* Emacs: how to remove "unread" tag while reading emails @ 2013-09-18 18:50 Gregor Zattler 2013-10-04 10:51 ` Jonas Hörsch 2013-10-05 9:19 ` Mark Walters 0 siblings, 2 replies; 6+ messages in thread From: Gregor Zattler @ 2013-09-18 18:50 UTC (permalink / raw) To: notmuch Dear notmuchers, I had difficulties to reliably remove the "unread" tag from messages. Mostly I page through threads with the space bar and all is well. But when the beginning of the thread is already collapsed and I "jump" in the middle of a message pressing space bar does not remove the unread tag. It's only removed when *entering* the message via space bar from the previous message. So the last press on space bar in the previous message jumps to the next message and at the same time removes its unread tag. This seems strange to me. I would say the unread tag should be removed when leaving the message with the last press on space bar, indicating that one really paged trough the whole message instead of only seeing the very beginning of it. What’s the rationale to this behaviour? Am I missing something? Thanks for your attention, gregor ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 6+ messages in thread
* Re: Emacs: how to remove "unread" tag while reading emails 2013-09-18 18:50 Emacs: how to remove "unread" tag while reading emails Gregor Zattler @ 2013-10-04 10:51 ` Jonas Hörsch 2013-10-05 9:19 ` Mark Walters 1 sibling, 0 replies; 6+ messages in thread From: Jonas Hörsch @ 2013-10-04 10:51 UTC (permalink / raw) To: notmuch [-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 766 bytes --] On Wed, Sep 18 2013, Gregor Zattler wrote: > This seems strange to me. I would say the unread tag should be > removed when leaving the message with the last press on space > bar, indicating that one really paged trough the whole message > instead of only seeing the very beginning of it. > > What’s the rationale to this behaviour? Am I missing something? oftentimes, i start reading my mails from a search on the unread tag and just quickly enter a message with RET and leave it again pressing q. with the above suggestion the message would stay marked as unread, although i saw it. extra commands like S-SPC and S-a, to bury the buffer after skimming through the last message in the open thread would remedy the situation then, though. [-- Attachment #2: Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 835 bytes --] ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 6+ messages in thread
* Re: Emacs: how to remove "unread" tag while reading emails 2013-09-18 18:50 Emacs: how to remove "unread" tag while reading emails Gregor Zattler 2013-10-04 10:51 ` Jonas Hörsch @ 2013-10-05 9:19 ` Mark Walters 2013-10-05 16:22 ` Austin Clements 1 sibling, 1 reply; 6+ messages in thread From: Mark Walters @ 2013-10-05 9:19 UTC (permalink / raw) To: Gregor Zattler, notmuch Hello I agree that the unread tag does not work well. There are some instances which I would class as plain bugs (notmuch-show-next-message which is bound to N marks the new message read even if it is collapsed) and other instances where it is not clear what the correct behaviour should be. I have messed around a bit and there seem to be a lot of possible variants and I don't know whether any would have any consensus. One clear divide is whether we should only mark "visited messages" (ie ones reached using space, n,N,p,P etc in the current bindings) or we should also make messages seen by scrolling past (eg with page down). Anyway here is a list of some possibilities. In all cases I assume we do not mark any collapsed message read. 1) Mark a message read when we visit it. 2) Mark a message read when we visit it and the leave it with a "visit move" (eg n for next message) 3) Mark a message read if we see the start of the message in the buffer. 4) Mark a message read if we have seen the start and end of the message in the buffer. 5) Mark a message read if we see the end of the message after seeing the start (rationale moving to the top of the buffer is likely "movement" rather than "reading") 6) Something based on how we leave the message: eg page down could mark all messages which were fully visible read, n (next-open message) could mark the message being left read. 7) Similar to 6) but something where read necessarily includes have seen the start of the message. I think all of these are reasonably easy to implement, and I think I know which I would like (something like 5 or 7) but it would be interesting to know if there is any general view or any view on how customisable this should be. Does anyone have any thoughts? Best wishes Mark On Wed, 18 Sep 2013, Gregor Zattler <telegraph@gmx.net> wrote: > Dear notmuchers, > > I had difficulties to reliably remove the "unread" tag from > messages. Mostly I page through threads with the space bar and > all is well. But when the beginning of the thread is already > collapsed and I "jump" in the middle of a message pressing space > bar does not remove the unread tag. It's only removed when > *entering* the message via space bar from the previous message. > So the last press on space bar in the previous message jumps to > the next message and at the same time removes its unread tag. > > This seems strange to me. I would say the unread tag should be > removed when leaving the message with the last press on space > bar, indicating that one really paged trough the whole message > instead of only seeing the very beginning of it. > > What’s the rationale to this behaviour? Am I missing something? > > Thanks for your attention, gregor > _______________________________________________ > notmuch mailing list > notmuch@notmuchmail.org > http://notmuchmail.org/mailman/listinfo/notmuch ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 6+ messages in thread
