Re: [Pan-users] Maybe solution of watched color dispute?

[Tim Day]

[This is a second attempt as the first one didn't seem to get through;
sorry for any duplicates at your end]

On Sun, 2002-12-15 at 23:43, Gollum wrote:
> There is a need to differentiate between unread and read articles
> within watched threads:
> 
> When being in a hurry, I may mark an interesting thread watched, but
> not reading all the messages.  When returning to the thread later, I'd
> like to read those articles I didn't have time for previously.
> 
> I consider it less important if a message within a watched thread is
> new or old (but unread).
> 
> I do however find it useful to see if an article (or thread) is new,
> since I scan the new threads for interesting subjects.  I don't
> appreciate having to redo that with the old threads.
> 
> I'd still appreciate a more visible distinction between watched read
> and watched unread, preferably by font, colour or brightness.

*** New Pan user de-lurks ***

I've been using Pan (0.13.2.92) a bit less than a week now, having
switched (as part of a personal campaign to kick Bill out of the house)
from the little known Turnpike (email/news client for Windows).

I've been using the watch/ignore feature a lot: after I visit one of my
regular NGs, I will probably have classified all the threads into one or
the other category.  However, there are some pieces missing which I
think would make the watch/ignore classification a LOT more useful than
it is at the moment (currently I can't see that it has much effect on
anything than the colour the headers are displayed in, but maybe I'm
missing something).

What I'd really really really like to see is:
In the "Groups" display:
 - An additional column giving the number of "watched unread" posts. 
The information currently given (e.g that a group has 44977 posts, 44968
of which are unread) isn't nearly as useful as knowing that there are 5
unread posts in watched threads in that group.
 - Posts in "Ignored" threads should be exactly that, and not contribute
to the "Unread" and "Total" counts for a group.

In the "Headers" display:
 - The ability to sort on thread classification so that all the posts in
watched threads rise to the top and the ignored ones sink to the
bottom.  This way you can enter a group, read up your watched threads,
pick out any interesting new ones to watch, then just shift-click select
everything else and classify them all as ignored.  

And generally:
 - As Gollum suggests above, individual control over the display style
of each combination of watched/unclassified/ignored vs read/unread
(including control of bold/italic as well as colour) would be real nice.
 - On the "Newsgroups" menu, an option halfway between "Get New Headers"
and "Get New Headers and Bodies" which just gets the bodies for watched
threads (I have ADSL.  I just fetch headers, and download bodies from my
ISP's server on demand; sometimes there is just enough of a delay to be
annoying.  For watched posts I'm definitely going to read them, so they
might as well be fetched).

Apologies if I'm actually completely missing the point of watch/ignore
here... maybe I'm just trying to abuse it into replicating Turnpike's
"interesting"/"uninteresting" classification when it's actually supposed
to be doing something completely different.  I was going to wait a bit
longer before suggesting any of the above, but since the subject has
come up I thought I might as well pile in.

Regards (and thanks to the developers for such an excellent piece of
software)
Tim