[Pan-users] About colors of read and watched messages...

[Maurizio Colucci]

On Wednesday 11 December 2002 03:02, Duncan wrote:

> > 2) Why does Pan not mark messages read when I have read them via the
> > SPACE key? Is there some way to enable that?

> You don't mention which version you have, 

sorry... I've got 0.13.0, as included in redhat 8.
But I was wrong. The problem is different, and only now I can see it.

For a watched message M the color is always the watched color, unregardless of 
whether M has been read or not.
This is a conceptual flaw! The read-unread state is a more important concept 
than watched-unwatched, so it should be marked in the most apparent way: the 
color. The less important concept (watched or not) should be marked by an 
icon.

Why is it more important? Imagine the situation of a typical offline reader, 
like myself: you ONLY READ WATCHED MESSAGES  (whose bodies you downloaded 
automatically via a filter and a rule). 
Using only watched articles, you totally loose the capability to tell read 
messages from unread ones by looking at the color. There is still the icon, 
but it's useless because both read and unread messages have it, and it's only 
slightly different---so this difference does not hit the eye.

Instead, I need to tell a read watched message from an unread watched message 
at a glance, by looking at the color. 

In conclusion, I suggest that Pan mark watched messages NOT with a color, but 
with an icon (like Agent does: sunglassess icon), so the read-unread state 
can be marked with a color consistently, both in watched and unwatched 
messages.

What do you think?
Maybe I should post a bugzilla request?


> On Tue 10 Dec 2002 15:21, Maurizio Colucci posted as excerpted below:
> > 1) Is it possible to have Pan NOT mark existing messages read when
> > downloading new headers?
>
> Well... yes... I've never had it do that.  Is it possible you are mixing up
> mark as read with old messages vs. new messages?

Yes, sorry...
What I really meant to ask is "Can I have Pan preserve the "new" state for 
existing messages when downloading new headers?". But this is useless...
As you say, the problem is that I was mixing the concept of "unread" with the 
concept of "new" (=just downloaded).

Now I simply disabled the new feature (by setting the same font for new 
messages).

For my purposes, old unread messages and new unread messages are on the same 
level: I need to read them both. So I don't really need the distincion 
between new and old.

>  Of course, any unread
> messages still marked new will become old, when a new set of messages is
> downloaded, but that's supposed to be distinct from marking them read, and,
> from my experience, IS distinct as outlined.  (Read messages are grayed
> out, while old messages retain color, but lose their bold aspect.)
>
bye,

Maurizio