too many useless warnings

[Sam Kuper]

On Wed, Jul 27, 2022 at 05:12:51PM +0100, Darac Marjal wrote:
> On 27/07/2022 13:08, Fourhundred Thecat wrote:
>> Hello,
>> 
>> when I press key that is not bound, I get following warning in the
>> lower left corner:
>> 
>>   Key is not bound.  Press '?' for help.
>> 
>> this is actually a helpful warning/notification that tells me what is
>> going on. Without it, I would be left wondering why my action is not
>> being executed.
>> 
>> However, when I press PageDown repeatedly, and land at the end of the
>> page, I get a warning:
>> 
>>   You are on the last page.
>> 
>> In my opinion, this is absolutely useless and superfluous warning.
>> Unlike the first case, this is just bombarding me with useless
>> information. I can see the key is working all right, I have just
>> pressed it one too many times.
> 
> How do you _know_ the key is working, though? Let's say you're paging
> down a mailbox and you press PgDn three times. On two of those
> presses, the screen updates within milliseconds, showing you more
> records. On the third press, nothing happens. So, what's going on?
> 
>  * Did you not press hard enough on the key?
>  * Did you miscount the number of times you pressed the key?
>  * Has your SSH connection suddenly frozen?
>  * Is the IMAP server thrashing and it's still trying to read the
>    headers for those next messages?
>  * Or, have you just reached the end of the list and there are no more
>    messages?
> 
> I'd argue that some feedback is better than none. Unless you've
> configured your index with some sort of scrollbar (or an indication
> that the cursor is on page X of Y) then I don't see how you can tell
> the difference between "mutt hasn't responded to the PgDn key yet" vs
> "mutt has done what you asked, but there was nothing to do".

This.

Mutt is doing the right thing here.  Little bits of quiet feedback like
this are more helpful than not.

Fourhundred: bear in mind that some people use Mutt over potentially
unstable/laggy SSH connections, where such feedback is especially
important.

-- 
A: When it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
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