Subject: UI suggestion for current message conditions

From: Nancy McGough <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 22 Jan 2003 14:22:46 +0000 (GMT)

Everytime I create a rule, I spend time wracking my brain trying
to remember the meaning of

 New (Unseen)
 Recent

Since I use IMAPSTATUS in my index-format, this is very confusing
because messages that are "New (Unseen)" are *not* marked with an
N and messages that are "Recent" *are* marked with an N. Here's a
table of the way I think things work:

Message is            STATUS FULLSTATUS IMAPSTATUS
==========            ====== ========== ==========
Important                *       *          *
New (Unseen)             N       N          U
Recent                   N       N        N or R
Deleted                  D       D          D
Answered                 A       A          A

To help make the rule conditions a little easier to understand,
I suggest that you do not use the word "New" because the letter N
is used in STATUS and FULLSTATUS to mean multiple things and I
bet a lot of people see the N and think "New." Here's a
suggestion for how to change the wording:

New (Unseen) ---> Unseen & Not Recent
Recent       ---> Unseen & Recent

So then the table would look like this

Message is            STATUS FULLSTATUS IMAPSTATUS
==========            ====== ========== ==========
Important                *       *          *
Unseen & Not Recent      N       N          U
Unseen & Recent          N       N        N or R
Deleted                  D       D          D
Answered                 A       A          A

and hopefully it will be a little easier to understand. And all
the confusing details could be in the Help.

Another thing to think about is the word "Unseen." Since it means
the message has not been opened or viewed, I suggest also
changing the word "unseen" to either "unopened" or "unviewed" or
"not viewed." Usually when I'm wracking my brain to try to
remember what these words mean I think "oh yeah, 'unseen' means
it wasn't in the folder the last time I was here." But that is
wrong.

What do other people think?

 -Nancy

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---

From: Eduardo Chappa <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 22 Jan 2003 07:54:53 -0800 (PST)

*** Nancy McGough ([email-masked]) wrote in the...:

:) Message is            STATUS FULLSTATUS IMAPSTATUS
:) ==========            ====== ========== ==========
:) Important                *       *          *
:) New (Unseen)             N       N          U
:) Recent                   N       N        N or R
:) Deleted                  D       D          D
:) Answered                 A       A          A

I think that your problem is that you are trying to use STATUS and
FULLSTATUS to understand IMAPSTATUS, when IMAPSTATUS should be understood
by itself, so I would suggest that you split the above table in two
tables. The first table should contain the same entries as the above
table, if you like, but only the first two columns, and the second table
should be:

Message is            IMAPSTATUS        STATUS        X-STATUS
==========             ====== 	       ========	     ==========
Important	          *		              F (flagged)
Recent and unread         N	     No or empty
Recent and read           R	        R
Unseen and unread         U		O (old)
read in earlier session  " " (blank)	RO (upon opening the folder)
Deleted                   D			       D
Answered                  A			       A

The last two columns are the internal codes that you find inside the
folder in the "headers" Status and X-Status. The first column translates
the second and third columns.

:) To help make the rule conditions a little easier to understand,
:) I suggest that you do not use the word "New" because the letter N
:) is used in STATUS and FULLSTATUS to mean multiple things and I
:) bet a lot of people see the N and think "New." Here's a
:) suggestion for how to change the wording:

In rule conditions, I would suggest to change

   Current text				suggested text
-----------------------------------------------------------
Message is New (Unseen)?            Message is Unseen and Old
Message is Recent 		    Message is New

What Pine is missing is a flag for "old" messages (that is to say,
messages that were present in the folder the last time it was opened). If
there was a flag for that status, everything would be easier.
Equivalently, Pine could introduce the concept of "old" messages when
explaining roles/filters/scores/etc and I'm sure rewording of the
conditions would not cause any confusion to anyone.

-- 
Eduardo
http://www.math.washington.edu/~chappa/pine/