Subject: Re: New mail?

From: Barry Leiba <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 11 May 1998 15:09:19 -0400 (Eastern Daylight Time)

On Mon, 11 May 1998 10:50:13 -0400 Cyrus Daboo <[email-masked]> wrote:

> The biggest issue about how to handle these flags is to recognise that
> \Recent is set for any new message that appears in a mailbox
...
> Of course things get more complicated in a shared environment, and this
> crucially depends on how the server is setup to handle flags for multiple
> users on the same mailbox. The \Recent flag should be per user (i.e. one
> user opening a mailbox does not remove the \Recent flag for any other users
> who might later do the same).

Ahhh, here we get onto shaky ground, though.

My interpretation of \Recent is that it is set for exactly one "select" of 
the mailbox.  That is to say, \Recent means "You're the first session 
that's been told about the existence of this message."  That means that if 
I leave my client logged on at work and it polls for new mail (or, better, 
uses IDLE :-), then while I'm bicycling home the "new" (whatever that 
means...) mail that comes in while I'm on my way will show up as "recent" 
to my client at work.  When I get home and log on there, it will not show 
as "recent".  But it will be "recent" when I get to work the next morning.

Worse, if mail comes in while I'm logged on at home, then whether my home 
or work session sees it as "recent" will be at the whim of the server -- 
whichever session it happens to notify first, which, with most clients, 
means whichever one happens to send a command to the server first and get 
the "* n EXISTS" and "* m RECENT" messages in response.  That makes the 
behaviour of "recent" rather capricious in the case at hand.

Of course, as Mark says, this is all a user-interface issue.  Just be aware 
that "recent" poses a unique problem with regard to multiple users of the 
same mailbox, and you need to think about it carefully.  Clearly, "unseen" 
mail is special in some sense of the word "special".  Clearly, "recent" 
mail is special in some sense of the word "special".  The trouble is that 
they're "special" in very different, but somewhat overlapping, ways.

Barry Leiba, Multimedia Messaging  ([email-masked])
http://www.research.ibm.com/people/l/leiba