Re: Re: Using TAB to check for new messages

*** Tim K. (Gmane) ([email protected]) wrote in the pine-info...:

:) >   Do you use the IMAPSTATUS token in the index-format?. If not, make 
:) > sure you use it.
:) >
:) >   A recent message is marked as "N" or "R", while and unseen message 
:) > is marked as "U" when you use IMAPSTATUS. If you have never tweaked 
:) > the index-format variable, then both recent and unseen messages are 
:) > marked as "N". This will only lead you to confusion.
:) >   
:) No, I've never changed index-format from its default. Are you saying 
:) that this will help pine better identify recent messages or it will 
:) help me identify the recent vs. unseen messages?

The IMAPSTATUS token will help you identify recent vs. unseen
You probably want to define your index-format as

index-format=IMAPSTATUS MSGNO DATE FROMORTO(33%) SIZE SUBJECT(67%)

:) Hmm, not sure I understand the explanation in the Help at all and it 
:) seems to imply that I should let it set to its default of 2. The Help 
:) also mentions Stay-Open-Folders. Should I make all my Inboxes 
:) Stay-Open-Folders so that pine never closes the connection for the 
:) Inboxes? Will this help pine correctly identify recent messages or is 
:) the opposite that I want (i.e. I want pine to actually close the 
:) folder)?

There are streams, that is connections to servers. Forget about the fact 
that you open a stream to connect to a folder and think about connecting 
to the server. This number specifies the maximum number of streams that 
you can have (modulo some other restrictions, to which I will get later).

Once you are connected to a server you can open any folder in it, as long 
as you have permission to do so. If you use a connection to open a folder, 
then a connection to another folder will be closed, that is, you can only 
access one folder per connection.

Your connection to your INBOX is never closed. Think of it as a "it is 
always open folder" or as a "stay-open" folder. You can make any imap 
folder an stay-open folder. For any "stay-open" folder you open a 
connection. If you have 30 folders in an imap server, and you want them to 
be stay-open folder, you will open 30 connections to that server.

So think of incoming folders as two groups. One which are stay-open and 
the rest. The feature we are talking about refers to this latter group, 
and everything I will say in the following text refers to this latter 
group. For this group you can only open up to this number of connections. 
For example, if you use the default and if first-folder is in server1, and 
second-folder is in server2, then when you open both connections you have 
used the maximum number of connections that you are allowed. If you open 
any other remote folder in this latter group, one of these folders will be 
closed (connection to that folder closed) and another session open. The 
problem is that the connections (to the folder) are kept open even if you 
are not in the folder, after you have entered to this folder for the first 
time, and even if you have closed that folder.

Some things may have happened in this folder when you closed it, like new 
mail arrival. If this is the case, you won't know it, unless you press the 
TAB key or actually open that folder. You do not receive notification of 
new mail in a closed folder, unless such folder is in the stay-open group.

As a mathematician that I am, I can tell you that there are two ways to 
close a folder. One "strong close", where when you close the folder, you 
unplug the cable to the folder, the folder is really closed, and "weak 
close", where the connection is open to that folder, even if you do not 
see it. In the latter group, a close is a weak close. In previous versions 
of Pine a close was a strong close, now a close is a weak close or a 
strong close depending on the number of remote connections you want to 
keep open.

As far as I understand, a close in present versions of pine is the same as 
a strong close if the value of max-remote-connections is set to 0.

:) I have pine set to check for new mail every 30 sec. (I really wish it 
:) supported the IMAP IDLE command like Thunderbird and other clients do)
:) - does this impact in any way the identification of recent messages?

As far as I understand the answer is no.

:) Sorry, but I'm still confused as to what pine considers a recent 
:) message and why it can't keep some state/snapshot of the state of each 
:) Inbox when pine has last seen it.

a recent message is a message that arrived since the last time the folder 
was closed (in the strong sense). Once you open a folder, all messages 
that are recent, plus those that arrive while the folder is open, are 
considered recent. From the moment you open a folder until you close it in 
the strong sense you are in a session. A message can be recent in only one 
session. When you first open a folder, a recent message which has not 
been read is marked "N" in IMAPSTATUS, and after it has been read is 
marked "R".

An unseen message is one which has not been read, or was read but flagged 
unseen. A recent message flagged "N" is unseen. A recent message flagged 
"R" was read, so it is not "Unseen". When you read a "N" message, it 
becomes a "R" message.

If a message is flagged "U" in IMAPSTATUS it means the message was there 
in an earlier session. When you read a "U" message it becomes a " " 
message.

When Pine closes a folder in the weak sense, you may receive new mail in 
such folder. In that case the new message would be flagged "N" if you 
opened the folder again without closing Pine (modulo some other 
restrictions), but if you close Pine and reopen such folder it will be 
flagged "U", so you need to have the [X] tab-uses-unseen-for-next-folder 
feature enabled if you want TAB to find the messages you are missing, 
because such message is unseen, not recent anymore.

If you want to receive notification of arrivals of new messages you need 
to make those folders stay-open folders.

I hope this helps.

-- 
Eduardo
Patches/Help: http://www.math.washington.edu/~chappa/pine/
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