[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, 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 marke by an 
icon.

Why? Because I need to tell a read watched message from an unread watched 
message at a glance, by looking at the color. Because I, like most offline 
readers, ONLY READ WATCHED MESSAGES!  (whose bodies I downloaded 
automatically via a filter and a rule). 
So I totally loose the capability to tell read messages from unread ones with 
the color. There is still the icon, but it's not apparent.

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