[Pan-users] Re: Pan2 - The bits I really miss

[Duncan]

Frank Tabor <address@hidden> posted
address@hidden, excerpted below, on  Thu, 21 Jun 2007 18:56:57
+0000:

Duncan wrote:
>> ([The auto-mark-read of killed posts] feature is scheduled to be
>> added, but most likely not until after 1.0 stable

> That will be good.  As I sit here, there are 10 groups showing a total
> of 100 new messages, all filtered, and now I have to go mark each group
> as read.

A bit more detail, since the subthread is headed that direction...

Charles has asked how the old rules setup was actually used.  It turns 
out that other than auto-expiration (particularly on groups with extreme 
retention on the servers a user may be using, gmane's archive policy, 
never expire, is a good example), which is handled differently now, the 
main use was for actually doing stuff (download, mark-read, delete) based 
on scores.  He says that use is legitimate, but believes the 
implementation in old-pan was too complex -- many users failed to make 
use of the because they simply couldn't groke how to set it up.  I agree, 
as I had to explain it a number of times.  Scoring itself can get 
complex, so is a legitimate candidate for having to explain, particularly 
with the power and complexity of regex expressions and the scorefile 
format, but once scored, actually doing something besides pretty colors 
with the scores can and should be rather simpler than the old 
implementation.

The exact details of the new implementation of course won't be known 
until it's actually done, but as discussed (with Charles approving),
automatic actions for (1) download, (2) mark read, (3) delete, would be 
possible, based on the scoring level (corresponding to the color 
levels).  There are several ways the options might be laid out.  Here's 
one ([] indicates dropdown boxes, possible defaults shown):

In preferences, perhaps on an "Auto" or "Actions" tab:

Automatically:

Download posts scored at least [Watched]

Mark-read posts scored at most [Negatively]

Delete posts scored at most [Ignored]


The dropdown boxes would have the choices:
disabled/watched/high/medium/zero/negative/ignored.

I just came up with that idea as I wrote this, as a bit simpler way of 
doing what was discussed.  As actually discussed, the options would be 
checkboxes, perhaps laid out like this:

Automatically:

Download:
        x Watched
        o High-scored
        o Medium-scored
        o Zero-scored

Mark-read:
        o Zero-scored
        x Negative-scored
        x Ignored

Delete:
        o Zero-scored
        o Negative-scored
        x Ignored

Of course, the other option would be to reverse that, so the dropdowns 
are on the actions, for each score-level, like so:

For scores of:

Watched:  [Automatically download]

High:     [No automatic action]

Medium:   [No automatic action]

Zero:     [No automatic action]

Negative: [Automatically mark-read]

Ignored:  [Automatically delete]

Or, the same but with checkboxes (I won't do a mockup of that).

Which of the above options or something else entirely is chosen, defaults 
as shown or to nothing done automatically (as now), and whether it makes 
sense to show all actions for all score-levels (auto-delete watched?? 
auto-download ignored??) for consistency if nothing else, of course 
remains to be figured out at actual implementation.  Naturally, I think 
the idea I just came up with, the first one above, is the simplest and 
makes the most sense, even if it kills a bit of flexibility (being able 
to auto-download zero-scored posts, while auto-deleting watched posts, 
for instance, but wow! that's non-intuitive!).

-- 
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