RE: [Evolution] have you seen this message?

[Gregory Leblanc <GLeblanc cu-portland edu>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Dan Winship [mailto:danw helixcode com]
> Sent: Friday, June 16, 2000 9:10 AM
> To: evolution helixcode com
> Subject: [Evolution] have you seen this message?
>
> 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.

Uhm, does "seen" mean the same thing as "read", or are they two different
things?

> 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.

If there is a "hint for the day" in Evolution, this would be a really good
default "first" tip.  

>   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.)

This doesn't have anything to do with "previewing" does it?  This would be
opening the message in a separate window, at which point it gets marked
read.  I can't see why you wouldn't mark it read at that point.

>   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.)

Does open mean in the preview window/view, or open in a separate window?  If
this means the preview pane/window, then it seems like it might be a good
option, but only as an option, I personally use it.

>   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")

I don't think that either of those are terribly useful.  I don't often see
the end of messages to mailing lists, since there's generally about 30 lines
of footer there.  Also, is there a cursor when viewing the message?  More
specifically, do cursor movements scroll the message, or do they move the
cursor?  The spacebar definitely seems out of place to me.  There are a lot
of things here that are a bit "vague" to me. Later,
        Greg