GNUMail.app questions

[Ludovic Marcotte]

Hi,

I've implemented Jamie Zawinski's message threading algorithm for
GNUMail.app / Pantomime (http://www.jwz.org/doc/threading.html).

So far, things work pretty well and it's fast. You can see a small
screenshot of GNUMail.app with message threading activated here:

http://sophos.ca/crap/mt10.png

For finishing the message threading implementation, I need your
opinion on various things in order to satisfy as many users as I 
can for the future behaviour of GNUMail.app when using message
threading.

I need you feedback on:

1) Receiving new mails.

   We could either add the message at end of the outline view (last row)
   w/o threading the mail or we could thread the message (add it as a
   child somewhere in deep down the thread "tree")

   If we do thread the message, we could expand the thread if it's collapsed
   or we could show in bold the 'root' of the thread if it's collapsed so
   it would be "easy" see that a new message has been received and
   threaded (starting at this particular root).


2) Doing a "Find"

   If we get results, messages being children of a parent that is collapsed
   and we iterate inside the results (Next/Previous buttons in the Find panel),
   we could either automatically expand the thread or just show the messages
   in the text view w/o touching the expand/collapse state of all nodes
   in the outline view.

3) Show/hide {deleted,read} messages

   If a child is unread but all its parents (to the root) are read, we can
   either show the thread (expand it) or hide all its parents and promote
   the child to the right level.

   Same thing would apply for deleted messages.


If you want to try things out, you must get and install the CVS version
of both GNUMail.app and Pantomime. To download the CVS version, do:

cvs -d :pserver:anoncvs@Sophos.ca:/opt/cvsroot login (password is anoncvs)
cvs -d :pserver:anoncvs@Sophos.ca:/opt/cvsroot checkout GNUMail
cvs -d :pserver:anoncvs@Sophos.ca:/opt/cvsroot checkout Pantomime

To activate message threading, do:

defaults write GNUMail MAILWINDOW_DATA_VIEW_TYPE 2

To go back to a non-message threading mode, do:

defaults write GNUMail MAILWINDOW_DATA_VIEW_TYPE 1


You can reply to this message only to me.. in order to not clobber the 
list with too many messages ;)

Thanks a lot!

       Ludovic

-- 
Live as if you were to die tomorrow.
Learn as if you were to live forever.
 - Gandhi