Re: [Pan-users] One-off colorization of attributions.

[Eric Ortega]

On Mon, Jan 13, 2003 at 08:39:46PM -0700, Duncan wrote:

> Actually, that's exactly the way it should work, logically.  Think of it this 
> way:  Who wrote the attribution line?  It wasn't the guy being quoted, it was 
> the guy AFTER him.  Thus, the attribution line is colored as one would 
> expect, in the quote color of that level of quote, as attributed by the 
> previous level.

Duncan, I appreciate your response, but I know this.  It still drives
me batty at times, though, and I've been a frequent Usenet-type-person
for over ten years now.

Just because it makes logical sense doesn't mean it makes visual sense.


> IOW, in a single level quote, the person replying creates the attribution 
> line, NOT the person being quoted, so it should be in the "new material" 
> color.

Yes.


> A second level quote will be attributed by the guy at the first level 
> quote, so the attribution should be colored in the correct color for the 
> person that wrote the attribution, and it is.  Again, it's all entirely and 
> perfectly logical. 

Perfectly logical and confusing nonetheless.  Just because I start counting
at zero all day long doesn't mean I want to do it at the dinnertable, too,
IYKWIM.


Perhaps the complications, to me, come about from having color involved.
I'm not used to this "feature" and maybe I will do better by disabling it.


What I was thinking might be more useful, though, is to colorize the
"name" of the owner of the attributed text the same as the color of
their text.  In this way we will only marginally violate the colorization
of who actually wrote what, but we will make it much easier to go back
through the multiple responses and easily pick out the quote owners.


It's like that cognition test where you need to look at the word "green"
when it's actually printed in a red ink ... the dissonance between the
color and the word causes problems.  The same thing happens when looking
back through eight levels of nested responses and trying to keep in mind
that the text I'm reading is brown but it's not actually the attribution
that's brown, they wrote that too ... it's the attribution before that that
counts, etc. and so forth.  It's just messy.



Look at it this way, it all starts with a response post from Person A:

    BLACK:   On the day of ..., "Person B" wrote:
    PURPLE:  > Drivel.
    BLACK:   Nice!!

Simple, easy, not a problem.  Quoted text is differentiated from original
in an obvious fashion.


But, then, after a while:

    BLACK:   On the day of ..., "Person D" wrote:
    PURPLE:  > On the day of ..., "Person E" wrote:
    RED:     >> On the day of ..., "Person C" wrote:
    BROWN:   >>> On the day of ..., "Person B" wrote:
    PURPLE:  >>>> On the day of ..., "Person A" wrote:
    RED:     >>>>> On the day of ..., "Person B" wrote:
    BROWN:   >>>>>> On the day of ..., "Person G" wrote:
    PURPLE:  >>>>>>> On the day of ..., "Person A" wrote:
    RED:     >>>>>>>> On the day of ..., "Person D" wrote:
    BROWN:   >>>>>>>>> On the day of ..., "Person A" wrote:
    PURPLE:  >>>>>>>>>> On the day of ..., "Person D" wrote:
    RED:     >>>>>>>>>>> On the day of ..., "Person A" wrote:
    BROWN:   >>>>>>>>>>>> On the day of ..., "Person B" wrote:
    PURPLE:  >>>>>>>>>>>>> Drivel!
    BROWN:   >>>>>>>>>>>> Nice!!
    RED:     >>>>>>>>>>> Dravel!
    PURPLE:  >>>>>>>>>> Rubble.
    BROWN:   >>>>>>>>> Flivel.
    RED:     >>>>>>>> Flaven!
    PURPLE:  >>>>>>> Farfervengughen.
    BROWN:   >>>>>> Shenanigan.
    RED:     >>>>> Cardigan.
    PURPLE:  >>>> Zimbabwer!!!!!
    BROWN:   >>> Smoke 'em if you got 'em.
    RED:     >> Cancer.
    PURPLE:  > Tasty.
    BLACK:   Le Big Mac.


    
So, grab a random line from there and try and pick out who said it ... say,
"Cardigan".  Well, to do so, you note that there are some number of '>'
there, but it's kind of tedious to count ... so, um, color I guess.  That
line is RED, working your way up roughly to the same number of '>' and an
also RED line you find that the attribution says that Person B might have
written this.  But, as we all know, this is wrong, because it's actually
the line above that, the PURPLE line whose text is quoted as RED that
contains the proper attribution!

Perfectly logical.


I think that if we were to colorize the name of "Person A" or whatever to
be the same as the color which will be used for their text then we can help
to mitigate some of these headaches.