I’m having a tough time with the various views in DTP. The problem is that the views which do the best job of displaying information in ways I can use it best invariably include a preview pane. This means anytime I click on an item, it is previewed and then immediately marked a read. So a common scenario might be that I have a 30-page report named “mm_dd_yyyy_Islam_Saudi.pdf” When I click on the item to see the title (perhaps “Islam in Saudi Arabia”), the file is immediately marked as “read.” Of course, it’s NOT read, since I’ve only looked at 1/2 of the first page and still have 29.5 pages to go. This leads me to conslude that either (1) “read” does not mean “I read it” but means “I clicked on it with preview enabled,” or (2) the “read” flag is not functioning as intended. I’m getting tired of pressing command+k every time I view a PDF. It’s reached the point where there’s a kind of “fear” of clicking on a PDF if preview is enabled because I really don’t want something marked as “read” that isn’t. I’ve not found a “do not mark viewed as read” checkbox, so it’s becoming frustrating. Any ideas?
Read means read like in Mail.
Of course, programs like Outlook have an option to set the “read” flag after xx seconds, but I’ll give a scenario where the “read” tag in DTP is problematic: selecting a range of files. Since I have no way of selecting, say, 10 files without first clicking on one, I have to either be in a non-preview view, or press command+k, if I want to avoid the "read’ flag. (Also worth noting that only the first file is marked read, so a difference state has been created for one file that is different from the other 9. Not a good thing.) Just strikes me as more work than is needed.
So it makes assumptions? Perhaps if the tag was “viewed,” I could understand the action. As it is, “read” is a poor choice of words, especially since a data aggregator of this kind is very much designed for data that is to be “read.” If a program cannot anticipate what I am doing with my eyes, it should not decide for me. But to be fair, it CAN tell what I’m doing with my eyes in a sense. Papers 2 is an excellent case, where items have a “partially read” type flag that engages once a PDF is scrolled. A full “read” is a manual action, or after one gets to the end o the document. (For what it’s worth, I also dislike this behavior in Mail, so I’m not just picking on DTP.)
More work than should be necessary. Perhaps I’ll just assume “read” means “unread” and mark “read” items with a tag or color, so I know “read” items that are colored “green” are “read.” 
Silly imagination, expecting “read” to mean “read.” 
Perhaps the devs will at least give the option to disable this behavior in a future release. Hope springs eternal, eh?