[Pan-users] Feedback wanted for Filter rewrite

[Charles Kerr]

On Tue, Apr 02, 2002 at 11:38:02PM -0500, jonathan wrote:
> there are several conceptual problems:
> i should have an option to download an attachment without having pan try
> to decode it.
> 
> a filter in the Subject/Author/Message-ID box should stay there even if i
> switch to another group. it did, then you "improved" it and now it
> doesn't any more. if for example, i'm looking through all of the linux
> groups for "scsi", it is a royal pain to have to enter it again for each
> group. and, please, don't tout that ridiculous dropdown menu of items to
> me. that was a complete waste of time on your part.
> 
> similarly, the original concept of having buttons to select which
> articles to show was superior to what you've got now.
> 
> what are you guys doing, taking "human interface" lessons from apple?

<sigh>

Jonathan,

I'm going to respond instead of plonking you because I've been going
over Filters this week to try to make them better, and I agree with
some of what you're saying, and would like feedback on what changes
should be made.

However, don't be an asshole with trash like "complete waste of time" or
"taking hci lessons from apple?" or reasonable eiscussion is going to
be impossible.

Filter Appearance
-----------------

The toolbar buttons were more popular than the pulldown, but they couldn't
grow.  As more buttons got added and the show article/threads/replies
option came in, the bar ran out of room.

IMO the advantage of the buttonbar was that it was clear and direct.
The advantage of the pulldown was that it could grow.  Both have at
least two disadvantages: they're not friendly to keyboard navigation,
and you have to wait [number of changes * time to repopulate the thread
pane] to make the changes you want.

What I've been working on this week is a dialog version of the old
buttonbar where everything has a keyboard shortcut.  So tweaking the
filter to show only new, complete binaries would take four keystrokes
[shift-f to pull up the filter dialog, alt-b for binaries, alt-n for new,
alt-o for the "Ok" button to close the dialog].  The filter button on
the thread pane's toolbar would pop up this dialog instead of a pulldown.
(I'll post a screenshot of this on pan-users tonight)

The dialog can grow like a menu could, has a feel similar to the original
toolbar w.r.t. icons grouped together in an etched pane, is very fast to
use from a keyboard, is faster filtering because you only need on repopulation
instead of N.  The only drawback I see is that it could *feel* less direct
just because it's a dialog.

Filter Behavior
---------------

The reason the subject/author filter gets cleared in the current version
of Pan is to work around a tricky filtering bug.  I don't like that
behavior and would like the filter to be `sticky' as you move from group
to group.

And here's where I start getting conflicting ideas:

Once it's sticky again, the question I expect is "why is the subject
sticky but not the new/unread/old etc. filter buttons"?  Why does Pan have 
to save a group's filter when a user leaves the group, and restore it when
the user comes back?  Often I'm looking for a particular thing and will set
the filters just to search for it, and when I come back to the group I've
got to set all those buttons back to normal.

OTOH If they are sticky, then the idea of a default filter for a group goes
away, which would be bad because group-specific filters are very handy
("complete binaries only, in alt.binaries*").

Ideally the new filter behavior would be:
1. easy to understand
2. able to set default group filters
3. able to toggle a `sticky' mode

And this is where I hit the wall.  2. could be done by adding a
`save as group's default filter' button in the dialog I mentioned above, and
3. could be another button, but those don't help with 1.

I'm CC'ing this to pan-users in the hope of getting additional feedback there.

cheers,
Charles