* Re: Emacs: how to remove "unread" tag while reading emails 2013-10-05 9:19 ` Mark Walters @ 2013-10-05 16:22 ` Austin Clements 2013-10-05 16:56 ` Mark Walters 2013-10-06 7:08 ` Jani Nikula 0 siblings, 2 replies; 6+ messages in thread From: Austin Clements @ 2013-10-05 16:22 UTC (permalink / raw) To: Mark Walters; +Cc: notmuch Great list. One of the problems with the current approach, which most of these options share, is that there's no feedback. For example, when I enter a thread, I have no idea if the first message was unread or not. I'd like a solution that either naturally doesn't have this problem, that visually indicates that a message *was* unread, or that delays all unread marking until you leave the thread (possibly combined with a visual indication of what will be marked unread). Bonus points if it's easy to adjust what happens, such as saying "keep everything unread" or "keep everything unread except this one". To this end, here are my two proposals: A1) Mark whole thread read when you leave it (via q, X, A or friends) and provide a binding to leave a thread without marking it read (C-x k would do, but we should provide an explicit one; perhaps C-u prefixing other "leave" bindings? For once, C-u is easy to remember because u is the first letter of unread). A2) Like A1, but mark only messages up to and containing point when you leave a thread. In either case, I'd like an echo message when I leave the thread telling me what happened ("Thread marked as read", "First 3 messages marked as read; thread archived", etc.). These would blend especially well with undo, because they would bundle together all read marking into a single action that would make sense to undo ("Thread marked as read [C-/ to undo]"). Both options are highly predictable and easy to understand. They don't lose information about which messages were unread when you entered a thread. And they're easy to adjust (you can always -unread a message manually and then C-u q or whatever to leave without touching anything else). Quoth Mark Walters on Oct 05 at 10:19 am: > > Hello > > I agree that the unread tag does not work well. There are some instances > which I would class as plain bugs (notmuch-show-next-message which is > bound to N marks the new message read even if it is collapsed) and > other instances where it is not clear what the correct behaviour should > be. > > I have messed around a bit and there seem to be a lot of possible > variants and I don't know whether any would have any consensus. > > One clear divide is whether we should only mark "visited messages" (ie > ones reached using space, n,N,p,P etc in the current bindings) or we > should also make messages seen by scrolling past (eg with page down). > > Anyway here is a list of some possibilities. In all cases I assume we do > not mark any collapsed message read. > > 1) Mark a message read when we visit it. > 2) Mark a message read when we visit it and the leave it with a "visit > move" (eg n for next message) > > 3) Mark a message read if we see the start of the message in the buffer. > 4) Mark a message read if we have seen the start and end of the message > in the buffer. > 5) Mark a message read if we see the end of the message after seeing the > start (rationale moving to the top of the buffer is likely "movement" > rather than "reading") > > 6) Something based on how we leave the message: eg page down could mark > all messages which were fully visible read, n (next-open message) could > mark the message being left read. > 7) Similar to 6) but something where read necessarily includes have seen > the start of the message. > > I think all of these are reasonably easy to implement, and I think I > know which I would like (something like 5 or 7) but it would be > interesting to know if there is any general view or any view on how > customisable this should be. > > Does anyone have any thoughts? > > Best wishes > > Mark > > > > On Wed, 18 Sep 2013, Gregor Zattler <telegraph@gmx.net> wrote: > > Dear notmuchers, > > > > I had difficulties to reliably remove the "unread" tag from > > messages. Mostly I page through threads with the space bar and > > all is well. But when the beginning of the thread is already > > collapsed and I "jump" in the middle of a message pressing space > > bar does not remove the unread tag. It's only removed when > > *entering* the message via space bar from the previous message. > > So the last press on space bar in the previous message jumps to > > the next message and at the same time removes its unread tag. > > > > This seems strange to me. I would say the unread tag should be > > removed when leaving the message with the last press on space > > bar, indicating that one really paged trough the whole message > > instead of only seeing the very beginning of it. > > > > What’s the rationale to this behaviour? Am I missing something? > > > > Thanks for your attention, gregor ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 6+ messages in thread
