• [slrn] Dealing with read articles

    From Andreas Mattheiss@21:1/5 to All on Fri Jun 11 20:33:15 2021
    Hello,

    the one thing that keeps putting me off using slrn more frequently is
    the way it is dealing with read messages.

    I should say I'm using a vintage 0.9.8.1, so maybe this has changed with respect to this. But the way I see it is that read messages can only be
    zapped from the article overview. This is harsh. Would it not be nice
    to have a read article just *flagged* as read by having something like
    a letter R in front of the subject in the article overview?

    Regards
    Andreas


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  • From Lewis@21:1/5 to Andreas Mattheiss on Fri Jun 11 23:38:39 2021
    In message <slrnsc7i4b.hc7.please.post@publicly.invalid> Andreas Mattheiss <please.post@publicly.invalid> wrote:
    Hello,

    the one thing that keeps putting me off using slrn more frequently is
    the way it is dealing with read messages.

    I should say I'm using a vintage 0.9.8.1, so maybe this has changed with respect to this. But the way I see it is that read messages can only be zapped from the article overview. This is harsh. Would it not be nice
    to have a read article just *flagged* as read by having something like
    a letter R in front of the subject in the article overview?

    The messages are all still there. If you want to leave them 'active'
    score them with some special number and mark those scores as unread.

    With a little slang, I expect you could do that automatically.


    --
    The best lack all conviction, while the worst
    Are full of passionate intensity.

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  • From J.B. Nicholson@21:1/5 to Andreas Mattheiss on Sat Jun 12 04:54:08 2021
    Andreas Mattheiss <please.post@publicly.invalid> wrote:
    But the way I see it is that read messages can only be zapped from
    the article overview. This is harsh. Would it not be nice to have a
    read article just *flagged* as read by having something like a
    letter R in front of the subject in the article overview?

    Articles marked as read are flagged in just this way; those articles
    can be marked unread if you change your mind. I don't understand how
    what you propose is different from marking an article unread in
    article mode.

    If you want to read articles without marking them as read, consider
    adding

    set auto_mark_article_as_read 0

    to your slrnrc.

    https://slrn.info/docs/slrn-manual-6.html#ss6.4 has info on this.

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  • From Andreas Mattheiss@21:1/5 to All on Sat Jun 12 09:36:21 2021
    Hallo,

    thanks for replying.

    Am Sat, 12 Jun 2021 04:54:08 -0000 (UTC) schrieb J.B. Nicholson <jbn@forestfield.org>:

    Articles marked as read are flagged in just this way; those articles
    can be marked unread if you change your mind. I don't understand how
    what you propose is different from marking an article unread in
    article mode.


    I didn't make myself clear: I had a flag in mind that would just show
    up in the article overview, eg like this:

    2 - R [Andreas Ma]: [slrn] Dealing with read articles
    - R [J.B. Nicho]: [-] Re: [slrn] Dealing with read articles
    4 - [Lewis ]: >

    The articles from myself and you are flagged "read", Lewis' is still
    unread. The read articles can still be accessed easily. Similar to
    pan, where read articles are still there but appear in a pale font in
    the overview. I personally find this appealing.


    If you want to read articles without marking them as read, consider
    adding

    set auto_mark_article_as_read 0

    to your slrnrc.


    Yes, I have done this, but as the faq correctly points out this just
    leaves me with *all* the articles in the overview, and keeping track of
    what's new is impossible. That's the whole point of flagging something
    "read" - I just think removing things read completely out of sight of
    the user is too harsh. Actually, the automark (and thus "autohide")
    feature, which is on by default, probably discourages novices from
    using slrn quite thouroughly, along the lines of "where the hack is that article I read yesterday and where I want to comment on today?" - I know
    the articles are still physically there (can't remove them from the
    server easily anyway), but popping up all the articles in a 20+ thread
    just to do this and thus again loosing track of what was read earlier
    is far from user friendly. The proposed "R" flag would do just nicely,
    me thinks.

    Regards
    Andreas

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  • From Lewis@21:1/5 to Andreas Mattheiss on Sat Jun 12 11:45:36 2021
    In message <slrnsc900l.o0e.please.post@publicly.invalid> Andreas Mattheiss <please.post@publicly.invalid> wrote:
    Hallo,

    thanks for replying.

    Am Sat, 12 Jun 2021 04:54:08 -0000 (UTC) schrieb J.B. Nicholson <jbn@forestfield.org>:

    Articles marked as read are flagged in just this way; those articles
    can be marked unread if you change your mind. I don't understand how
    what you propose is different from marking an article unread in
    article mode.


    I didn't make myself clear: I had a flag in mind that would just show
    up in the article overview, eg like this:

    No, you did. But what you also did was not ssay "I want my news reader
    to be like my email reader" and you've been given two different
    suggestions on how to do that.

    If you want something more compicated, I would point out that AFAIK no newsreader software behaves this way, which indicates it is not a
    feature other people care about. This means you may have to write it
    yourself.

    Who knows, you may have discovered a feature everyone has secretly been clammoring for and take the world by storm. I doubt it, but I've been
    wrong before (shh, don't tell my wife).

    Yes, I have done this, but as the faq correctly points out this just
    leaves me with *all* the articles in the overview,

    No, you can still specifically mark articles you no longer want to see as
    read. All that setting does is disable the AUTO marking.

    what's new is impossible. That's the whole point of flagging something
    "read" - I just think removing things read completely out of sight of
    the user is too harsh. Actually, the automark (and thus "autohide")
    feature, which is on by default, probably discourages novices from

    This is not an slrn specific feature, it is how ever newsreader I've
    ever used since rn back in 1987 has worked.

    using slrn quite thouroughly, along the lines of "where the hack is that article I read yesterday and where I want to comment on today?"

