Re: How do I come back from viewing the message to index?
On Thu, Aug 10, 2006 at 07:05:54PM -0400, Derek Martin wrote:
> On Thu, Aug 10, 2006 at 05:43:37PM +0200, Alain Bench wrote:
> > > but it is NOT intuitive, and should not be the default behavior, IMO.
> >
> > Here is the limit: Your model is valid, but you can't impose it with
> > its constraints and consequences to other people.
>
> Well, you're right in that there is a subjective intuitiveness for
> each individual user. Everyone thinks their own way, so what you say
> is true.
>
> But, when designing an interface (computer program or other), there is
> also an OBJECTIVE idea of what is intuitive.
[snip]
Clearly you have to choose what is "most" intuitive when designing an
interface. However, it's still legitimate to argue about what people
find intuitive: by definition, people's opinions (and therefore their
opinions about what is intuitive) are subjective whereas only reality is
objective.
Your exposition about alternatives was helpful and interesting.
However, I think where it leaves us is:
-- There should be a way to quit mutt in one step from any screen
-- Defining "quit" behaviour in a modal program is complicated.
In particular, my personal view is that mutt deliberately obscures
whether you are using the pager ("modal" behaviour) or a separate
program ("non-modal" behaviour) as this is irrelevant to most users, who
see these two different things as one functional behaviour ("viewing a
message"). Hence I think you can defensibly argue - in terms of user
requirements, rather than program architecture - that "q" should leave
the user in the same position in both cases: namely, back at the index.
So the practical solution (which is backwards compatible) is to make
sure that you can define a key binding which quits in one step from any
screen. Then I don't care what you assign this to in the default case,
as long as it isn't "q".
J