All messages will be stored in a great big amorphous database, which you can view subsets of by a combination of filtering criteria ("all messages to or from Freddy") and explicitly assigned categories ("all messages which I decided were about PuTTY when I first read them"). The advantage is that you can file a message in more than one category without taking up twice as much space; the idea is that this should in fact be the norm (at least being able to retrieve a message by sender or subject, and more likely being able to file a message under more than one subject). To make the classification process easier I intend to make it easy to automatically script suggested category assignments for new messages, but then to allow the user to modify them before they become final.
So the closest thing to an "inbox" will be various other filters. Perhaps a list of recent uncategorised messgages (though that's not very useful, since many messages will have no explicit category if the only way you expect to want to retrieve them is by remembering who they were exchanged with). Or a list of recently received messages in general. Or messages you haven't either replied to or marked with a no-reply-required tag (I'm not sure whether such a tag is a good idea or not yet; when I get up to that level of the code I'll make a decision). Or messages you've explicitly marked as "action required". Or just unread messages ... and so on.
I don't claim it's original :-) The reason I need to write my own is that I want it to be operated from within my editor of choice, and since that isn't emacs I don't have the usual choice of editor-embedded mailers...
Yeah, mine has an SQL backend as well, although I didn't like the idea of using MySQL and thus requiring sysadmin help to set up one's mail store. Instead I went for SQLite, which operates entirely in ordinary user-level disk files and seems adequately powerful for my needs.
Lotus Notes also works like this - with a great big mail database onto which you have different "views". There's no really intuitive GUI way of convincing a message to be in two different views, though, IME.
That's just the unread messages, of course... I use Outlook but I've locked it down so it doesn't count as insecure MS rubbish. I also pop3 direct from Perl, but not for my own mail, only for certain special apps I'm involved with.
I've been using it at home. It's obviously a clone of Outlook, yet it is vastly better at dealing with Internet email and generally has a more consistent UI than Outlook - not that there aren't some annoying bugs in it.
I've also used pine, MacOS X Mail, Sylpheed and Thunderbird recently, but only because I've been sorting out user's mail problems. Only one user has actually complained that they have to use pop3 or imap, which was nice.
I use the webmail client of the University of Edinburgh. I like to be able to get at all my stuff from any computer. I like pine, too - it's simple enough for me.
Well, you can set up the connection info for POP3 or IMAP so it works anywhere to anywhere, too. Just make sure you always leave the mail on the server.
I have no messages in my inbox, there wasn't an option for that. If you count messages which I have sorted from my inbox to various other 'in' folders depending on subject but have yet to act on or sometimes rwad in depth, I have about 20.
I actually meant to include a 0 box, but must have had some kind of finger trouble at the last minute. Meant to be a log scale, innit, and you can't have log(0).
Unless you follow the traditional international convention of defining eSad goink who (a) has no friends (b) has fucked up his ISP password or (c) anally sorts his mail into little folders:= 0.
What is the deal with polls then? Are they just inherently broken until you have a paid account? They never say "You can't do this" but clicking on things like "fill out poll" and "view results" usually does absolutely nothing.
Anyway, my first answer would need to be to the question: -1) How many actively used inboxes do you have? Which is 3 (home, work & fyshmail). 1) Collectively they're in the 1000-9000 range, but only through judicious application of mail filters and other folders, plus a recent ruthlessness with deleting 2)eudora, outlook & elm, respectively
When I click on 'fill out poll' it gives me the current answers with a clickable "view answers" over each question which, when clicked, gives me the current answers. This is the only clickable thing I can find.
If you view ewx's journal (http://www.livejournal.com/users/ewx/),
can you see any locked posts (there are two on September 16th)?
If so, can you see tickyboxes in this poll or only the results?
I did once have an odd problem with LJ polls in that when I filled in the boxes and pressed submit it would say something of the form "you need to be logged in", and yet I must have been logged in because I then managed to post a comment from my own account. Anyway, I put it down to either LiveJournal being temporarily broken or NTL's web caches confusing it as to my IP address [given that LJ's login screen allows you to lock your login to a single IP address], and it went away eventually so I don't think I ever got to the bottom of it.
