I’d like to suggest that all As …-prefixed commands under the Data > Mark submenu be changed to toggle commands, how Show/Hide State currently is. Main advantage is that is a single keyboard shortcut can be assigned/used for each toggle instead of two. For example, compare the DT submenu:
… with Mail’s Message > Mark submenu:
To me Mail’s is cleaner and more compact, with the current setting easily implied instead of having checkmarked versions the commands indicating it. Other than Data > Label, I think this is the only DT submenu with checkmarks so it looks out of place.
Thanks for writing the scripts though I must confess to not using them (and not for reasons of distrust or anything like that).
Since posting I’ve noticed As Checked or As Unchecked only display a checkmark when Show State is active, and it activates when either of those states is selected. Especially if As Checked has been selected it seems confusing that Hide State makes the checkmark disappear without actually changing the state and reappear again if Show State is active. To me no checkmarks implies an As Unchecked state, which isn’t necessarily the case.
Relating that to my suggestion, if As Checked/Unchecked was a single toggle command then its current state could always be determined regardless of Show/Hide State and be another benefit of reducing the Data > Mark submenu from 7 to 4 items.
It can be a multi-step process with mixed selections and DT’s Mark menu, too, if I’m not misunderstanding. You haven’t convinced me why I wouldn’t prefer the toggle commands/shortcuts I’ve suggested.
You can always select the desired result immediately. Hiding/showing the state is usually not necessary as checked/unchecked automatically show the state if necessary.
I can do that with a toggle command when a single item is selected. Maybe I don’t know what you meant by mixed selections. I thought you meant multiple items selected, where it’s not necessarily possible to select desired results for all items with one command (regardless of the menu type).
The issue is that an item’s state can’t be determined with Hide State active in the DT Mark submenu. There’s no way to know if As Checked had been previously run before Hide State. But a toggle command would display As Unchecked, indicating that the item is currently checked independently of Show/Hide State status.
Using Mail’s Message > Mark submenu as an example of implied status indication, without using explicit checkmarks, shows me this message is Read and Unflagged:
And this one’s Unread and Flagged:
(The context menu only lists the top three commands, sans shortcuts)
I’m still failing to see advantages to DT’s Mark submenu, aside from being more explicit for people who prefer that. The main disadvantage, and motivation for my suggestion, is its lack of convenient toggle shortcuts like in Mail and other apps.
Anyone else out there have feedback about this? Thanks.
Multiple selected items, some of them checked/read/flagged, some of them not. Mail’s menu offers one option although one might look for the other one (at least I’ve experienced this quite often).
Ahh, I finally see what you mean… d’oh! With multiple items selected you only have the choice of going in one “direction” with toggle commands like in Mail’s menu, but with DT’s you can go either direction.
That doesn’t bother me in Mail because I know when there are mixed settings with multiple items selected that if there’s one Read or Flagged message in the selection the commands will be As Read and As Flagged. I’m not going to make a selection with mostly unflagged messages if my intention is to unflag the remainder. And if I do happen to toggle the wrong direction it’s efficient to retype the shortcut without repositioning my fingers. Or, sometimes I might intentionally go the wrong direction knowing that I’ll retype the shortcut.
For me two occasionally uses of the same shortcut is quicker and less awkward than remembering to use a different shortcut to achieve the same result. I prefer using two shortcuts to toggle four (Un)Flagged/(Un)Read states (in Mail) to having four unique shortcuts (in DT).
If you’re using the mouse and therefore the (contextual) menu, then the current approach is better. But if you’re using shortcuts, then Apple Mail’s approach is superior.
Similar to Copy/Cut/Paste commands, these Mark submenu commands seem generally more effective being keyboard-centric than mouse-centric. Since using the mouse+menus for them would usually seem inferior I wouldn’t care if they were optimized for shortcut usage.
I look forward to seeing the next beta’s revision. Thanks!
