I forgot a couple of points... 2016-07-24 15:41 Manuel A. Fernandez Montecelo:
One of the problems that I found with your suggestions is that if people don't know about the feature and press "f" expecting that everything is forgotten as before, and only one package or a small section is forgotten, they might think that forgetting-new is not working at all, or not working properly, or at least it will be puzzling for a while until they learn that it's a "new feature" and how to use it.
Or alternatively, if the screen is updated in every time that a package is forgotten, then the view would be reloaded and the whole tree would be collapsed (as it happens in other situations where the package states change). So it would be very cumbersome / not really useful if one wanted to unmark package as new one by one (which is presumably the use-case for forgetting-new packages individually or by non-top-level subtrees), or it would need a lot of modifications in aptitude and perhaps the widget library to update packages and view while keeping the cursor in the same place and the subtrees open ("in the same state"), effort which at this point I am not able to commit.
Added bonus is that at least it needs an extra key stroke to have the old behaviour clear all new ("f + Enter"), so it's likely to trigger by mistake than before (which happens from time to time, and a case for which your suggestions in that bug report don't improve when people press the key by mistake).
... it's _less_ likely to trigger by mistake ... Cheers. -- Manuel A. Fernandez Montecelo <manuel.montez...@gmail.com>