Thanks Smite (and Itimpi),
I appreciate the time involved in responding so detailed to the complex (and LENGTHY) stuff I've been writing.
[I suppose best for me to 'overexplain' than not explain enough... I've tried to help people with computer problems who left out SO much information it was absolutely impossible to tell what they were talking about!]
I not only misinterpreted something originally with the program, I misunderstood something you'd written: I wasn't checking the "Filter Profile" column: I've had it hidden for SO long (since I'd never ventured into different filters before) that I'd COMPLETELY forgotten it even existed (so didn't think to look for it, even when you specifically said, "Filter column"... it wasn't until Itimpi's statement "you may have to scroll to see it" that I found it). [My personal icon here makes more sense, eh? I've had three head injuries and sometimes miss the obvious!] When I looked there I found that the filters WERE linked to the groups I'd assigned them to.
You asked, "If you select the filter you want from the dropdown on the filter bar, does it then filter properly? And again, do you have "Ignore Filters" checked on the filter bar?" The answers were both "no" to these. (I did/have used "Ignore Filters" AFTER the fact {after all headers were downloaded} to see if the filters did their jobs... that's how I found they were working later, because the things I didn't want were, indeed, marked 'rejected by filtering'.)
Actually, I had three filter profiles (those that I split into the three seperate files). Each of those were as small as they could get to still do what I needed/wanted with the groups I was applying them to.
I was QUITE comfortable back in the DOS days, so know my way around most files that can be edited in a text editor (and know a little about HTML {as I'd built a bit of a web page before the third head injury made pursuing that further impossible as it would have then involved sales and such which I no longer had the capacity for}). HTML is similar to the basic organization in the "FILTERS.XML" file. I've also hand-edited the 'default set-up' files with computer games to change frame refresh-rate, gamma, all the movement criteria key-links, etc, so have some experience with files that open with a text editor [I, obviously, never try working with one that *doesn't* open with a text editor, and ALWAYS make a back-up of the original file in case I ever screw something up really bad... I can just pop the old one back in place if I need to give up on what I was trying to do.] I was also working with the earlier versions of Newsbin, where certain files virtually *invited* tinkering to tweak them (I think some actually REQUIRED manual editing for some things {this was in late-version 1 or during version 2 of Newsbin}).
Since I already HAD a complete list of who I was going to look for in the Celebs groups, it was MUCH easier to hand-edit the XML file to include them than to enter each individually in Newsbin's "Accept Subject Filter : Add" area. (To hand-edit, it was a simple cut-and-paste of names and name fragments that I'd edited easily in a word processor from a 'directory list' made from the Celebs directory on my hard drive... much easier, quicker, and less likely to get typos than if I added each of the hundreds of entries individually to the file through the 'normal' interface).
Then - since you'd mentioned there'd been occasional problems with longer files - I tried splitting the file since the 'big one' didn't seem to be working right.
I DO think that something that I didn't think of may have been the culprit in the filter(s) not working (that Quade's original comment brought to mind, and that I think I mentioned in my second response to him): that I had *spaces* and *underscores* in my filter names. It took his statement to 'remind' me that these characters
do not work in this filter file format. As you suggest here, it may very well be that THEY were the reason that the filters did not seem to be working at all, as they 'invalidated' either the filter profile they were in, OR they invalidated the entire FILTERS.XML file! [It appeared that every post showed up... I just realized that
if I'd thought to check to see if the file-size limits still worked at that point, that actually would've meant that ONLY the "name" portion of the filter profile was 'broken', not the whole thing... ain't hindsight wonderful? :/]
I did try 'hand-selecting' the filter profile, then 'hand-applying' it (with the pull-down menu) and that did not change anything with the way it did (or rather, did not) act.
Since you mention that other users don't have this problem of 'too many filters so they don't work', I am 'rebuilding' the "FILTERS.XML" file (re-adding all three different profiles to the one XML file, since they have now all been tested - and worked - individually, even the one with 530 entries in the <SUBJECTACCEPT> area!). I will test that new corrected/combined one to see if it does - indeed - work now
as a whole.... This would be pretty conclusive that it was not working before NOT because it was 'too big', but because I had the spaces and underscores in it which invalidated the whole file, so Newsbin (intelligently!) ignored it/them.
I will have to wait a few days to get enough 'new' posts on the different groups to check this new combined version of the XML file to see if the XML file size is - or is not - a culprit here [or rather that people like me who want it to do such extreme filtering are the culprit <sheepish wink> ].
Thanks so much for your help, again. As Quade pointed out just above: this IS a massive amount to read and take in, and I
REALLY appreciate that you have been, and are, taking the time to help me out with this!
),
