Re: split display?
On Wed, Jul 15, 2009 at 04:48:56PM -0500, Derek Martin wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 15, 2009 at 02:01:57PM -0600, lee wrote:
> > I would need to know exactly which pattern will show only those
> > messages I want to see, and all of them. I don't know such patterns. I
> > might have an idea of what I could search for, but it only means that
> > I eventually have to spend a lot of time searching and trying to
> > figure out search patterns.
>
> So, in other words, you would need to manually mark the message as
> belonging to a category. You would need to take action to associate
> the message with a category. So, what's the problem with just moving
> the mail to a category-specific mail folder, exactly?
1.) It is awkward.
2.) It would mess up the folder hierarchy I already have by greatly
increasing the number of folders. It's too complicated.
3.) It's incompatible with the folder hierarchy I have.
4.) The messages would be out of sight and not easy to access and
would be forgotten. If there's another new message that would belong
to a category I have, I would have to browse through the folder
hierarchy, and I would have to remember for each directory I see in
the list if it's a maildir or a directory that contains
maildirs. Changing folders in mutt is fumbly (c TAB TAB enter CTRL-g
CTRL-g c TAB TAB down down ... enter ?? q ??? CTRL-g ... Hmm.? c ...).
5.) There's no way to delete maildirs from within mutt. Mutt is not a
file manager and shouldn't have to be one.
> As far as I can see, what you're trying to accomplish is exactly why
> mail clients have the ability to handle mail in multiple mail folders:
> When you receive a message that you think belongs in a particular
> category, move (or copy!) it into a mail folder associated with that
> category.
Yeah, I think I can understand why you say that. But it's not the way
I'm using mail folders, or the purpose I'm using them for. What I'm
using them for is to keep mail from mailing lists separate and as a
final storage for mails I'm done with. What I'm not done with has to
stay in the inbox so that I keep being remembered of it and don't have
to remember that I should search for something and do something
with/about it.
> Better yet, let a filtering program like procmail do it for you.
Before the computer is able to understand what mails are about, such
programs remain unable to decide into what category I might want to
put a particular mail. To edit my .forward file so that a mail is
delivered into the appropriate maildir (category), I would have to
predict that I'm going to get this mail and to predict the contents of
it.
It works fine for mailing lists because it is predictable that I'm
going to get mail from them and what search pattern can be used to
identify mail from the list, but that's it. Once the list admin makes
a change and the same search pattern isn't in the mail anymore, it
won't be delivered into the correct directory.
And I'm hoping that computers never get intelligent enough to read my
mail.
> You could probably even do something funky like rig up a macro
> to change the list of mailboxes to which mutt pays attention to just
> those associated with categories, and then rig up a second one to
> change them back to "normal" mode. Mutt has folder hooks and other
> interesting mechanisms to make sure that if you want, sent mail can be
> saved to the same category-specific folder, etc..
Well, I wouldn't want to separate working with categories from working
with incoming mail. Using different maildirs to simulate categories
creates such a separation. That is precisely what I'm trying to avoid.
Separation is for mailing lists and for final storage. That's what I'm
using different maildirs for. It's not applicable to mail in the inbox
I'm not done with.
I wouldn't mind if mutt could handle categories by using different
maildirs --- or any other way. What matters to me is how it lets me
work with the mail.
> And of course, you can always manually edit both incoming and
> outgoing messages, to add custom headers to them, to make it easier
> for various programs to automatically sort them for you, either
> before or after you've seen them.
But that is very tedious --- and I don't want to edit mail I have
received. It's like faking it.
> Your requirement to keep mail in your inbox until you've decided what
> to do with it is artificial and self-imposed;
Yes, you could describe it like that. It's how I'm doing it since I'm
using mutt, 10 years or more. It's a way that has developed and been
used over a long time, and I would like to have a better way.
But this way is as much a result of what options/ways mutt offers its
users as it is a result of what I made of it. I've been using other
MUAs and came to other ways with them, but having mail in the inbox
until I have decided what to finally do with it is something I always
did. That's one of the things the inbox is for.
> if you move the mail and leave it marked new, Mutt will cheerfully
> remind you that you need to address it by prompting you to change
> folder to the next listed mailbox with new mail in it.
That would be extremely annoying. That I'm changing a folder doesn't
mean that I want to switch to the first one mutt detects to have new
mail in it. I want to switch to, for example, =lists/debian-user, not
to one of the categories.
> Your insistance on keeping it in your inbox may very well be getting
> in your way. I suspect no mail client has implemented a scheme like
> what you describe because the problem is rather well-solved by
> multiple mail folders, and what you describe is, while perhaps
> interesting, also a lot more complicated, for no clear benefit of
> substance.
When you look at other MUAs, many of them make it a lot easier to move
mail into different folders and to handle different folders than mutt
does. Mutt is great for handling a lot of mail, but not for handling a
lot of folders.
> The one thing you suggested that sounds the most interesting to me is
> the idea of having your index view contain all your messages, grouped
> by category. In this case, that would mean displaying all messages in
> your mailboxes, grouped by mailbox.
You could see it as "displaying a list of maildirs" instead of
"displaying a list of messages".
Displaying a list of maildirs (folders) instead would make sense. You
could say that mutt is designed to handle a lot of mail and each mail
individually, accessible through a list of mails. That you can switch
to different folders is not actually supported and only "merely
possible".
That way, mutt totally ignores that plain, eventually long lists of
mails aren't at all useful when one is trying to bring some
structurization or categorization upon ones mail. Instead, it could
make use of what means the underlying storage structure already
provides (for free). Maybe this is so because mutt supports different
storage methods?
> Personally, I don't think I would want that... but it's an
> interesting idea. Unless you kept the first several folders very
> empty, you would rarely ever see any mail except that in the first
> "category" (i.e. mail folder). So I still have doubts that such a
> feature would be practical or useful, but it's an interesting idea.
What you would see would be pretty much what ancient file managers
like mc or norton show you: A list of directories (mail folders) and a
list of files (mails). You would have options to get these lists
sorted the way you want and have better ways to move mail from one
folder to another.
It wouldn't be much different from what you're seeing now, only make
it way easier to use different folders. If you don't want it, you only
need to tell mutt not to display folders in the message list and to
display the folder you want to see on startup instead of the list of
folders.
It's not exactly what I would want, but I think it would do just fine
--- and it's probably not difficult to implement because it's
basically a different representation of the storage structure mutt
already know how to use. Technically, it would be even better than
"artificial" categories.
Maybe there is already an option I can turn on to have folders
displayed in the message list?