[Pan-users] Re: keyboard help

[Duncan]

"M B" <address@hidden> posted
address@hidden, excerpted below, on  Sun, 29
Oct 2006 09:44:22 -0500:

> Execelent.
> I cant say I've found such mailing lists and news groups all that helpfull 
> in the past... a nice change in getting a constructive reply.

We try.  =8^)  One of my things is that I'm not skilled at coding, but
understand enough "programmer-speak" to sometimes be a go-between. 
Anyway, I like pan and want to contribute, but not being able to code,
something that's left is being able to answer questions on the list (aka
newsgroup thru gmane.org, which is what I use).  If I can be of help here,
not only do I make it better for users, but perhaps I can free the folks
who /can/ do the coding, mainly Charles, but he gets help from others, to
do so.  So hopefully I get a faster improving news client out of the mix
as well. =8^)

>>From: "Duncan" <address@hidden>
>>Subject: [Pan-users] Re: keyboard help
>>"M B" <address@hidden> posted
>> > I didnt really want to be on this mailing list, but where do I go for
>> > keyboard help?
>>??  I'm not sure what you are asking there, but the keyboard shortcuts are
>>listed beside the menu entries if appropriate.  Note that it's possible to
>>remap keyboard shortcuts if desired.  I won't go into that here but
>>ask...
> 
> Yes, I see the key help on the menu items (nice, and expected), I dont
> know much about gtk+.
> I guess I was hoping for a cheat-sheet.

Well, I see you mention emacs below.  I'm more of an mcedit or if it came
to it, vim guy myself, but the point is, if you know emacs, you should be
fairly comfortable editing text file.  =8^)

There's an accels.txt dump in the config dir (~/.pan for <0.90, ~/.pan2
by default >=0.90), loaded (if there) each time pan starts, re-dumped each
time it closes.  It's dumped in totally arbitrary order, so if you wish to
edit it by hand (as I have mine), you'll likely find it worth your while
to save it to a different file, where you can order it as desired, adding
comments (beginning with a semicolon) and blank lines a suits your
purpose.  Then copy that back over the dump file (with pan closed
naturally) every time you make changes.

By adding a particular line (I forgot what it was but google is your
friend) to your gtkrc, you can also unlock interactive hotkey setting. 
However, partly because it doesn't work too well switching between text
editing and interactive editing, partially because the menu hotkeys take
priority so there's some you can't set interactively, and partly because I
systematically changed a whole set of the accels, I set mine by editing my
ordered file and copying it over the dump-file exclusively.

If you'd like, I can re-post my ordered file (for new-pan), saving you
at least that trouble, tho I can't guarantee you'll like my accel scheme.

>>BTW, you didn't mention what version of pan, either.
> 
> Sorry.  Pan 0.14.2.91.   I didn't go past yum update pan... I guess I
> should download from the homepage. .. I found pan-0.116-1.i686.rpm   for
> FC5 (under a broken FC6 link) 0.14.2 is the stable release, but I'm
> looking for improvments. Cool.  rpm does make it a bit easier. Space to
> next unread... now an obvious option.

Glad you found the option. =8^)  Unfortunately, you mention fedora core,
which altho Charles mentioned it as what he tends to use, doesn't seem to
have as active a pan maintainer as say Debian, or group participant as say
Gentoo (that would be me).  Back when I used Mandrake (b4 it became
Mandriva), I used to use the RH rpms on occasion.  They don't usually get
/far/ behind, but as I was often ahead of both Mdk and RH, eventually I
decided to start doing the tarball thing.  That worked well once I had the
necessary -devel packages installed.

> I think the options should have a sub-menu or pop-up indicator... a
> minor issue.

I don't quite get your drift, there...

> Nice font selector (I assume that's gtk+)... re-aranging colums... all
> good. This version shows more promise. I must admit to being spoiled by
> emacs, and being able to ask... what keys do what? I'll have to look at
> more of this version...

Yes, the font selector would be a gtk+ widget, as would be the color
selector, and of course the various buttons and dropdowns and treeviews
and the like...

