unPoster – The Downloader

Note: If you use more than one Downloader to work on the same file, the time-remaining calculation will not be accurate, nor will the overall-progress bar. However, the data will be fine, so feel free to do this.

You can download many files with a single Downloader. To do so, select the files on the Lister and then click the Download button. You can also drag-and-drop files from the Lister to an existing Downloader as long as all the files come from the same server/newsgroup.

If you have a large number of files in a Downloader, you can stretch the window to see more of the list. You can also stretch it to the right to see additional columns. The columns of the list can be stretched by clicking on the dividing line between column headers, and then dragging to the right or left. In many cases, you will want to do this to see long filenames.

The Errors column will show you the number of errors that the Usenet server has returned. Errors are common when trying to download old files since some of their parts may have already expired off of the server. These are server errors and have nothing to do with the integrity of the data.

The Notes column will show you various things such as the last error message.

You can stop and start a Downloader as many times as you like.

If the Downloader finishes a file, and for some reason you want to download it again, you must create a new Downloader to do so.

You can sort the list by clicking the column headers to change the order in which the files will be downloaded. You can also drag files and drop them further up the list, or further down, to change the order.

Since you may put many files in a Downloader, and it may take a long time to download them, the Downloader is stored in the unPoster.sdb database file and will still exist if you exit and re-start the program. When all the files are done, click the Delete link to get rid of the Downloader.

At the bottom of the Downloader are spots showing which files will be used for automatic PAR and RAR, if any. The unPoster will try to pick out the correct files and fill them in here, but you can change them if needed. To do so, click the desired file in the list, right-click on the PAR or RAR area, and then choose “set” from the pop-up menu. If the person posting the files didn’t use RAR to compress them, and did not include PAR files, then these two spots should be left blank.