Pan

See also: Newsreaders

Pan is a graphical open source newsreader that runs under Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD and Mac OS X. Pan stands for “Pimp Ass Newsreader”. The GUI is based on GTK2 and quite modern. From the Features pages:

Why use Pan?

It’s Actively Developed.

  • Pan aims for a three-week development cycle between versions.
  • Bug reports are typically investigated and answered with a few days.
  • Wish lists are answered, and new features are discussed on the mailing list for user feedback.
  • The GNOME internationalization team keeps translations up-to-date.

It’s Good for Reading News.

  • Pan is the only Unix newsreader to score 100% on the Good Net-Keeping Seal of Approval evaluation.
  • Basic newsreader features, such as reading and writing news, threading articles, and replying via email, are supported.
  • Articles can be sorted by author, date, subject, or the number of unread children in the thread.
  • Multiple connections are supported, so articles can be read while binaries are downloading.
  • Selected articles, threads, and entire groups can be queued for offline reading.
  • Articles can be filtered by regular expression matching, read/unread state, binary/text, etc.
  • Pan is fast and can download and thread articles as quickly as the bandwidth will let it.
  • Posts can be queued until you want to go online, and can be re-edited at any point before they’re sent.
  • Pan saves your posted messages in a folder for future reference.
  • A flexible rules system allows you to delete, hide, download, or notify you of, etc. articles that match a subject, or are posted by a particular user, and so on.
  • Groups can be filtered by regular expression matching subscribed/new/all, etc.
  • Article headers are cached locally for fast group loading.
  • Pan has keyboard bindings for mouse-free newsreading.

It’s Good for Downloading Binaries.

  • Pan supports the decoding of uu, base64, and yEnc-encoded binaries.
  • Attached images can be shown inline.
  • Pan supports single-click decoding, opening, or saving of binary messages.
  • Pan’s Task Manager lets you re-order, cancel, and resubmit download tasks.
  • Multiple connections are supported, so many binaries can be downloaded simultaneously.
  • Multi-part articles are automatically grouped together.
  • Non-binary, incomplete multi-part, and previously-saved messages can be filtered out of the article list.
  • Pan understands both MIME and traditional uuencoded attachments.
  • Works with servers on standard and non-standard NNTP ports.

It’s Configurable.

  • Pan can support multiple servers, even concurrent connections to multiple servers.
  • Users can specify per-server maximum connections, session maximum connections, and which servers are allowed to go online.
  • Pan supports NNTP authorization, for Usenet accounts that require passwords.
  • The main window’s panes can be rearranged to suit your tastes.

Pan is written and distributed under the GPL license.


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