Subject: Sorting by date seems not to work (ver 3.92)

From: Ole Nielsen <[email-masked]>
Date: 24 Jun 1996 22:06:27 GMT

When I ask pine to sort my files by date ($ D)
I get something like the following

..
+ A  52 Jun  4 Inge-M.Nielsen@536  (1,131) jeg ringede kl. 1. dansk tid         
+ A  53 Jun  3 Inge-M.Nielsen@536  (1,400) Natten ml. soendag og mandag         
+ A  54 Jun  6 Inge-M.Nielsen@536  (2,063) fornyelse af visa/dankort 2          
     55 Jun  6 Inge-M.Nielsen@536  (1,171) Vedr.: 'Hilsen fra Connecticut' 3    
     56 Jan 25 Ole M. Nielsen        (988) Hejsa                                
     57 Jan 26 Ole M. Nielsen      (1,165) Re: Tak for hilsen      
..

Am I doing something wrong?
In any case it is very annoying.

-- 
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Ole Moller Nielsen                  | Email: [email-masked]
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Work: 251 Mercer street             | Phone: (212) 998 3254 
      New York, NY 10012            | Fax:   (212) 995 4121
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From: Richard Gering <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 25 Jun 1996 23:24:38 +0100 (WET)

> In any case it is very annoying.

Could you compare the date formats from the messages send by Inge with
those send by you?  Most likely the message from Inge have an unknown
timezone or contain other information that cannot be parsed.

There is room for improvement in the code that does the date handling, but
it is already quite complex.  Currently, a date having a symbolic time
zone of over 3 characters causes that date to be ignored by the parser.

Apparently some timezones, as set by certain operating systems (within
Europe?), have been "upgraded" to 6 character symbolic names. I know that
on my SCO OpenServer 5 system the default timezone is now set to METDST,
which also throws my date sorting out the window. It looks like a problem
that could be fixed in a future release of Pine. 

Hope this information helps (if just a little).

Regards,

- Richard.

+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Richard Gering ([email-masked]) | Let me make one thing perfectly clear:  |
| CI International B.V. Netherlands | I never explain anything! (Mary Poppins)| 
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+

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From: Ole Moller Nielsen <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 25 Jun 1996 19:05:14 -0400 (EDT)

Thanks for your reply -
indeed their are differences in the headers:

  Date: 6  Jun 96 13:50 GMT
  From: [email-masked]
  To: [email-masked]
  Subject: Vedr.: 'Hilsen fra Connecticut' 3

  Date: Thu, 25 Jan 1996 19:50:53 +0100 (MET)
  From: "Ole M. Nielsen" <[email-masked]>
  To: "Inge M. Nielsen" <"Inge M..Nielsen"@53677251.da.diatel.dk>
  Subject: Hejsa

I have also now verified your inormation that mails with TZ = METDST are
treated differently.

BUT -
How can pine display the correct date in the date field of the index
regardless of these messy headers ?

It seems to me that somewhere in the pine-code there is a working
algorithm for extracting the date even though the headers are different.
Maybe the sorting could be done based on this information instead of doing
the parsing all over.

This is at least how it looks from a users point of view.

Best regards
Ole Moller Nielsen

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From: Tom I Helbekkmo <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 29 Jun 1996 12:26:46 GMT

[Ole Moller Nielsen]

>   Subject: Vedr.: 'Hilsen fra Connecticut' 3

You should report to Inge M Nielsen and/or his system operators that
the software he's using to send mail generates bogus Date: headers.

-tih
-- 
Tom Ivar Helbekkmo
[email-masked]