Alt.Binz forum
New Alt.Binz versions => Requests => Open requests => Topic started by: Sc0tTy on January 13, 2007, 07:06:20 am
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Because i see a lot of people posting requests about header fetching i thought a sticky would do nicely .
alt.binz currently doesnt support header fetching , you can use one of the integrated search engines to search files.
new requests about header fetching will now be deleted.
Greetz ,
Sc0tTy
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I propose allowing multiple connections for downloading headers. Most newsreaders don't do this, and only use a single connection for headers.
I've never understood why a binary newsreader will allow dozens of connections for article downloads, but only a single connection for header downloads - but that's what most newsreaders do.
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I am so happy with the alt-binz - low memory usage, automatic un-rar, super search support. So wonderful! The only thing I REALLY want is head downlaod. Now I have to switch to newsleecher occasionally for download headers from my favorite group!
Is altbinz going to support header download soon?
Thank you very much for such a nice program!
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I am so happy with the alt-binz - low memory usage, automatic un-rar, super search support. So wonderful! The only thing I REALLY want is head downlaod. Now I have to switch to newsleecher occasionally for download headers from my favorite group!
Is altbinz going to support header download soon?
Thank you very much for such a nice program!
You can browse ALL the newsgroups with the most search engines!!
no need for headering!
That proces is not need anymore.
An example,I made a screenshot for you:
http://www.uploaddump.nl/f-163232.html
(bv Alt.binaries.boneless)
Or :
http://www.uploaddump.nl/f-163283.html
(alt.binaries.mp3)
Alt.Binz will do that much quicker with it's search engines.
That is a reason I don't use Newsleecher anymore,it takes too much time.
Alt.Binz is a much more clever program!!!
Gr Hunny :lol: :lol: :lol:
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I am so happy with the alt-binz - low memory usage, automatic un-rar, super search support. So wonderful! The only thing I REALLY want is head downlaod. Now I have to switch to newsleecher occasionally for download headers from my favorite group!
Is altbinz going to support header download soon?
Thank you very much for such a nice program!
You can browse ALL the newsgroups with the most search engines!!
no need for headering!
That proces is not need anymore.
An example,I made a screenshot for you:
http://www.uploaddump.nl/f-163232.html
(bv Alt.binaries.boneless)
Or :
http://www.uploaddump.nl/f-163283.html
(alt.binaries.mp3)
Alt.Binz will do that much quicker with it's search engines.
That is a reason I don't use Newsleecher anymore,it takes too much time.
Alt.Binz is a much more clever program!!!
Gr Hunny :lol: :lol: :lol:
nonsence... even if headering takes longer you get the updates as they are uploaded. search engines have indexing intervals for popular groups and updates, for not so popular groups, come even later. What happens if the search engine goes down? Good luck getting a tv show the same day :) I would love to see header fetching support. damn newsleecher crashes all the time because of the problems with the cache.
any idea if this feature gonna be added soon?
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You can browse ALL the newsgroups with the most search engines!!
no need for headering!
That proces is not need anymore.
Not quite.
Indexing sites all pull headers themselves, and most of these pulls are done at quite lengthy time intervals ( I think Newzbin do theirs every couple of hours). Sometimes you need things as quickly as possible, e.g. if you want to watch a certain episode before you go bed and headers are the only way of doing this.
I must say, the inability to download headers is kind of a deal breaker for me. The only reason I do not use SabNZBd anymore is because I hate having to switch over Newsleecher just to get headers. So, I was hoping Alt.Binz would be a happy middleground. I suppose I will just have to keep checking back now and again to see if it's been implemented. :)
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Well, of course these things vary from site to site, and between groups, but look at these current stats for alt.binaries.multimedia:
Newzleech < 1 mins
SuperSearch ~ 3 mins
aEton ~ 12 mins
Binsearch ~ 17 mins
That's good enough for me compared with the hassle of dealing with headers. Text groups are another matter, but then I'd use a reader for those anyway. Since I stopped dowloading headers, I've really not been able to understand the attraction they still hold for others. Just one of those things, I suppose.
-Hecks
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Good program if you use or get NZB files etc.
But...
* Not all searches bring results.
* Not all posters use nzb or nfo files.
* Not all posters use common file names
* Many posters misspell words by accident or on purpose.
* Many files are abbreviated names & can only be deciphered by using your brain.
With nzb files I use alt.binz because it is much less of a resource hog than newsleecher.
On the other hand if you have a good connection it shouldn't take long to get new headers in a group.
Except maybe boneless which you should probably get new headers a couple times a day to keep the new header count low.