* Re: Emacs: how to remove "unread" tag while reading emails 2013-10-05 16:22 ` Austin Clements @ 2013-10-05 16:56 ` Mark Walters 2013-10-06 7:08 ` Jani Nikula 1 sibling, 0 replies; 6+ messages in thread From: Mark Walters @ 2013-10-05 16:56 UTC (permalink / raw) To: Austin Clements; +Cc: notmuch On Sat, 05 Oct 2013, Austin Clements <amdragon@MIT.EDU> wrote: > Great list. > > One of the problems with the current approach, which most of these > options share, is that there's no feedback. For example, when I enter > a thread, I have no idea if the first message was unread or not. I'd > like a solution that either naturally doesn't have this problem, that > visually indicates that a message *was* unread, or that delays all > unread marking until you leave the thread (possibly combined with a > visual indication of what will be marked unread). Bonus points if > it's easy to adjust what happens, such as saying "keep everything > unread" or "keep everything unread except this one". I like the idea of not doing the update until you actually leave the buffer. > To this end, here are my two proposals: > > A1) Mark whole thread read when you leave it (via q, X, A or friends) > and provide a binding to leave a thread without marking it read (C-x k > would do, but we should provide an explicit one; perhaps C-u prefixing > other "leave" bindings? For once, C-u is easy to remember because u > is the first letter of unread). > > A2) Like A1, but mark only messages up to and containing point when > you leave a thread. I like A2 but would like to check exactly what you meant: would this only mark open messages (ie not collapsed messages) up to point? I also like the prefix argument for q etc idea but I have a plausible variation: ctrl-u q (etc) could say "mark 4 messages unread y/N?" so you could easily see what it would do (but default to not doing it). I am imagining not updating read/unread as the less common case. I guess if we provide functions for each case it is easy for a user to configure. (Actually is it easy for a user to configure how prefix arguments work?) The only time in my use this would do the wrong thing is if I open all messages with M-Ret I think this also simplifies the mark-read code quite substantially which is nice. Best wishes Mark > In either case, I'd like an echo message when I leave the thread > telling me what happened ("Thread marked as read", "First 3 messages > marked as read; thread archived", etc.). These would blend especially > well with undo, because they would bundle together all read marking > into a single action that would make sense to undo ("Thread marked as > read [C-/ to undo]"). > > Both options are highly predictable and easy to understand. They > don't lose information about which messages were unread when you > entered a thread. And they're easy to adjust (you can always -unread > a message manually and then C-u q or whatever to leave without > touching anything else). > > Quoth Mark Walters on Oct 05 at 10:19 am: >> >> Hello >> >> I agree that the unread tag does not work well. There are some instances >> which I would class as plain bugs (notmuch-show-next-message which is >> bound to N marks the new message read even if it is collapsed) and >> other instances where it is not clear what the correct behaviour should >> be. >> >> I have messed around a bit and there seem to be a lot of possible >> variants and I don't know whether any would have any consensus. >> >> One clear divide is whether we should only mark "visited messages" (ie >> ones reached using space, n,N,p,P etc in the current bindings) or we >> should also make messages seen by scrolling past (eg with page down). >> >> Anyway here is a list of some possibilities. In all cases I assume we do >> not mark any collapsed message read. >> >> 1) Mark a message read when we visit it. >> 2) Mark a message read when we visit it and the leave it with a "visit >> move" (eg n for next message) >> >> 3) Mark a message read if we see the start of the message in the buffer. >> 4) Mark a message read if we have seen the start and end of the message >> in the buffer. >> 5) Mark a message read if we see the end of the message after seeing the >> start (rationale moving to the top of the buffer is likely "movement" >> rather than "reading") >> >> 6) Something based on how we leave the message: eg page down could mark >> all messages which were fully visible read, n (next-open message) could >> mark the message being left read. >> 7) Similar to 6) but something where read necessarily includes have seen >> the start of the message. >> >> I think all of these are reasonably easy to implement, and I think I >> know which I would like (something like 5 or 7) but it would be >> interesting to know if there is any general view or any view on how >> customisable this should be. >> >> Does anyone have any thoughts? >> >> Best wishes >> >> Mark >> >> >> >> On Wed, 18 Sep 2013, Gregor Zattler <telegraph@gmx.net> wrote: >> > Dear notmuchers, >> > >> > I had difficulties to reliably remove the "unread" tag from >> > messages. Mostly I page through threads with the space bar and >> > all is well. But when the beginning of the thread is already >> > collapsed and I "jump" in the middle of a message pressing space >> > bar does not remove the unread tag. It's only removed when >> > *entering* the message via space bar from the previous message. >> > So the last press on space bar in the previous message jumps to >> > the next message and at the same time removes its unread tag. >> > >> > This seems strange to me. I would say the unread tag should be >> > removed when leaving the message with the last press on space >> > bar, indicating that one really paged trough the whole message >> > instead of only seeing the very beginning of it. >> > >> > What’s the rationale to this behaviour? Am I missing something? >> > >> > Thanks for your attention, gregor ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 6+ messages in thread
