Re: Last Call: draft-ietf-imapext-sort (INTERNET MESSAGE ACCESS PROTOCOL - SORT AND THREAD EXTENSIONS) to Proposed Standard

[Mark Crispin <[e-mail]>]

On Mon, 3 Mar 2008, Alexey Melnikov wrote:
>> (In some 
>> clients, the sorted list is scrolled to whichever  message was previously 
>> selected, so it's a fast way of finding other  messages by the same 
>> person).
> Yea, I do this frequently in Thunderbird.

As do I.

Note that an address sort that collates all "mrc" messages together is 
more likely to do the right thing that one that collates by name and has 
to figure out that "Mark Crispin", "Mark R. Crispin", "Crispin, Mark", "M 
Crispin", "Mr. Mark Crispin", "IMAP Support", etc. are all the same.

> I frequently sort by subject, because many clients still don't support proper 
> threading (threads can become broken due to lack of the References header).

I also sort by Subject (although more commonly ORDERSUBJECT threading than 
direct SUBJECT sorting) in cases where the thread tree has become so 
complex that it has lost value.  A classic example is when a new thread is 
started by replying to a message in a thread that has little or no 
relationship to the thread.  Think USENET.

> I also sort by IMAP flags (i.e. I want to see all important messages), size 
> and rarely by date.

Usually for flags I would do a filter rather than a SORT, but it seems 
reasonable to me to add such a thing in the first round of extensions.

Date sorting seems to be pretty common with our users.  Some people who 
prefer their mail "in order" use it instead of sequence order in the 
mailbox (no sort) which tends to be an INTERNALDATE sort.

-- Mark --

http://panda.com/mrc
Democracy is two wolves and a sheep deciding what to eat for lunch.
Liberty is a well-armed sheep contesting the vote.