Re: Terminology

[Simon Josefsson <jas@extundo.com>]

Jonas Steverud <tvrud@bredband.net> writes:

> Dan Christensen <jdc@uwo.ca> writes:
>
> [...]
>> The last two lines seem to contradict the first line, so maybe there
>> is no strict definition of what "unread" means.
>
> Seems like it is time IMHO for some spring cleaning...?
>
> It seems like the big problem is the terms "read" and "unread" that is
> the problem.
>
> Suggested new terms/definitions:
>  Visited: A article that the user has seen before; read, ticked,
>           dormant, marked as expireable, ... (Other criteria?)

I'm not sure we need to introduce more terms...  (But we could keep
the term "visited" around for when we need a new class of read marks.)

>  Read: An article that has been marked as killed, ancient, read in the
>        naïve sense; i.e. actually *read*, ... I.e. not ticked etc.

There is a Gnus mark called "read".  If you tick an active article, it
will become read automatically.  Same for if you mark an article as
expired, etc.

>  Unvisted or Unread: Replaces Unseen which I find confusing - an
>                      article that is killed and yanked from the
>                      summary buffer is in my view unseen.

"Unread" is not a proper Gnus mark.  It might help understanding if
you think of "unread" as an implicit mark, i.e. one that holds if
nothing else holds.  So an article can't be marked both expired and
unread, as unread isn't a mark.  "unread" is just an absence of marks.
Of course, the exception to that rule is the "unseen" mark.

>  Unseen: (?) Articles that are unvisited but not shown in the summary
>          buffer, usually expunged articles due to scoring.

"unseen" is another Gnus mark, it is maintained by Gnus internally and
you can't set/clear it.  Its purpose is to let you know which messages
you have never seen before.  This is not the same as "unread", as you
can M-u an article to make it "unread" (but not "unseen").  "Unread"
articles may be "seen", but "unseen" articles cannot be "read".

IIRC, that is.