[MlMt] Mailbox count = Recent

Randall Gellens mailmate at randy.pensive.org
Fri Jan 11 15:06:57 EST 2019


On 11 Jan 2019, at 6:42, Benny Kjær Nielsen wrote:

> On 26 Dec 2018, at 17:32, Randall Gellens wrote:
>
>> On 26 Dec 2018, at 6:38, Steven M. Bellovin wrote:
>>
>>> On 25 Dec 2018, at 22:13, Randall Gellens wrote:
>>>
>>>> When the displayed count for a mailbox is "Recent," what does MM 
>>>> count?
>
> It counts emails having the IMAP `\Recent` flag. This is not as useful 
> as it might seem to be.

Exactly; the IMAP \Recent flag is not much use.

>>>> I would like to suggest that there be an option for the count to be 
>>>> "Unread messages that have arrived in the past [count] [unit]" 
>>>> where count and unit are settings (global or per-account or 
>>>> per-mailbox).  For example, setting count to 7 and unit to days 
>>>> would count unread messages that arrived in the past week.
>>>>
>>> I use a smart folder for recent unread messages.
>>
>> Sure, I could do that, and I can see that being especially useful in 
>> certain cases, but to do that universally would mean twice as many 
>> mailboxes as I now have, and also mentally ignoring every actual 
>> mailbox and only paying attention to the smart mailboxes.  Since MM 
>> has a count and allows changing what the count is counting, it seems 
>> reasonable to request that it count unread "recent" for reasonable 
>> values of "recent."
>
> I believe I understand what you would like to do. I'm going to 
> consider it a request for something more general, that is, being able 
> to define custom counters (low-level I actually think this is already 
> possible).
>
> Maybe the most “intuitive” way would be to have a menu item in the 
> Displayed Count allowing one to count whatever intersects with some 
> other mailbox. For example:
>
> 	Displayed Count ▸ ...
>                       Also in Mailbox ▸ ...
> 	                  ...
>
> That would allow you to use any smart mailbox you have defined.

I would not find that of much use, since I have a fairly large number of 
actual IMAP mailboxes spread across various accounts and would not want 
to have to create smart mailboxes for every actual mailbox I have.  
Steven already suggested using smart mailboxes.  What I would like is a 
way to have the mailbox counter display unread messages that have 
arrived within the last x time period (e.g., unread messages that 
arrived in the last ten days or two weeks).  This would make it easy to 
see at a glance if a mailbox has something new in it.

We've previously discussed having mailboxes stand out in some way when 
new mail arrives in them, such as being in bold font.  I think that 
would be quite helpful, either as an alternative or in addition to a 
flexible counter.

--Randall
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