies and refresh you database (infinite
loop or only keep reading some groups, called "suscribed to", refreshing
only headers for that groups).

The search engine is better than FreeAgent, but the group->header->bodies
way of work is a direct copy (copyright problems? are "adding 1+1" or
"alphabet" copyrighted?). =;]

You stay online only to transfer data, the other time you are offline,
working at you own pace, and paying only electricity bills.

If the machine is shared be two or more guys, you have to look if your
requests have been done and you can "jump" one connection. Imagine I mark
some groups to get their headers, then my sister uses the computer,
downloads the queued requests (groups list, headers and bodies, from any
user), so when I use my PC again, I just start directly selecting messages
to dowload bodies.

Once the system becomes running in a PC, the news reading goes pretty smooth
in some days (you can mix any kind of request: "new groups", "new headers
for these groups", "bodies for this messages"). And you cuts the phone
costs, cos when you browse web, the idle time is used by the news app to get
queued requests. Now the modem will be running at 28.8K, no waste time.

Obviously a way to "finish the action in progress and then die" should be
implemented, so one can retrieve request in two or more connections.
Other feature should be some kind of limit, so modem can be shared ("work
for 1 min, then sleep 2 mins" configurable times, the provided are examples,
of course).

All these ideas end in:
Should a server and client app be coded separated? The server will manage
queues and connections, and the client will show things to the user and make
request to the server (the client must be capable of doing requests and
retrievals).
I say this cos I doubt if normal clients will be capable of realizing that
unavaliable requests are queued and they have wait some time to get them
downloaded, or they will directly say "not in server, forget about this
article".

GSR