colour Re: [Alpine-info] Two Unresolved Issues: ...

[Benjamin R. Haskell]

On Thu, 22 Sep 2011, Lucio Chiappetti wrote:


> On Wed, 21 Sep 2011, Benjamin R. Haskell wrote:

>

>> Using alpine, I never enabled colors for more than a minute, though, 

>> as I find them visually distracting.

>

> Matter of taste and convenience. I felt like that for a long time, and 

> I'm still using a monochrome pine in the account I use to read Usenet. 

> But in my normal account it is quite a long time I set up a colour 

> arrangement which I like:


Responses to specifics inlined.  But first an overview of how I use 
Alpine:

When I'm at home I use Alpine very infrequently for reading mail, but I 
use it for the majority of my mail composition.  I do most of my 
browsing and sorting through Gmail's web interface (Apps for Domains).

The reasons I still use it even though I don't use it for most of my 
reading:

1. When wading through the ocean of crap that is my Spam folder, I can 
sort by sender.

2. I can specify the From: address when composing mail.

3. I can use an external editor for composing.  (I use Vim, in which 
I've got a whole lot of colorization.)


With Gmail, I find myself using the tagging system... a looot.  Which 
doesn't play well with the fact that it's poorly translated to IMAP 
(tags are really Keywords, but Gmail represents tags as folders).  So, 
that makes using IMAP for browsing less pleasant.

At work, without Gmail, I've stuck with my "everything in INBOX" mode of 
operation.  (currently 21,000+ messages for the past two years.)  I use 
the search functions (;TS), (;TP), (etc.) allll the time.  I'm pretty 
quick at (;F)iltering.  I generally use tHreaded sort, and don't have to 
often deal with excessively long threads but when I do, I generally fold 
({) them to get them out of the way.

I use my Index Format to solve a lot of the things you seem to do with 
colors, so I'll mention it up front:

KEYINIT(1) FULLSTATUS MSGNO SHORTDATEISO TIME24 SUBJECT FROMORTO TO(12) SIZE



> - on all screens

>  top line "in evidence" (white on blue)


I find "reverse" to be fine.  No need for color.



>  bulk with default color (coral on black)


With KEYINIT(1), bulk is indicated with a 'B' in the first column.



>  bottom lines with key reminder in dim magenta


I have the keymenu disabled.



> - on (most) folder index screens

>

>  default colour for messages to me

>  different colour for messages from me


FROMORTO in my index format.  Then messages that are From me have a 
conspicuous 'To:' right after the Subject.



>  green for NEW messages


Fourth char of FULLSTATUS is 'N'.



>  red for messages in inbox saved to other folder but still to be answered


Don't use folders much.  I have a Todo keyword for this, or '*' for 
Important, if it's warranted.



>  cyan for important messages


'*' as the first char of FULLSTATUS.



>  yellow on blue for messages marked by particular keyword


This was actually the thing that bugged me most about the colors.  I'd 
much prefer that the colors apply to the entire index line.  I really 
like the use of horizontal space that my Index Format provides (most of 
the subject line usually visible), but the fact that only things in the 
first 7 or 10(?) characters of my line is what I found most distracting, 
and makes it seem half-assed.



>  (the same colour arrangement may be used with slightly different

>  meaning in particular folders)

>

> - in the message screen

>

>  default colour for body

>  but different colours for indented replies

>  signature in white


N/A for my home use of Alpine.  At work, I get by without message 
coloring because everyone top-posts, rather than inline-responses (which 
I prefer for technical work).



>  default colour for most header kwds but

>  from and subject are brighter (white yellow)

>  to and cc are different (green and dimmer green)

>  message id is dark (blue)


I don't normally enable full header mode, so I find the headers pretty 
quick to parse.



> (and actually I spent a bit of time when I insalled webalpine to make 

> it "traditional" view look like the above)


(Still amazed that you got webalpine working and use it.  Nice writeups, BTW.)



> I like the extreme flexibility of .pinerc in configuring things like 

> this to one's taste.


Absolutely.  I also like the fact that I've not had to hand-edit .pinerc 
in years.  Especially because I use a remote-pinerc, so I share it 
between multiple servers (or create a similar one when necessary, but 
started from the same base).

-- 
Best,
Ben