Ideas for making notmuch-hello easier to navigate

[Carl Worth]

On Fri, 23 Apr 2010 13:13:01 -0700, Carl Worth <cworth at cworth.org> wrote:
> That's the feedback I have from a very quick, first look. I'm sure I'll
> have more later.

In order to give notmuch-hello some good testing, I switched over to
using it exclusively instead of notmuch-folder. The biggest frustration
I'm having is easily picking the desired saved search with only the
keyboard, (I tend to be the kind of person that prefers the keyboard
over any mouse/trackpad/pointer-stick-thingy).

From the initial screen, (with point at the upper-left corner), it takes
several keypresses of TAB before I get to the first saved search. It
might be even more natural to just use C-n to get to the line of
interest, but then I end up in the first column where the saved search
isn't active for RET.

Here are a few different ideas to simplify things:

  * Provide a target column from the beginning so that C-n moves point
    to an active location.

  * Consider a single-column layout for saved searches so that C-n is
    sufficient for selecting one.

  * Consider moving the name of the saved search to before the count so
    that the initial column is active. Otherwise considering making a
    larger active target, (name and count, maybe more). With a
    single-column layout the whole row could be active.

  * Consider moving saved searches to above the big search bar. This way
    the become the primary thing to access, which is what I want at
    least. Then recent searches could stay just below the search bar,
    which also makes sense. And for a new user, the big search bar would
    be at the top which gives a good introduction to the system.

  * Provide keypbindings for "next (and previous) saved search" which
    would move point to the next or previous saved-search name in the
    buffer.

  * Provide a keypress for easily typing a name of a saved search. I
    think I'd like this to work like i-search, but would only match
    saved-search names, and a single press of RET would both terminate
    the isearch and activate the saved search.

Any/all of those would help for selecting a single group. Then the other
feature that I would find essential, (and that notmuch-folder had):

  * Make it so that when quitting from a search and returning to
    notmuch-hello, that point is at the same position it was before, (so
    that "q" followed by "RET" returns the the same search view). This
    would make it so that selecting the next search of interest would be
    much easier than now.

Just throwing those ideas out in case anyone wants to try implementing
some and experimenting. I'm busy enough merging code now that I don't
have time to write any of the above yet, but I hope to have time to
start coding again soon.

-Carl
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://notmuchmail.org/pipermail/notmuch/attachments/20100424/5c02c032/attachment.pgp>