[Pan-users] Re: New Pan problem

[Duncan]

Joe Zeff <address@hidden> posted
address@hidden, excerpted below, on  Mon, 08 Dec 2008 14:12:09
-0800:

> One other, small (I'd think) enhancement that I've been wondering about:
> I'd like to have a Back button, so that I cold go back one post (at a
> time) from where I am.  Sometimes, I'm considering replying, but don't
> want to repeat what somebody else already said.  If I go to the next
> post and it's a long way away, there's no simple way to get back.  Is
> this worth mentioning to Charles, or do you think it's not that useful
> to the average user?

I don't know...

It wouldn't be useful most of the time here, but I do things rather 
differently than the default and than many users, I expect, and there are 
rare occasions on which it would be /quite/ useful.

One of the things that drove me crazy with the original key bindings was 
that I normally want to go to the next article, not the next unread 
article.  Fortunately, there's an option in preferences for that, and I 
have it set accordingly.  

I also have quite a few of the standard keybindings changed. (See 
accels.txt in pan's data dir, but note that it's just a dump so it resets 
to more or less random order when pan exits, save a copy somewhere and 
edit that if you want to sort it, then copy it back over the dump... or 
simply use your editor's search functionality if you aren't changing a 
whole bunch.)  Among them the next <whatever> entries are all unmodified 
(a=article, g=group, t=thread in my scheme, while next unread <whatever> 
consistently uses the alt-modifier (so alt-a/g/t), and previous 
<whatever> uses the shift-modifier.  Parent article is alt-shift-a.

I normally work with view unread-only toggled on, so next article and 
next unread article would be the same thing.  However, I also added a 
binding to that toggle (r=read/unread toggle), so I can toggle that as 
needed as well.

With it setup that way, and since I don't normally jump around that much, 
I'm normally fine without a back function (previous article or parent 
article, along with the read/unread toggle and using the uparrow key, 
work reasonably well).

Once in awhile it would be handy, tho, and it would probably be handy for 
the less technically inclined and users who view all, not unread-only, 
most of the time, but use next-unread for default navigation.  Making it 
simpler for the less technically inclined should appeal to Charles... but 
of course that has to be weighed against both code and UI complexity.  
Too many buttons isn't simpler for the less technically inclined!  Of 
course as usual with free/libre and open source, if someone with the 
talent cares enough to implement the code as a patch, its chances to 
appear in pan in anything like a reasonable timeframe go up dramatically.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman