[prev in list] [next in list] [prev in thread] [next in thread] 

List:       sylpheed
Subject:    [sylpheed:22006] Re: unseen sequence
From:       "James K. Lowden" <jklowden () schemamania ! org>
Date:       2003-11-30 22:18:38
[Download RAW message or body]

On Wed, 15 Oct 2003, Hacksaw <hacksaw@hacksaw.org> wrote:
> Does some version of Sylpheed properly maintain the .mh_sequence file, 
> especially the unseen sequence, yet? 

[For those not familiar with the term: an mh "sequence" is a named set of
messages in a folder.  The .mh_sequence file stores lists of messages (by
number), preceded by a tag -- the sequence name.  Most mh operations can
work on either a folder or a sequence.]

Why is the unseen sequence in particular of interest to you?  Mutt?  Just
curious.  

Sequence support would be a) helpful and b) an unusual feature (among
mailers).  It would be a nice drawing card for Sylpheed.  

I find myself musing about how hard it would be to add.  

Maintaining the unseen sequence is merely a matter of comparing Sylpheed's
folder cache to the folder's directory information.  Hardly more than a
shell script, really [1].  

Creating sequences is quite involved, because a sequence's value is a
function of the complexity of the search that created it.  Sylpheed's
search feature is simple, so the kinds of sequences it could muster aren't
very interesting.  Also, adding/removing messages from a sequence would be
quite a lot of GUI programming.  

Reading sequences (created, say, with nmh's "pick" utility), on the other
hand, would be vastly useful.  Sylpheed is a much nicer application than
nmh for reading and replying to messages.  If there were a way for
Sylpheed to recognize the messages found by "pick", it would be much more
powerful.   Sequences are the obvious means to that end.  

My workaround: I keep a folder called "Utility".  I use "pick" to create a
sequence, and "refile -link <sequence name> +Utility" to populate the
Utility folder with (hard) links to the messages.  These can be readily
browsed and indiscriminately deleted, because their base folder is
unaffected, and the mh sequence remains intact.  Obviously, I could have
more folders and be able to review more sequences, but since everything's
so disconnected, I haven't bothered.  

Does anyone else wish for sequence support in Sylpheed?

--jkl

[1]  One snag with this is that Sylpheed uses an mtime marker to know
what's "new" in a folder.  nmh relies on the file name, such that if "cur"
is, say, 519, anything that sorts after 519 is "new".  Similarly, when nmh
"inc" imports messages into the store, it updates each folder's
Unseen-Sequence (and viewing the message removes it from the unseen
sequence).  

Because it tracks new messages, nmh isn't required to stat each message
file to learn the folder's status (big savings).  Anything that would
generate an .mh_sequence file would have to interrogate each file, just as
Sylpheed does.  


[prev in list] [next in list] [prev in thread] [next in thread]