(OT) Viewing unread messages

[Bill Campbell]

On Sat, Jul 09, 2005, Jay R. Ashworth wrote:
>On Fri, Jul 08, 2005 at 04:28:26PM -0700, Bill Campbell wrote:
>> I have somebody who wants me to modify our Maildir handling routines to
>> rewrite the Date header of all messages to be the date it was received into
>> the system which seems to me to be a very Bad Idea(tm), and probably in
>> violation of applicable RFCs.  Their reasoning is that it is a support
>> problem to get people to learn how to view unread messages in light of bad
>> dates sent by spam ratware, and otherwise broken mailers.  It seems to me
>> that it would be far better to simply put together a web page that has
>> simple instructions for various MUAs telling people how to view only unread
>> messages.
>
>Especially given how trivial that is.  They think that what they want
>you to do will help them... how?

I am the one that wants to help them by providing an e-mail hints page that
will make it easy for the end-users to improve their use of e-mail.  I
absolutely hate to make it easy for people to continue to do stupid things.
IHMO, stupidity and laziness should *HURT*!

>> Most MUAs have a quick way to limit the messages displayed to see only
>> unread messages.  Mutt uses ``~lN'', Sylpheed has ``View->Unread'', as does
>> Entourage (the mail component of Microsoft Office 2004 for Macs).
>
>And so does Outhouse/Express.

The only access I have to Outhouse is on my wife's Win98 machine, and it's
reasonably easy except that it's the second level down under ``Current
something'' instead of being at the top level of the ``View'' selections.

>> One thing I did learn today is that the current version of IMP, the horde
>> webmail program, has a very neat feature, virtual folders that are
>> basically stored search commands.  One can define a search for unread
>> messages in one or more folders, give the virtual folder a name, and the
>> virtual folders will then appear in the navigation area.  When reading
>> messages in these virtual folders it automatically refreshes the search and
>> returns to the subject selection screen after reading the last message.
>
>That is pretty clever; I gather it's somewhat similar to how Gmail
>works?  (Though I don't know: jra at gmail was taken when someone finally
>gave me an invite...)
>
>> This is similar to Apple's new ``Smart Folders'' in the Tiger Mail.app,
>> except that it works on IMAP folders, not just local ones.  A screen shot
>> is available here:
>
>If the Horde IRC team weren't such *perfect* assholes, I might be
>interested.  Shame; they've got some nice programs.

Good software developers often lack communication skills.  I haven't had
any run-ins with the folks at horde.org, and only do IRC under duress (the
first time I ever used IRC seriously was earlier this month when an OpenPKG
Foundation was held using IRC to elect new directors and such).

Bill
--
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		-- H.L. Mencken, ``Minority Report''