One of the things that has long frustrated me about Mutt is the behavior of the "file browser" and how it gets sorted. I used quotes because it is not just a file browser, it is also a folder list browser. While it is true that mail folders are implemented as files, there is a fundamental difference between these two concepts that matters in mutt, at least some of the time... Files are just files, and when we're browsing them, we most likely want them sorted alphabetically (or to be more technically correct, sorted according to our locale's collation order). This makes the files much easier to find in the browser. By contrast, the list of folders (as defined by mailboxes commands in your .muttrc) represents the list of folders in which you want to read mail. When mutt detects mail in these folders, or when changing mail folders, Mutt cycles through them in the same order as defined by $sort_browser. But actually, due to the nature of Mutt's interface, it is much more convenient if these folders are sorted in the order defined by the user, so that the user can thusly specify the priority of the mail folders, being prompted to change to more important folders first before less important folders. Essentially, the change in behavior that I want is for these two to be treated separately, so that both of these can be achieved. Am I the only one thinking this is the best possible behavior? An alternative solution would be to set $sort_browser=alpha, and name all my folders starting with a numerical priority. It would work, but it's utterly gross. So there are two questions that need to be asked: 1. How many people would favor this kind of change? 2. What would be the best way to implement it? As for #2, I'd be perfectly happy if we got rid of $sort_browser and just made Mutt always behave this way. To be honest, I can't really imagine why anyone would desire any other behavior, and I'm surprised that this isn't a more common topic on mutt-users and mutt-dev. But I s'pose that goes against the principle of Mutt being the most powerful and most configurable mail client around... So the only suggestion I can come up with is to introduce yet another variable, $sort_folderlist, which works like $sort_browser, except only with regard to Mutt displaying or sorting the list of mailboxes as defined with mailboxes in the user's muttrc file. I have to wonder though... Is there anyone who DOES NOT want their file browser (i.e. for searching for attachments, etc.) sorted alphabetically? Also, is there anyone who wouldn't prefer to have their mail folders presented to them in order of priority, as listed in their muttrc? I won't argue what possible utility other settings might have... but I really am curious if people find other settings useful. My suspicion is that the only reason the $sort_browser variable needs to exist at all is because these two different functions are treated as the same, and the early users of mutt needed a way to tell Mutt which of these behaviors was least annoying for them... -- Derek D. Martin http://www.pizzashack.org/ GPG Key ID: 0xDFBEAD02 -=-=-=-=- This message is posted from an invalid address. Replying to it will result in undeliverable mail. Sorry for the inconvenience. Thank the spammers.
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