[Evolution] have you seen this message?

[Dan Winship <danw helixcode com>]

Right now, Evolution marks a message "seen" after you've been looking
at it for one and a half seconds. The idea behind this is that you can
jump through messages with the up/down arrow keys and not cause them
to be marked read. However, almost everyone seems to find this
confusing until it's explained to them.

Outlook does something similar, however it doesn't actually display
the message until the timer runs out. Several people said they found
that behavior annoying.

So under what circumstances should a message be considered read?

Some possibilities:

  1) Like it is now, just document it, because of course everyone will
     read the documentation and be enlightened.

  2) Outlook style.

  3) Messages should be marked read immediately upon being opened.
     People can mark them unread again by hand if they need to.
     (You can't toggle the flag by hand right now, but you will be
     able to.)

  4) Messages should be marked read immediately upon being opened.
     People can use Shift + up/down arrow (or something) to move the
     cursor in the message list without opening messages, and Return
     or Space or something to select. (This is basically how most
     Emacs-based mail readers work.)

  5) Messages should be marked read only after you've scrolled all the
     way to the bottom of them. (This seems to make some sort of
     sense, but at the same time seems like it could be
     wrong/annoying. Do any other mail programs do this, and if so,
     how well does it work?) (Also, this leaves the question of "what
     about messages that fit on one screen and don't need to be
     scrolled?".)

  6) Like 5, but the spacebar means "scroll" if you're not at the
     bottom of the message, and "mark this message read and jump to
     the next message" if you are. (aka "DWIM mode")

-- Dan