Forecasting the future is difficult. Guessing is easy. Here are some guesses (in no particular order) about what future versions of Yet Another NewsWatcher may bring.
1) A totally revamped interface to filters. The various filter groups would be displayed in a normal (non-modal) window similar to a newsgroup window. Selecting and opening a filter group within this window would open a second normal window similar to a subject window listing the filters defined for the group. Selecting and opening a specific filter would display a dialog to permit a filter to be edited. Filters could be dragged from one window to another to permit easy moving or copying.
2) Support for user group and subject window level preferences.
It would be nice to be able to define the following on a newsgroup by newsgroup basis:
default sort mode
default folders for saving articles, binaries, etc.
default signature
display of authors, lines, dates
default reply mode (post, email, copy to self)
The following could usefully be defined independently for each user group window:
fonts
filters
character mapping (Latin1, etc.) and script related settings
Having filters, scripts, fonts, and character mapping defined independently for each user group window would make it easier to support a more international version of YA-NW that would better work with Chinese newsgroups, etc.
3) Replace TextEdit routines with WASTE to break the 32k limit and be more WorldScript aware.
4) "Real" message threading (whatever that is).
5) "Smart" filtering options, like automatic labeling of followups to
previously read articles or a user's own posts.
6) Thread manager support, and the ability to have multiple news fetching operations going on at the same time.
7) Full MIME support.
8) Full email support (sending and receiving), with mailboxes handled in a manner similar to group windows.
9) PGP support (which really requires #7 to be useful, though it might also add to the anonymous remailer support).
