Re: [Pan-users] Kill-file: no "mark as read"?

[Duncan]

Ron Blizzard posted on Thu, 21 Apr 2011 04:30:13 -0500 as excerpted:

> On Thu, Apr 21, 2011 at 3:19 AM, Graham Peter Davis
> <address@hidden> wrote:
> 
>> In other news-readers I've used, it's possible to "kill-file" someone
>> by setting their postings to "mark as read". I can't find such a
>> setting in Pan. Is there one?
> 
> I don't think there is one. For what it's worth, this is my routine. I
> add scoring rules to ignore various posters, cross-posts, and subjects
> that have gone too long.. When I'm done reading those messages that are
> not killfiled, I go to the group pane, right click on it, and select
> "mark all messages read." The group is then zeroed out and I'm ready for
> the next session.

Somehow in that long epic of an explanation, I missed writing my own 
workaround.  Since you put yours here, I might as well, too.

The problem with your solution here is that sometimes I deliberately save 
a few messages as marked-unread, to come back to later.  Thus, using the 
mark group read function won't work for me.

Instead, as mentioned in the OP's option #2, I set pan to display ignored 
messages as well.  Then I do one of two things.

1) On groups where ignored postings are rare, such that it's as likely I'd 
be setting a new ignore as seeing an old one, the color-coding is enough.  
I have the score column shown in the headers pane, and seeing the ignored 
color there is enough.  As I said, in these groups ignored posts are rare 
and it's about as likely I'd be coming across a new poster/thread/whatever 
to ignore, so accidentally clicking one to load isn't a big deal, since 
I'd as likely (not very) click a new one to ignore and have to add it 
anyway.  And, it's easy enough to see that it's ignored if I glance at the 
header pane, so that works reasonably well, for groups where ignored posts 
are rare anyway.  (Obviously, auto-delete ignored and auto-mark-read 
negative would be better, but lacking that...)

This works well for ignored threads, too, since I can use the add-threads-
to-selection function (which I have a hotkey for, don't know if there's 
one by default), then hit the delete hotkey (FWIW, if it's ignored, mark-
read isn't good enough! delete!) to get the entire thread at once.  So I 
might see the first new post in the thread if I'm careless and don't see 
the ignored-score coming up in the header pane, but won't see the rest.

2) On groups with LOTS of ignored posts, generally active spam-heavy 
groups where spam's a lot of the ignored, upon fetching overviews/headers, 
I've gotten into the habit of hitting the threaded-view-toggle hotkey 
(again, I have a hotkey set for it here, tho I do NOT believe there's one 
set by default, depending on the type of ignored post, if it's all spam 
new-thread posts for instance, this step may not be necessary), then 
clicking the score column header to sort by score.  With posts unthreaded 
(if necessary) and sorted by score, it's then easy enough to select the 
whole ignored-post range and hit the delete hotkey.

If necessary, while it's unthreaded and score-sorted, I can do the same 
thing for the negative-scored, but using mark-read.  (However, I really 
don't so often find myself using this, as I tend to find a post either 
worth at least an initial scan-thru, or so totally bad it's delete-with-
prejudice worth material, and thus seldom have any negative-scored mark-
read-only posts to worry about.)

I can then toggle the view-threaded hotkey again, and switch back to 
normal sorting.

Again, this works, without the problem of marking the whole group read, 
thus undoing any deliberately marked-unread-to-come-back-to-later 
marking.  It's not as good as having it handled automatically based on 
score would be, but given that's not an option ATM, the above two methods 
are the best I've come up with as work-arounds.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman