[MlMt] Reading unreads, by Date Received, jumps around

[Bill Cole]

On 13 Apr 2020, at 19:18, Randall Meadows wrote:

> So, I typically read all my mail based on the default Unread smart 
> mailboxes that MailMate ships with.  I have the default sorting column 
> as Date Received, so that the messages are more-or-less in 
> chronological order.  And the messages are grouped by thread.
>
> As I read the messages, I delete most of them (saving only the few 
> needed for posterity).  As I do this, often the messages then jump 
> around, because I just deleted the parent of a thread that was keeping 
> said thread in the correct chronological order, splitting the thread 
> into multiple parts; then when I delete the last message in that now 
> partial thread, I'm thrown into a completely different thread.  But I 
> haven't finished the first one yet!
>
> Anyone have suggestions on how to configure MM so as to avoid this 
> (admittedly high-order first-world) problem?

As with most MailMate use cases, the solution is Yet Another Smart 
Mailbox...

What I do to evade the problem of "Unread" losing messages and their 
threading is that I have a mailbox for "Recent Messages" which are less 
than 3 days old in a subset of IMAP source mailboxes (you may prefer 
"All Messages") and a "Recent Threads" mailbox drawing from the same 
Sources, with a Condition of  "Thread-Id" "is in" "Recent Threads" 
"Thread-Id", with submailboxes by Source, using 
"${#source.path.noinbox}" for names. This gives me full threads of 
messages which don't lose eligibility based on read/unread status.

A similar approach that I like less well (but you may prefer) is an 
"Unread Threads" mailbox where the sources are both "All Messages" and 
"Deleted Messages," and the Condition is "Thread-Id" "is in" "Unread" 
"Thread-Id". This mailbox does have some lability as messages are read, 
but messages and their threading only vanish when all messages in a 
thread have been read, rather than when each message is read and/or 
deleted.

--
Bill Cole
bill at scconsult.com or billcole at apache.org
(AKA @grumpybozo and many *@billmail.scconsult.com addresses)
Not For Hire (currently)