I can find more of the files I seek by getting headers & Using the scenarios above.
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I think you misunderstand how Alt.binz works. Yes, you can use external NZBs with it, but really the best way is to search with the inbuilt search engines. These index files directly from Usenet, so the subject lines you see are *exactly the same* as the headers you would ordinarily download yourself. The only difference is that most sites have some kind of autogrouping function, so collections of files are grouped together under the same subject (something that's on the cards for the next version of Newsleecher, btw). When you add these files to the queue, the sites generate NZBs dynamically - they're not pre-posted by users - and Alt.binz handles them as intermediate files to get the message IDs (though you can save them if you want). You *don't* have to download the NZBs provided by the original poster. So there's absolutely no chance of spelling errors or the like: you're getting exactly what you'd get by downloading headers, but in a fraction of the time, using a fraction of the bandwidth, and with no danger of losing all your data if the app crashes.
You can also browse all posts in a single group by using the Browse button on e.g. the Binsearch or Newzleech tabs.
Since sites like Newzleech usually have stuff indexed within 10 minutes, the only chance of not being able to find stuff this way vs headers is if the engine doesn't index the group. But then you can use Xpat if your server supports it.
I hope that's clarified things for you. :)
-Hecks
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Can headers be added sometime soon.
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Can headers be added sometime soon.
Why?
-Hecks
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One of the reasons why is because you don't always know what your searching for. For example if you go thru a channel you might be like oh i remember that artists etc.. or that sounds like something I might wanna read. Another reason is because alot of open source projects example mozilla, sourceforge use newsgroups for discussions.
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One of the reasons why is because you don't always know what your searching for. For example if you go thru a channel you might be like oh i remember that artists etc.. or that sounds like something I might wanna read. Another reason is because alot of open source projects example mozilla, sourceforge use newsgroups for discussions.
The 'Browse' button covers the first - which has the added advantage of taking 0.1% of the time and bandwidth it would take to do the same job by downloading all headers for all groups you may or may not be interested in. I know because I do this every day, and it usually takes me about 5 minutes to flick through my favourite groups, whereas doing the same with headers could sometimes take hours. Not to mention the frustrations of your local cache becoming corrupted and needing to do the whole lot again (yes, Newsleecher, I'm looking at you).
As for the second, Alt.binz isn't really set up to be a text newsgroup reader; for a start. it has no message viewer, and no means of replying/posting. There are plenty of alternatives for that, not least Google Groups,- which again, makes better sense from a time and bandwidth pov - or Outlook Express, which comes free with every copy of Windows.
-Hecks
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@Hecks: did you notice that the search engines do not cover all available newsgroups? They are missing a lot of very important binary groups, like "a.b.u-4all". With AltBinz, there's no way to download anything from the groups not indexed by the search engines.
This is definitely a good reason to implement header downloading! This should not be difficult anyway - AltBinz already supports getting the list of newsgroups on the server, but what for? What's the point of doing that if it can't display the group headers anyway?
I would like to see header download implemented, because only with this feature AltBinz could really be a competitive product to the established programs. There are many posts you simply can not find with binsearch, newzleech, etc. and I always have to use NewsLeecher just to find these postings. That's pretty annoying and if AltBinz could show me the headers in a group, it would all be fine. Also, this would make it possible to read text messages related to posts (not just the NFOs), which also would help a lot.
Regards!
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a.b.u-4all is indexed by Binsearch in the extended 'Other' list and NZBIndex, for a start. I wouldn't call it an important group, though. You can also request that groups be added to e.g. Newzleech or NLSS (use the form).
Maintaining a local cache of downloaded headers for all and every possible group that you may be interested in for searching is slow, wasteful of bandwidth and local resources, and is not how Alt.Binz is currently set up to work. The list of newsgroups on the Newsgroups tab is for XPAT searching. I disagree that there are "many posts that you cannot find". You can read text messages posted in binary groups with Alt.Binz - just download them as normal. Alt.Binz doesn't cover text-only groups because it's a binary newsgroup reader.
Anything else?
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But I can't find "a.b.u-4all" in the binsearch tab of AltBinz, because it only lists the first 1000 groups. Therefore I can not browse this group. Binsearch does seem to index it, but it doesn't do this right - many postings do not show up in Binsearch, but they exist when you browse the headers with NewsLeecher.
And it wouldn't be necessary to maintain a complete list of all headers between sessions - just some way of temproarily view the newest x headers in a group would do fine! I'm sure this is not difficult to implement.
Regards!
