On Tue, Sep 21, 2021 at 11:24:56AM +1000, raf wrote:
On Sat, Sep 18, 2021 at 07:28:14PM -0700, "Kevin J. McCarthy" <ke...@8t8.us> wrote:Do any old timers have an opinion on this?I guess the difference is whether you think that a "selection" can only contain a single item and so the purpose of the selection should be performed immediately (so display-message makes sense), or whether a selection can contain multiple items and so the purpose of the selection might need to be delayed until the selection process is complete (so tag-entry makes sense).
Thanks raf, I certainly can't say your opinion is due to a lack of experience with Mutt! However, just to be clear to everyone, my opposition to the "tag" interpretation is because of Mutt's current usage of <select-entry>.
Menus that allow both single and multiple selection (e.g. alias list, file browser, query menu) use tagging for multiple selection and <select-entry> for single selection. Menus that allow single selection (e.g. background-edit list, key selection, postponed list) respond to <select-entry> by immediately using/processing the entry (and usually, though not always, exiting the menu afterwards).
I understand that in general the term "selection" can be interpreted either way. But consistent usage within Mutt is important to me, and I think is a good design principle.
The default bindings for <select-entry> are overshadowed by the default bindings for <display-message> in the index. But for those who re-bind it, I don't think there's a good reason to drastically change its behavior in the index, compared to everywhere else in Mutt. As you noted, the way to operate on or select multiple entries in Mutt is already well established: via tagging.
Now, there *is* one case where the index is used as a selection menu: attaching messages. Currently that interface forces selection (either one or multiple message) via tagging. One could make an argument <select-entry> could be used in that case for single selection and immediately returning. But it would entail some technical changes to an already complicated menu, as well as requiring a *new* keybinding in the index. Since that operation isn't all that common I don't know that it would be worth it, but I'd be open for that discussion (on mutt-dev).
-- Kevin J. McCarthy GPG Fingerprint: 8975 A9B3 3AA3 7910 385C 5308 ADEF 7684 8031 6BDA
signature.asc
Description: PGP signature
