[MlMt] feature request - nextUnreadMailbox: ?

[Bill Cole]

On 27 Jun 2016, at 9:38, Fabian Blechschmidt wrote:

> Ok, then I was right when I thought you have seen this.
>
> What is the difference? I mean, what do you expect? See the next 
> unread message of another mailbox? :-)

Well, yes, of course!

Maybe some context would help...

For many years I used Usenet newsreaders (nn, trn, and various 
NewsWatcher variants) and mail clients (mailx, elm, pine, Eudora) where 
I could start with the first unread message in my first 
newsgroup/mailbox with any unread messages and read entirely through to 
the last unread message using nothing but <space>, provided I didn't 
want to reply to anything or whack the whole emainder of a thread or 
anything like that. Just launch the program, space space space ... done: 
everything new got read. This model grew out of Unix paging programs 
from pg to more to less, because the text-based programs just used the 
stock text pager. The early GUI mail and news clients were written by 
people who were in the habit of spacing though everything.

I could offer fancy arguments for why having a one-key method for the 
default navigation through a session of using a program is efficient UI 
and even why making the one key <space> is clearly the best choice 
because it's the largest and most easily hit key, but ultimately the 
real reason some of us want bindings like 
"scrollPageDownOrNextUnreadMessage" and ideally 
"scrollPageDownOrNextUnreadMessageOrFirstUnreadMessageInNextUnreadMailbox" 
is because it is a habit we've acquired and reinforced over many years. 
Like not top-posting replies and not using HTML in mail, it's a thing 
some of us old guys call "better" because it's what we've always done 
and have come to like. And because it really is better.