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

[Alexey Melnikov <[e-mail]>]

Speaking as email client user:

Dave Cridland wrote:

>On Mon Mar  3 15:03:20 2008, Cyrus Daboo wrote:
>  
>
>>--On March 2, 2008 11:07:50 PM -0800 Dan Karp <[e-mail]>  
>>wrote:
>>    
>>
>>>The purpose of sorting in mail clients is so that users can find
>>>messages they're looking for.
>>>      
>>>
>>Actually you need to look at your use cases in more detail because  
>>a lot of times searching is a much better solution than sorting.  
>>e.g. the case of trying to find email from a particular person - a  
>>search is much better. Yes you do have to do a little more work to  
>>setup the search (type something in) rather than the single click  
>>sorting requires, but on large mailboxes you will usually see what  
>>you want immediately without having to scroll through the sorted  
>>list looking for what you want.
>>    
>>
>I don't think Dan's saying that using SORT for searching is a good  
>idea, but it's certainly what people do based on my observations,  
>too. (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.

>>For the most part I question why anyone would really want to sort  
>>on any of the text fields. The only sort I have found useful is  
>>sort by size - and then only to help in culling large messages when  
>>my quota-limited mailboxes get full.
>>    
>>
>My client does no sorting at all, so I'm hard pressed to give any  
>alternative use-cases. Generally, people seem to like sorting by date  
>fields, though again not a text field. I've also seen people who like  
>to sort by subject, essentially as a grouping thing - better done  
>with threading, but still.
>  
>
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 IMAP flags (i.e. I want to see all important messages), 
size and rarely by date.