> One of the most disturbnig things is that it doesnt really tell you what
> it's doing. The tasks-list is nice, but if I hit 'n' (or now space, to
> goto next unread) and there is no next unread in this group, it just
> sits there, no indicator. I'll use the feedback to let the authors know
> "the way". (dont kick me)

That's what the feedback is for.

> I guess manuals are a pain... but I thought I saw a wiki there
> somewhere, which will hopfully be the way to build much of manuals in
> the future.

Yes.  There was talk about a wiki, and it'd be cool and all, but for
whatever reason, I seem to gravitate towards news format.  Neither mail
nor IM nor web forums nor wikis seem to appeal to me so much.  (Thus it's
probably a good thing I can get this list as a newsgroup.)  Sometimes I
wish they did a bit more, as it'd certainly be more efficient to write
some things once and then simply post a URL to them when necessary, and if
I was more into wikis, or creating manuals or whatever, the pan one would
be pretty decent by now.

>> > How to mark current thread as read?
>>To mark current thread as read, select thread (or subthread if you only
>>want it), hit mark-read.
> 
> I don't see how to select the thread (I've been using the mouse middle
> button.. which is a nice feature) but again, a single key would be nice.

Check the menus.  On new-pan, it's under the edit menu.  That's one of the
sections I've customized so I don't know the default entry, but here, "t"
means "thread", so ctrl-t selects thread, ctrl-shift-t selects sub-thread,
ctrl-alt-t toggles thread/unthread headers (under view menu, header pane),
under the go menu, t is next thread, shift (commonly meaning reverse or
undo) t is the reverse of next thread, so previous thread, alt (alternate)
t is next unread thread, etc.

BTW, I've similarly customized "a" for "article" (and also "all", ctrl-a
commonly meaning select all, as it does here), g for group, etc, so g is
next group, shift-g is previous group, a is next article, shift-a... you
got it... previous article...

So you see how my logic works and the basics of the keyboard accel scheme
I've customized for myself here.

I've kept m as mark-read (the default), but shift-m undoes that, so marks
unread.  Thus, here, to mark the current thread as read, I'd simply hit
ctrl-t to select thread, then m to mark-read.

>> > .. and ideally new articles I get tomorrow in this thread are marked
>> > as read too.
>>For that you want scores.  You can score the thread as desired (probably
>>ignore or at least negative, in this case), and it'll not normally
>>display.  However, it doesn't get marked read either.  That's an option
>>scheduled for a later version.  In the meantime, you can either set pan
>>to display the ignored and negative scored articles and mark-read
>>manually, or mark-read the entire group when you are done with it
>>(there's an option for that in preferences).
> 
> Auto mark all as read is a little to aggressive for me, but manual is
> easy...
> I'll ahve to check out scoring.

If you've ever used slrn, pan's score file format is very similar, the
biggest difference being that it's normally case insensitive.  (pan
doesn't do all the fancy includes stuff and the like, AFAIK, tho, but I've
never really tested it, so I guess IDKVFAA (I don't know very far at all
=8^).)

Here's the link to its scorefile doc:
http://www.slrn.org/docs/score.txt

> Yes, it helps a lot, thanks.
> I guess I thought it was a bit more mature than it is, and I didn't
> really look for a new version on the web site.
> 
> I'm a news reader from way back... probably started in 1986.  I loose
> touch every few years, but then things are getting interesting again.
> I've never been very interactive on the net.. more of a recluse
> (lurker)... but I've been trying to contribute a little more, and find
> more community contacts to help me deal with some of these sticking
> points I've run into.  I might have a bit to offer myself.

Well, if you are into wikis...  =8^)

BTW, I'm not sure if you are using pan for all text or some binary groups
as well.  New-pan works much better for binaries than old-pan did,
particularly if you have multiple servers.  You may wish to take a look at
some of my other posts that get into a bit more detail about some of the
config file edit tweak only (no or limited GUI config options) options
available, particularly if you do binaries and/or end up with more groups
than nicely fit on the unified list in new-pan.  Take a look at this reply
(on gmane's web interface, they post the link as a handy header in the
news interface, so it's easy to view-headers and select-paste it) for some
details: http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.comp.gnome.apps.pan.user/7759

-- 
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