    You can mark articles you want to save for comment later, which is
    normally how this is done.

    --
    <http://xkcd.com/241/>
    <http://xkcd.com/304/>
    <http://xkcd.com/635/> <=-

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  • From J.B. Nicholson@21:1/5 to Andreas Mattheiss on Sat Jun 12 14:08:35 2021
    Andreas Mattheiss <please.post@publicly.invalid> wrote:
    I didn't make myself clear: I had a flag in mind that would just show
    up in the article overview, eg like this:

    2 - R [Andreas Ma]: [slrn] Dealing with read articles
    - R [J.B. Nicho]: [-] Re: [slrn] Dealing with read articles
    4 - [Lewis ]: >

    The articles from myself and you are flagged "read", Lewis' is still
    unread. The read articles can still be accessed easily. Similar to
    pan, where read articles are still there but appear in a pale font in
    the overview. I personally find this appealing.

    Instead of hitting Enter to enter a group, try entering a group with
    ESC 1 Enter. By default slrn will prompt you for how many articles to
    show you and you'll see that many articles (minus any articles which
    have expired from your news server). You can put in the default number
    and see as many of the group's old articles as slrn can fetch from
    the news server.

    https://slrn.info/docs/slrn-manual-7.html#gkey_select_group has more
    info on this.

    Consider looking into setting query_read_group_cutoff to a negative
    value in your slrnrc to see if that helps you.

    https://slrn.info/docs/slrn-manual-6.html#ss6.80 has more info on query_read_group_cutoff.

    Or you could use a macro like:

    #v+
    define my_select_group () {
    variable starting_prefix_argument = get_prefix_arg ();
    reset_prefix_arg ();
    set_prefix_argument (1);
    ungetkey ('\n');
    call ("select_group");
    if (starting_prefix_argument != -1) set_prefix_argument (starting_prefix_argument);
    }
    definekey ("my_select_group", " ", "group"); % SPACE
    definekey ("my_select_group", "^M", "group"); % Enter
    #v-

    which should let you enter a group in the normal way and always see
    all of the articles the server will supply to you at that time. Read
    and unread articles are marked as slrn normally does. Your scorefile
    is also processed normally.

    Actually, the automark (and thus "autohide") feature, which is on by
    default, probably discourages novices from using slrn quite
    thouroughly, along the lines of "where the hack is that article I
    read yesterday and where I want to comment on today?"

    Your question is the first time I've seen anyone ask about this. For
    decades across many newsreaders people have read netnews chiefly by
    looking at the new articles by default and bringing up older articles
    ad-hoc. If you want to read news otherwise that's fine, but the
    defaults don't work that way. However I think you'll find slrn will
    let you do what you want.

    Some articles are quite easy to refetch from the server particularly
    the parent and child articles of current article. The
    get_children_headers (ESC CTRL-P, by default) and get_parent_header
    (ESC p) functions fetch the child articles and parent articles
    respectively.

    See https://slrn.info/docs/slrn-manual-7.html#ss7.2 for descriptions
    of these functions.

    The proposed "R" flag would do just nicely, me thinks.

    slrn is free software -- users are free to inspect, share, and modify
    slrn according to its license, the GNU General Public License. This
    means that you're free to add the functionality which you think is
    missing or get someone else to add it for you. You can optionally
    distribute your improved version as well, even commercially.

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  • From Andreas Mattheiss@21:1/5 to All on Sat Jun 12 17:46:51 2021
    Hello again,

    Am Sat, 12 Jun 2021 14:08:35 +0000 schrieb J.B. Nicholson:


    Instead of hitting Enter to enter a group, try entering a group with ESC 1 Enter. By default slrn will prompt you for how many articles to show you
    and you'll see that many articles (minus any articles which have expired
    from your news server). You can put in the default number and see as many
    of the group's old articles as slrn can fetch from the news server.

    https://slrn.info/docs/slrn-manual-7.html#gkey_select_group has more info
    on this.


    this was the key to success. This and https://slrn.info/docs/slrn-FAQ-3.html#ss3.2 . Quote:

    ======================================================================

    If you want to see all articles in a group (read and unread ones),
    simply set a ``prefix argument'' before entering a newsgroup. Using the
    default bindings, you can do this by pressing ``ESC 1 RETURN'' in group
    mode. There are variations of this; the online help or the manual will
    tell you more about them.

    If you always want to enter groups that way, pressing three keys instead
    of one is annoying. You can avoid this using a special keybinding in
    your slrnrc file. Here is an example:

    setkey group "set_prefix_argument(4); () = select_group();" " "

    With this line, pressing ``SPACE'' in group mode will enter the selected
    group with four as the prefix argument.

    ======================================================================

    Unquote. This does exactly what I want - I mark the articles as read,
    leave the group, reenter with the space bar, and everything's still around
    and properly "flagged":

    - [Andreas Ma]: [slrn] Dealing with read articles@@sig
    3 D [J.B. Nicho]: tq[-] Re: [slrn] Dealing with read articles
    4 - [Andreas Ma]: x mqRe: [-] Re: [slrn] Dealing with read articles@@si
    5 D [J.B. Nicho]: x tq[-] [slrn] Seeing all articles in the group by de
    6 D [Lewis ]: x mq[-] Re: [slrn] Dealing with read articles
    7 - [Lewis ]: mq>

    That's the way I wanted it to be.

    Usenet rulez. Well, mainly the friendly & helpful people behind it of
    course. Thanks to J.B. and Lewis for advice & patience.

    Regards
    Andreas

    --
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    CAT: Of course we have, it's the cockpit, dummy! We come here all the
    time.
    KRYTEN: In this sector of the galaxy, sir... Doesn't it look
    familiar?
    LISTER: Kryten, it's space. Black with twinkly bits.

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