Re: folder_format: reporting new/unread/read totals?
On Wed, Oct 08, 2003 at 05:01:00PM +0200, Ren? Clerc wrote:
> * Allister MacLeod <amacleod@xxxxxxxx> [08-10-2003 16:58]:
> > I'd like mutt to start up showing me a screen listing all my
> > defined mailboxes, along with an indicator showing how many new
> > messages are in each box, along with the total number of messages in
> > the box.
>
> For Maildir, this might make sense, but with mbox, it requires mutt to
> parse all mboxes...
I understand. Perhaps if the format specifiers were added, they could
be documented with a warning about use with folders in the mbox
format. I only use IMAP and Maildir folders these days, so that sort
of counting would be efficient and ideal for me.
Thinking about parsing mboxes reminded me of another question I had
about the way mutt works. Would it make sense for mutt to have an
optional mode to cache mailbox info somewhere? That way e.g. IMAP
folders wouldn't have to be re-scanned every time.. mutt could talk to
the IMAP server and see that there were X new messages and Y
deletions, and just apply the delta to its cache.
Certainly this would not be desirable behavior for all situations, but
I think that an informed user could avoid or deal with the pitfalls,
as long as they knew what they were when they turned on the option.
Just some ideas.. I'll probably be cracking open browser.c to see if I
can figure out how to add % specs.
Cheers,
Allister