[Pan-users] Re: 0.129 - a few minor issues

[Duncan]

Jim Henderson <address@hidden> posted
address@hidden, excerpted below, on  Fri, 11 May 2007 15:54:22
+0000:

> I have it set to pull new headers at startup, otherwise just when I hit
> Shift+A (still getting used to that instead of CTRL+SHIFT +U).

You do realize that you can set your own shortcuts, right?  If you have 
it toggled on in your gtkrc (there's mention of the specific setting in 
the archives, I've forgotten it), you can edit the shortcuts directly in 
pan, by hovering your mouse over the appropriate menu entry, and hitting 
the shortcut you wish to use for it.

Alternatively, with pan closed, you can directly edit the accels.txt 
file, in pan's configuration dir.  Note that this file is simply an 
unordered accels dump, updated each time pan is closed.  Thus, you'll 
either need to use search to find the function you wish to change (best 
if changing only one or two items), or reorder it yourself, then save the 
reordering (and any comments you wish to add) to another file so it won't 
get overwritten, copying it over to the accels file any time you make 
changes.  This is what I've done, as I've changed and added quite a lot 
of accels, creating my own scheme.  

With my scheme, -t hotkeys are for threads, -g for groups, -a for 
articles, -h for headers, etc.  Thus, "a" is next article, alt is alt-
function, so alt-a is next unread article, shift reverses, so shift-a is 
the previous article, shift-alt-a is the parent article, ctrl-a selects 
the article body, ctrl-alt-a selects all articles, shift-ctrl-alt-a 
reverses that so deselects all articles, etc.

Where possible, -t parallels -a only for threads.  Thus, where a is next 
article, t is next thread, where alt-a is next unread article, alt-t is 
next unread thread, where shift-a is previous article, shift-t is 
previous thread.  Some thread ops don't directly parallel article ops, 
but ctrl-t adds threads to selection, shift-ctrl-t adds subthreads, and 
ctrl-alt-t toggles threading.

For groups, as you might expect from the trend above, g is next group, 
alt-g is next unread group.

For headers, h toggles view all headers, ctrl-h gets headers in 
subscribed groups, ctrl-alt-h gets headers in selected groups.

All three modifiers, ctrl-alt-shift-letter, opens the appropriate 
dialog.  cas-g opens the group prefs dialog, cas-t the task-manager, cas-
l the event log, cas-n the news server dialog, cas-p the posting 
profiles, etc.  Two exceptions are ctrl-p opens the general pan 
preferences dialog (I use ctrl-p for preferences nearly universally here, 
it's often print, but I don't print very often, and prefer not having it 
hotkeyed, and I open preferences often enough that ctrl-p as a universal 
hotkey for that works well), and cas-a, which as already mentioned 
deselects all articles.

As you can see, that's a reasonably consistent and I think well thought 
out scheme, but it differs substantially from the pan default.  Thus, it 
was worth rearranging the scrambled functions in accels.txt and saving 
off the reordered file so I could make changes as necessary without 
having to go searching for the menu item I wanted to change.  I have them 
ordered as are the pan menus.  Additionally, at the bottom, I've included 
a little table with the letters running down the side, and the modifier 
keys across the top, so I can track which accels I've used and which ones 
are still free, if I want to change anything further.

Some time ago, after a similar discussion, I was asked if I could post my 
ordered accels.txt file and did so.  If you'd like, I could post it 
again.  Even if you don't want to use the hotkey scheme I've setup, the 
reordering I did should save you quite some time, a good half hour 
anyway, I'd guess.  Again, don't forget to save it as something else, 
then copy it over pan's accels.txt file to change pan's settings, as pan /
will/ rescramble its own file every time it exits and saves it.

BTW/FWIW, the pan shortcut for followup is so embedded in my "muscle 
memory" that I have reassigned the kmail hotkeys as well, so instead of r 
for reply, it's f to followup (f is by default forward). So yes, I know 
how hard adjusting to a new set of shortcuts can be!  =8^(

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman