Subject: Re: TAB does not detect new messages in incoming folders

From: "Pierre Rocher" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 17 Jan 2002 05:50:51 +0000

I think implementing this new feature "[X] tab-skips-incoming-unread" is the 
answer to accommodate different users and keep pine's consistency.  Because 
of the default aggregate of "U" and "N" into "N", and the current definition 
of "tab-visits-next-new-message-only", it make sense to set the default to 
TAB checks unread, and can optionally enabled to check for new only.  It 
will be something like:

                   FEATURE: tab-skips-incoming-unread

This feature affects Pine's behavior when using the TAB key to detect new 
messages in the incoming mail folder collection. Pine's usual behavior is to 
notify if any message in an incoming folder has the new or unread status.

Setting this feature causes Pine to notify of new messages only if a message 
in an incoming folder has the new status.  Messages that have the unread 
status will not be reported.  A message gets the new status if it arrived 
since the mail folder was last closed.

Notice that Pine typically represents both the new status and the unread 
status with the "N" flag, unless the IMAPSTATUS token is used where unread 
status is represented by the "U" flag instead.

<End of help on this topic>

This is the current description of the existing feature:

                   FEATURE: tab-visits-next-new-message-only

This feature affects Pine's behavior when using the TAB key to move from one 
message to the next. Pine's usual behavior is to select the next unread 
message or message flagged as "Important".

Setting this feature causes Pine to skip the messages flagged as important, 
and select unread messages exclusively. Tab behavior when there are no new 
messages left to select remains unchanged.

<End of help on this topic>

best regards,
P.Rocher

>From: Eduardo Chappa <[email-masked]>
>To: Pierre Rocher <[email-masked]>
>CC: Pine Discussion Forum <[email-masked]>
>Subject: Re: TAB does not detect new messages in incoming folders
>Date: Sat, 12 Jan 2002 11:25:10 -0800 (PST)
>
>*** Pierre Rocher ([email-masked]) wrote in the pine-info list today:
>
>:) I have to disagree.  Here are the reasons:
>:)
>:) 1. Pine traditionally collapses UNSEEN and NEW messages into one
>:) catagory represented by the "N" flag (unless the non-default IMAPSTATUS
>:) is used). Treating them differently while they both get status "N"
>:) violates the consistency.
>
>It may have been a design decision. The first versions of Pine were not
>designed to be used for power users, so probably adding a "U" to the index
>would have been confusing at the time.
>
>I believe there's a clear distinction between messages that are *new*
>(those that arrive to your mailbox and when you open it you say "oh!, I
>got a new mail from XYZ") and those that are *old* (those that arrived in
>an earlier session and you said at that time "I'll read this message later
>- or in another session", or maybe said "ok, I read this message, but I'll
>keep it here until next time I open this folder, so I'll flag it as new so
>that it is not saved automatically").
>
>The real problem is if Pine should "lie" to you and tell you that
>something is new when it is not. Most people are already accostumed to
>seeing the "N" flag for messages that are not really new, but that are
>old. The advantage of IMAPSTATUS over STATUS is that you can see which
>messages are really new, as opposed to those that are old.
>
>Personally, I like the fact that TAB only finds new messages, because if a
>folder is skipped by TAB, it means to me that no new messages have arrived
>to that folder since the last time I opened it, which saves me the time of
>opening the folder, to only see messages that I haven't read for whatever
>reason or that I read and did not delete.
>
>I am not saying that there should not be a key that finds "new" and
>"unseen" messages, but I'd rather have TAB only find those that are really
>"new".
>
>--
>Eduardo
>http://www.math.washington.edu/~chappa/pine/
>
>P.S. This is a minor issue, do you know if hotmail will ever include the
>"in-reply-to" header to messages that are replies to messages in their
>INBOX?
>

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---

From: Eduardo Chappa <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 16 Jan 2002 22:45:06 -0800 (PST)

*** Pierre Rocher ([email-masked]) wrote on Jan 17, 2002:

:) I think implementing this new feature "[X] tab-skips-incoming-unread"
:) is the answer to accommodate different users and keep pine's
:) consistency.

The problem is what you get consistency with, either your idea of how TAB
should work (that is to say, TAB should find "Recent" or "Unseen"
messages) or the real way that TAB works (which only finds "Recent"
messages). Tab was not designed to look for unseen messages, so setting
the default of a feature to reverse this behavior does not do any good
for most of Pine users that use TAB in the above mentioned way.

I do agree that the solution is to make it configurable, and it is not
difficult to do so, but disagree that the default should be to look for
unseen messages (which takes more resources to find).