Quoth Jani Nikula on Jan 31 at  3:12 pm:
> On Thu, 26 Jan 2012 23:58:51 +0200, Jani Nikula <jani@nikula.org> wrote:
> > On Thu, 26 Jan 2012 14:41:46 -0500, Austin Clements <amdragon@MIT.EDU> wrote:
> > > Quoth Jani Nikula on Jan 26 at  9:21 pm:
> > > > +				       ("flagged" :foreground "red"))
> > > 
> > > Red is pretty universally used to indicate danger or a serious
> > > condition, while "flagged" is simply supposed to draw attention.  I
> > > would say blue as a neutral and distinct indicator, but it also has
> > > poor visibility (I used to use blue, but found that when scanning my
> > > mail, I would habitually skip over flagged messages because they were
> > > dark, which was the opposite of what I wanted).  Personally I've
> > > settled on yellow; it's visually distinct enough to be easily
> > > noticeable and bright enough that I don't skip over it, though it
> > > obviously wouldn't work on a light background.
> > 
> > Can be yellow, I don't really care that much. But isn't a light
> > background the default for emacs in most distros? If that matters,
> > *shrug*.
> 
> Ugh, yellow is absolutely horrible on a white background... that would
> certainly draw people to figure out how to change the settings. Now
> shall I send v2 with bold for unread and yellow for flagged, or can this
> go in as it is?

Sorry, I really meant to propose blue for flagged.  The thing about
yellow was meant more as an aside.  Blue is reasonably visible on both
light and dark backgrounds.  It should draw people into customizing
it, while still being a reasonable default.