From: Jani Nikula <jani@nikula.org>
To: Austin Clements <amdragon@MIT.EDU>
Subject: Re: [PATCH] emacs: add default value to notmuch-search-line-faces
In-Reply-To: <20120126194146.GG1940@mit.edu>
References: <1327605679-15213-1-git-send-email-jani@nikula.org>
	<20120126194146.GG1940@mit.edu>
User-Agent: Notmuch/0.11+95~g1c29b96 (http://notmuchmail.org) Emacs/23.3.1
	(i686-pc-linux-gnu)
Date: Thu, 26 Jan 2012 23:58:51 +0200
Message-ID: <87liounn1g.fsf@nikula.org>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Cc: notmuch@notmuchmail.org
Precedence: list

On Thu, 26 Jan 2012 14:41:46 -0500, Austin Clements <amdragon@MIT.EDU> wrote:
> Quoth Jani Nikula on Jan 26 at  9:21 pm:
> > Add default value to notmuch-search-line-faces to show "unread"
> > messages in bold, and "flagged" messages in red, to have some visual
> > indication of important messages in search results. This should be
> > helpful for new users.
> > 
> > "unread" tag is quite obvious, and handled specially both in the lib
> > and emacs ui. "flagged" is synced to maildir F flag in the lib. If one
> > syncs the maildir to IMAP, this also translates to corresponding IMAP
> > flag. (This is "starred" in GMail and Android.)
> > 
> > Signed-off-by: Jani Nikula <jani@nikula.org>
> 
> While I'm sure this can be bikeshod to death, I do have one legitimate
> concern (and one illegitimate).
> 
> I completely agree with what you said on IRC, though, that setting
> this to non-nil is more about making this capability more discoverable
> to new users than trying to come up with the perfect faces.

Thanks for repeating that here too before full blown bikeshedding. I'm
just trying to help other people find this option quicker than I and
some others did...

> > ---
> >  emacs/notmuch.el |    3 ++-
> >  1 files changed, 2 insertions(+), 1 deletions(-)
> > 
> > diff --git a/emacs/notmuch.el b/emacs/notmuch.el
> > index 6b2c252..551ea9d 100644
> > --- a/emacs/notmuch.el
> > +++ b/emacs/notmuch.el
> > @@ -662,7 +662,8 @@ This function advances the next thread when finished."
> >  		  (goto-char (point-min))
> >  		  (forward-line (1- notmuch-search-target-line))))))))
> >  
> > -(defcustom notmuch-search-line-faces nil
> > +(defcustom notmuch-search-line-faces '(("unread" :weight bold)
> 
> As much as I would like this, many terminals don't visually
> distinguish between the default face and the default face in bold.

Would it really matter, though? People on such terminals are probably
aware they are missing out on a bunch of visual stuff. But please do
suggest an alternative that could be "composited" with the :foreground
setting below for "unread" and "flagged" threads.

> > +				       ("flagged" :foreground "red"))
> 
> Red is pretty universally used to indicate danger or a serious
> condition, while "flagged" is simply supposed to draw attention.  I
> would say blue as a neutral and distinct indicator, but it also has
> poor visibility (I used to use blue, but found that when scanning my
> mail, I would habitually skip over flagged messages because they were
> dark, which was the opposite of what I wanted).  Personally I've
> settled on yellow; it's visually distinct enough to be easily
> noticeable and bright enough that I don't skip over it, though it
> obviously wouldn't work on a light background.

Can be yellow, I don't really care that much. But isn't a light
background the default for emacs in most distros? If that matters,
*shrug*.


BR,
Jani.