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To get all the Binsearch 'Other' groups, you need to replace the bsglist2.abz file following the instructions here:
https://www.altbinz.net/wiki/Using_the_Search_Engines#Binsearch
But as I said, the group you're looking for is indexed by NZBIndex as well. I'll regard the "many posts don't show up" statement as an exaggeration until I see meaningful proof.
I think you underestimate the complexities of header handling and how this could be implemented in Alt.Binz. If it's access to unindexed groups that's a priority for you, and your server doesn't support XPAT searching, to have any kind of search functionality you'll want to download more than just latest X headers for each group. In any case, you'd be gradually building up a header cache for all of your groups to match your server retention. That's a lot of local hard disk space and bandwidth to sacrifice for not much benefit in the long run. And you'll know if you've used Newsleecher how frequently such caches become corrupted and unusable, meaning you have to start the whole process again, wasting even more bandwidth. By design, Alt.Binz lets the indexing server do all of that grunt work for you.
Who knows if Rdl will implement header downloading eventually. Personally, I think it's not a priority feature on a pure effort vs reward basis.
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Free search engines like binsearch are kinda shitty because files like nfos go missing alot. :( I still have hope that header fetching will be implemented in alt.binz :P
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Free search engines like binsearch are kinda shitty because files like nfos go missing alot.
Proof?
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I just checked some search engines and the only one that isn't missing files is nzbindex, but headers should still be implemented because there isn't any reason not to do it, especially after you requested posting features (https://www.altbinz.net/forum/index.php?topic=1040.0) (and cr4zyfr4g supporting the idea) in the program but don't want header support? ??? I'd say thats quite idiotic. Furthermore it shouldn't take rdl more than a year to add this to the program as this thread is more than a year old already ::)
From the last 10 days of headers I used some random req id's from alt.binaries.cd.image and binsearch, newzleech, aeton and beta.binaries.nl are all missing nfo's for these (except for nzbindex):
16580 16660 16656 16657 16654 16644 16636 16633 16630 16624 16625 16626 16623
In other words, all except for 1 of them are crap and totally useless for people who collect releases.
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because there isn't any reason not to do it
Of course there is, this thread is full of them. Finding non-indexed .nfos is a rather trivial reason to implement something like this, IMHO, especially if NZBIndex carries them (and of course NLSS does too). There are plenty of sites that index those separately, if you're missing any (http://www.nfoogle.com). Posting is an enirely separate function and has nothing to do with managing headers locally.
Please try to keep the discussion courteous. We're only sharing opinions here, it's up to Rdl to decide whether to move this forward or not. It's not that I don't want header support, it's just that I don't think the rewards are worth the (user) effort in this case. I have my views, plenty of other people think differently to me (including Rdl, as I recall :P). That's life.
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That reason is good enough because it shows how low the overall quality of those search engines are. Headers have no problems at all. I really wonder if you don't mind about header support being added to the program as you are trying to find tons of reasons not to do it. As if there is anything else worthwhile for him to work on other than fixing bugs and wasting time on weird requests like SSL binsearch instead of something extremely basic like header fetching, something that every good client should have. :-*
BTW, I was happily using Newsleecher SS until my subscription expired not too long ago and now I'm stuck with these free search engines as I am not going to pay for a program that I won't be using (Newsleecher). Guess he doesn't know/gives a shit about people who just want to pay only for SuperSearch. :-\
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Header fetching is only "extremely basic" in the way that a steam engine is "extremely basic", i.e. a redundant technology. In this case, superseded by quicker methods that offload bandwidth and local disk usage to an indexing server. Sometimes the indexing algorithms get it wrong and miss part of a post here or there, especially with posts like the ones you cited that have obfuscated subjects (and why is that?). I'd be more worried if the free engines regularly missed whole posts rather than trivial .nfos that can easily be found elsewhere. I simply don't see the point of clogging up my drive and wasting my bandwidth for such a meagre benefit. And I'm glad that Alt.Binz development over the last year hasn't been held back by a need to incorporate and bug-fix a backward approach to using binary usenet.
This doesn't mean it won't be in future. As I said, Rdl disagrees with me, if I recall our last discussion about this properly.
Anyway, this thread is going round in circles, and I meant what I said about keeping the discussion civil.
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why r u guys not using the build-in xpat search? by puting in a space u get (nearly?) all posts of a specific newsgroup. ok you can only browse one group at the time and when u changed groups you have to do the search again, but if you limit ur search to the last 1000-10000 posts it's quick enough. by the way hitnews is one of the suposed rare providers supporting it.
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why r u guys not using the build-in xpat search? by puting in a space u get (nearly?) all posts of a specific newsgroup. ok you can only browse one group at the time and when u changed groups you have to do the search again, but if you limit ur search to the last 1000-10000 posts it's quick enough. by the way hitnews is one of the suposed rare providers supporting it.
That might just be why not many (don't know whether that's true or not) use it, the provider you use needs to support it for it to work ;)
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why r u guys not using the build-in xpat search? by puting in a space u get (nearly?) all posts of a specific newsgroup. ok you can only browse one group at the time and when u changed groups you have to do the search again, but if you limit ur search to the last 1000-10000 posts it's quick enough. by the way hitnews is one of the suposed rare providers supporting it.
Correct way would be to use wildcard and search for * . That way you'll get all posts. All providers I've used/am using have xpat... xlned, hitnews, easynews, newshosting. The only one I'm sure doesn't support xpat is giganews.
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why r u guys not using the build-in xpat search? by puting in a space u get (nearly?) all posts of a specific newsgroup. ok you can only browse one group at the time and when u changed groups you have to do the search again, but if you limit ur search to the last 1000-10000 posts it's quick enough. by the way hitnews is one of the suposed rare providers supporting it.
Correct way would be to use wildcard and search for * . That way you'll get all posts. All providers I've used/am using have xpat... xlned, hitnews, easynews, newshosting. The only one I'm sure doesn't support xpat is giganews.
tanks for that info :-)
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This is about headers, but not necessarily about Dling all headers for a group. Is there, or can there be, a way to download and read a single header ? For example if there is a collection and someone has posted a reply to the collection, is there a way to just grab and read that single response (hearder contents) ?
Our previous reader had that ability, and to be honest, I don't miss much else about the old reader at all, except occassionally for that one feature :)
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If you use NLSS, you can right-click + Open (to view article contents) and/or right-click + View Header (just article header info). Extending this to other search engines has been requested before - although it isn't quite as straightforward, given how articles are indexed & grouped by these.
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Ahh, ok, Thanks for the explanation. And NLSS is a paid subscription index/search engine ? (if I read other comments correctly).
Thanks again !!! :)
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I also just "found" the "view nfo" option that appears to be for all of the search engine tabs. Very cool :). I will research the NLSS option you mentioned further. Thanks again.
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Most used in:
Binsearch
NZBIndex
Newzleech (if it shouldn't be down)
Yabse
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One of the reasons why is because you don't always know what your searching for. For example if you go thru a channel you might be like oh i remember that artists etc.. or that sounds like something I might wanna read. Another reason is because alot of open source projects example mozilla, sourceforge use newsgroups for discussions.
The 'Browse' button covers the first - which has the added advantage of taking 0.1% of the time and bandwidth it would take to do the same job by downloading all headers for all groups you may or may not be interested in. I know because I do this every day, and it usually takes me about 5 minutes to flick through my favourite groups, whereas doing the same with headers could sometimes take hours. Not to mention the frustrations of your local cache becoming corrupted and needing to do the whole lot again (yes, Newsleecher, I'm looking at you).
As for the second, Alt.binz isn't really set up to be a text newsgroup reader; for a start. it has no message viewer, and no means of replying/posting. There are plenty of alternatives for that, not least Google Groups,- which again, makes better sense from a time and bandwidth pov - or Outlook Express, which comes free with every copy of Windows.
-Hecks
Until I read this answer, I also missed the headers download due to my misunderstanding of the functionality of the program. Browsing a groups headers eventually brings you to content you were not aware of before (and therefore you would have never searched for). And yes, I missed that. Now, as I have understood the usage of the browse button, I am even more fine with this ultimately cool piece of software called alt.binz... Browsing all headers of a group already works out fast and fine, no need to implement any more in that field. ;D
:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D Thank you so much for providing it. I love it ! and will stick on it.
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I can't believe this still isn't implemented! There are many times you need to browse newsgroups, especially now that posters intentionally misspell etc in order to prevent DMCA and search engines aren't enough. The browse button in the binsearch tab doesn't give me access to all relevant groups on my server either. Like someone said: what's the point of having a group list if you can't do anything at all with it?
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As explained many times before, group list is for XPAT server-side searching (if your USP supports it).
I suggest that you trial Newsleecher or Newsbin for a month and then come back and report once you've had the experience of trawling raw headers and storing them locally to a satisfactory level of retention.
To give you an indication, I currently store 5 groups for 800 days, and that's 20GB just for the heavily-filtered headers I choose to keep. You can easily pull a few GB a day of headers only, 95% of which is useless spam, viruses or Dutch :P Not to mention how often you can count on your db corrupting and having to start again.
This is why anyone with any sense lets the indexers do the heavy lifting with today's usenet.