Urgent messages and 'Next message' control

Urgent messages and 'Next message' control

[Robin Norwood]

Hi!

I've got a couple of requests that are somewhat related, at least in my
mind.

I use gnus v5.10.6 for e-mail, not so much a news reader.  When I check
my mail, I tend to treat the mail kind of as a 'work flow' - there are
certain messages that I want to read pretty much as soon as they come
in, and either act upon or defer until later.  I've got the mail that I
want to read this way separated from the rest of my mail with procmail,
into various groups 'inbox', some mailing lists that I want to keep on
top of throughout the day.  These are all under a 'primary' topic in the
*Group* buffer.  Stuff that I need to read less frequently is under
'secondary', and so on.

If there is a message I don't want to read or 'take care of'
immediately, I mark it as 'u'rgent, and try to get back to it later.

This works ok, but if I could figure out how to do three things, I would
be a lot happier:

1) Enter a group and go to first 'urgent or new' message.  Currently
   entering a group with space or enter takes me to the first new
   message, and skips over the urgent ones.

2) Don't skip 'urgent' messages.  'n'ext cycles through the unread
   messages.  'N'ext hits 'urgent' messages, but it doesn't seem to
   behave correctly going between groups like 'n'ext does.  In fact,
   even though the docs simply say 'N' is for 'next message', I can't
   really figure out what it is doing at all.  Maybe it is ignoring
   threading or something.

I could probably work around these two problems above my marking the
messages I want to keep as 'unread', but I would like to keep the 'read
but urgent' messages in a different category from 'unread' messages.
Maybe sometimes I really *do* want to skip over the 'urgent' ones and go
to the 'unread' ones.

3) Don't cross 'topic' boundaries when looking for the next message.  It
   is really nice that 'n'ext finds the next new message in the next
   group on my list, but I would like it (or another key) to stop
   getting new messages when it hits a new topic.  This would ideally be
   the same key that takes me to the 'next new or urgent' message.
   Sometimes I may want the normal behavior, so this magic key would
   ideally be different from 'n'ext.

So what I want to get is a process where I am in the *Group* buffer,
and:

o 'g'et new mail.
o 'enter' my inbox (which is under my 'primary' topic).
o land on the first 'unread or urgent' message.
o go to the 'n'ext 'unread or urgent' message in any group under my
  'primary' topic.
o Continue until I have read all of the 'unread or urgent' messages in
  any group under the 'primary' topic, and then drop back to the
  *Groups* buffer.

Am I the only one who wants to handle his mail in this way?  Is some or
all of what I want possible?

Thanks,

-RN

-- 
Robin Norwood
Red Hat, Inc.

"The Sage does nothing, yet nothing remains undone."
-Lao Tzu, Te Tao Ching