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

From: "Pierre Rocher" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 12 Jan 2002 02:41:15 +0000

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.

2. When people cannot read all NEW email during each folder open session, it 
is crucial to allow people to treat the UNSEEN messages as NEW ones. This is 
in fact one of the reasons I choose pine over some other clients which 
forces read flag or moves the msgs away from inbox upon session exit. eg. I 
frequently dial up to read interesting/urgent messages only, leaving the 
uninteresting ones to be read when I go to the lab.  While pine can tell me 
if there are NEW messages in a folder, I have to open the folder's index 
view to determine if any is interesting (by sender or subject).  I then read 
the interesting ones, leaving others unread, and close the folder and 
eventually the pine session.  Back in the lab, those non-NEW unread (aka 
UNSEEN ones) have the same meaning as new messages to me.

3. The intention of TAB is to check for NEW messages in the incoming folder 
collection. Let's think for a moment what is important to a person reading 
email:
- the ability to tell apart a message that comes in after I opened the 
folder, and a message that came in before I opened the folder.
- the ability to tell apart a message that has not been read, and a message 
that has been read (at least skim/scan its contents).
Notice filtering to an incoming folder, one should treat such a folder as an 
inbox and not a folder to store messages. If you don't even bother if a 
message is briefly read or not, you can filter to a non-incoming folder.  
This seems to introduce the need of treating UNSEEN messages different 
between incoming folders and non-incomping folders, but fortunately, TAB 
mail checking has no notion for non-incoming folders.

4. To wrap up, if you think one wants to tell if messages have come in since 
the folder's last close (ie. TAB checks SA_RECENT only and not SA_UNSEEN), 
you are making the assumption that the person has skimmed thru all messages 
in that folder last time before closing it.  In mordern days, most people 
get much more messages than those that are really destined to them or 
concern them, because of group aliases, news, junk mail, etc. A good portion 
of the new messages goes directly into the trash, and it's hard to finish 
the messages before closing the session. In the old days, one checks the 
mail twice a day and would be happy if gets copule of new messages.

Remeber those days when pine resisted filters, because servers or external 
programs are better at the job? IMAP changed that by defining the norm of 
the public checks their mail from different domains, unix, pc, etc. Inbox 
and active files stay on the server, while archives (or more often over 
quota data) are kept on your own local host. Filtering email before email 
client accesses them will put the filtered messages onto a relatively-local 
file system which is against the IMAP idea, or is there any sysadmin wants 
everyone to run programs on the mail server so that the filtered messages 
are still on the server? Time has changed, and so should our concept on how 
things are done.

Best regards,
P.Rocher

PS. Pine seems to use the term "recent" in different ways. The help doc says 
a message with the "R" flag means recent message, which is one that is "new 
to the folder and has been viewed." (see IMAPSTATUS "R") The flag SA_RECENT 
in the source is explained as "recent messages" which doesn't tell much, but 
obviously meaning "new" and/xor "unread" messages when examining closed 
folder for SA_RECENT messages. So one is viewed, one is not. I attribute 
this as the different meaning of "recent" between pine's interface to imap 
vs pine interface to the user, which is perfectly okay.

>From: Eduardo Chappa <[email-masked]>
>To: Pine Discussion Forum <[email-masked]>
>Subject: Re: TAB does not detect new messages in incoming folders
>Date: Fri, 11 Jan 2002 16:19:45 -0800 (PST)
>
>*** Pierre Rocher ([email-masked]) wrote in the pine-info list today:
>
>:) IMAPSTATUS provides the clue.  Further tests suggest with the detailed
>:) status of IMAPSTATUS [N,R,U], TAB does find messages with the N flag, 
>but
>:) not R nor U.  There are two bugs:
>:)
>:) Bug 1: TAB only finds messages in the incoming collection folders with 
>the
>:) "N" status only, where it should detect both "N" and "U" statuses.
>
>Hello Pierre,
>
>   Tab only tries to find messages with the "N" flag. Messages with the "U"
>flag are messages that were in the folder the last time it was opened,
>but you either did not read them or decided to read them and flag them as
>new again. If you close that folder (without deleting that message), the
>next time it is opened you will see it marked with a "U".
>
>   From here it follows that TAB is working correctly in your case, because
>IMAPSTATUS is telling you that somehow between the moment that the message
>was saved in the folder and the moment that TAB is doing the check, the
>folder was read or it was touched by some other process. It may be that by
>saving the files, the folder is considered to be opened. This should be
>the bug, I use Pine filters to filter messages from INBOX to an incoming
>folder and do not have this problem.
>
>--
>Eduardo
>http://www.math.washington.edu/~chappa/pine/
>

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---

From: Eduardo Chappa <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 12 Jan 2002 11:25:10 -0800 (PST)

:) 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".

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?