* Re: Emacs: how to remove "unread" tag while reading emails 2013-10-05 16:22 ` Austin Clements 2013-10-05 16:56 ` Mark Walters @ 2013-10-06 7:08 ` Jani Nikula 1 sibling, 0 replies; 6+ messages in thread From: Jani Nikula @ 2013-10-06 7:08 UTC (permalink / raw) To: Austin Clements, Mark Walters; +Cc: notmuch On Sat, 05 Oct 2013, Austin Clements <amdragon@MIT.EDU> wrote: > One of the problems with the current approach, which most of these > options share, is that there's no feedback. For example, when I enter > a thread, I have no idea if the first message was unread or not. Agreed. And this gets repeated for navigating messages within the thread. Very annoying. This should be fixed. Two other things I find annoying: * I often find myself glancing at the first few lines of the message to decide whether I want to read it now or later (potentially never). I still want the unread information be retained if I decide to archive or move on to the next thread, so I often end up restoring the unread tag. So the marking as read is too eager. * I sometimes use the arrow keys and page down/up to read through messages, and this leaves messages unread even though I've read them. So the marking as read is not eager enough. > I'd like a solution that either naturally doesn't have this problem, > that visually indicates that a message *was* unread, or that delays > all unread marking until you leave the thread (possibly combined with > a visual indication of what will be marked unread). Bonus points if > it's easy to adjust what happens, such as saying "keep everything > unread" or "keep everything unread except this one". I'd like to have the visual indication. > To this end, here are my two proposals: > > A1) Mark whole thread read when you leave it (via q, X, A or friends) > and provide a binding to leave a thread without marking it read (C-x k > would do, but we should provide an explicit one; perhaps C-u prefixing > other "leave" bindings? For once, C-u is easy to remember because u > is the first letter of unread). I think I'd like to keep this message based instead of thread based. However it's very difficult to know for sure until one actually gets to try it. I do switch between show buffers (for example, while reading a message, I need to check something from another message) and the marking as read might get lost. Also, it's not clear to me what happens if you refresh the buffer and new messages show up in the thread. Again, difficult to know in advance. My message based proposal: Don't do anything when you enter a message. This keeps the unread tag visible if it's there. Mark each message as read on actions you do when the point already is within the message: n/N/p/P/SPC/a/x/A/X/q/r/R/f (others?), arrow keys, and page up/down, *unless* the action is prefixed with C-u. Collapsed messages would never be marked as read. RET to expand would mark as read. This still does not provide visual indication of the removal of the unread tag in a way that would be always visible. But I think it's more important to know whether the message *was* unread before or not. Here's a proposal independent of the marking-as-read topic that would help with the visual indication: We currently set header-line-format (the top header in show view) to the subject of the first message. The usefulness of the header line could be improved a lot. We could make it reflect the message the point is currently on, with user configurable format not unlike notmuch-search-result-format. Including tags. And this would provide visual indication for marking as read when the message header is not visible. The header would also help in navigating long threads with long messages. > In either case, I'd like an echo message when I leave the thread > telling me what happened ("Thread marked as read", "First 3 messages > marked as read; thread archived", etc.). These would blend especially > well with undo, because they would bundle together all read marking > into a single action that would make sense to undo ("Thread marked as > read [C-/ to undo]"). This might be useful with the message based approach, although it might be too verbose, and a new annoyance... BR, Jani. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 6+ messages in thread
end of thread, other threads:[~2013-10-06 7:08 UTC | newest] Thread overview: 6+ messages (download: mbox.gz / follow: Atom feed) -- links below jump to the message on this page -- 2013-09-18 18:50 Emacs: how to remove "unread" tag while reading emails Gregor Zattler 2013-10-04 10:51 ` Jonas Hörsch 2013-10-05 9:19 ` Mark Walters 2013-10-05 16:22 ` Austin Clements 2013-10-05 16:56 ` Mark Walters 2013-10-06 7:08 ` Jani Nikula
Code repositories for project(s) associated with this public inbox https://yhetil.org/notmuch.git/ This is a public inbox, see mirroring instructions for how to clone and mirror all data and code used for this inbox; as well as URLs for read-only IMAP folder(s) and NNTP newsgroup(s).