On Mon, 23 Jun 2003, Timo Sirainen wrote:
> Currently I just try to remember how many unread messages there in each
> folder are and select based on that. A simple color change for mailboxes
> with new mail would work much better. But I'd still like to see the
> unread counters so I wouldn't miss some mail I left unread on purpose,
> although they wouldn't have to be updated very often, or not at all when
> the mailbox has "new mails" flag/color.
Don't get me wrong; I think that having separate colors in the index for
"mailbox has new messages", "mailbox has no new mail but has unseen
messages", and "mailbox has no new or unseen messages" is a great idea.
I just don't think that polling with lots of STATUS commands in an attempt
to maintain a real-time update is a good idea.
I also don't think that a server should unilaterally decide that "it isn't
useful to find mailboxes with recent messages, so we don't issue the
\Marked and \Unmarked flags", especially when:
. there are users for whom this is "good enough" in the 98% case
. there are users paying by the *kilobyte* for network traffic
. there are mail stores in which testing for recent is the only thing
that can be done more or less instantly, and where testing unseen
potentially requires a great deal of work
IMAP should not be seen as a luxury available exclusively for users on
100MB+ networks connected to terahertz servers with database mail stores
that maintain every conceivable piece of mailbox metadata instantly
available at no cost.
-- Mark --
http://staff.washington.edu/mrc
Science does not emerge from voting, party politics, or public debate.
Si vis pacem, para bellum.