I try and keep it below 50 both at home and work (and frequently fail). At work I'm forced to use Outlook *spit*; at home until now I've been using Pine, but have just got a new computer and it's so fast compared to my old, late nineties vintage, laptop that I'm tempted, once I've got over the numerous teething problems in migrating from Red Hat 7.3 to Red Hat Fedora*, to move into the twenty-first century and use Evolution, which comes as standard --provided, that is, it still stores emails in standard Unix format so I can peruse my archives as plaintext.
Work: Outlook, never delete anything - it's all autoarchived (which is contrary to the DPA I believe, but it makes it very easy to squash people who complain about my not doing things they didn't ask me to do). As with all the other MS stuff I have to deal with, I wouldn't choose to use it but I have to support people who do.
Home: Mozilla Thunderbird, delete or move everything from the inbox almost immediately - I have one message in the inbox, a long one from my cousin which I ought to reply to.
Gmail: LJ notifications only, deleted when read (or more usually unread if I've already read the comment on the web).
To be fair, they've fixed that in more recent versions. Also, the auto-archive feature archives into a separate .pst file, so the mechanism does tend to prevent the main .pst file getting too large.
On the other hand, I would dearly love to set about Microsoft a baseball bat for the fact that Outlook not only used to have that limit, but also just crashed when you exceeded it, rather than giving any kind of sane diagnostic.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2004-09-23 05:51 am (UTC)When I finish rewriting my MUA from scratch, though, the answer will be "mu" since the outmoded concept of an inbox will no longer apply :-)
(no subject)
Date: 2004-09-23 05:52 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-09-23 06:02 am (UTC)So the closest thing to an "inbox" will be various other filters. Perhaps a list of recent uncategorised messgages (though that's not very useful, since many messages will have no explicit category if the only way you expect to want to retrieve them is by remembering who they were exchanged with). Or a list of recently received messages in general. Or messages you haven't either replied to or marked with a no-reply-required tag (I'm not sure whether such a tag is a good idea or not yet; when I get up to that level of the code I'll make a decision). Or messages you've explicitly marked as "action required". Or just unread messages ... and so on.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-09-23 06:11 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-09-23 06:15 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-09-23 06:31 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-09-23 06:35 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-09-23 06:37 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-09-23 05:53 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-09-23 05:55 am (UTC)I use Outlook but I've locked it down so it doesn't count as insecure MS rubbish.
I also pop3 direct from Perl, but not for my own mail, only for certain special apps I'm involved with.
I use Outlook but I've locked it down so it doesn't count as insecure MS rubbish
Date: 2004-09-23 06:06 am (UTC)Re: I use Outlook but I've locked it down so it doesn't count as insecure MS rubbish
Date: 2004-09-23 06:25 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-09-23 05:59 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-09-24 04:37 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-09-23 06:01 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-09-23 06:03 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-09-23 06:06 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-09-23 06:26 am (UTC)Burn the heretic!
Date: 2004-09-23 06:07 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-09-23 06:23 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-09-23 10:37 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-09-23 06:55 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-09-23 07:00 am (UTC)I actually meant to include a 0 box, but must have had some kind of finger trouble at the last minute.Meant to be a log scale, innit, and you can't have log(0).(no subject)
Date: 2004-09-23 07:04 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-09-23 07:13 am (UTC)Anyway, my first answer would need to be to the question:
-1) How many actively used inboxes do you have?
Which is 3 (home, work & fyshmail).
1) Collectively they're in the 1000-9000 range, but only through judicious application of mail filters and other folders, plus a recent ruthlessness with deleting
2)eudora, outlook & elm, respectively
(no subject)
Date: 2004-09-23 07:18 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-09-23 07:28 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-09-23 07:55 am (UTC)When I click on 'fill out poll' it gives me the current answers with a clickable "view answers" over each question which, when clicked, gives me the current answers. This is the only clickable thing I can find.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-09-23 08:02 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-09-23 08:48 am (UTC)- can you see any locked posts (there are two on September 16th)?
- If so, can you see tickyboxes in this poll or only the results?
I did once have an odd problem with LJ polls in that when I filled in the boxes and pressed submit it would say something of the form "you need to be logged in", and yet I must have been logged in because I then managed to post a comment from my own account. Anyway, I put it down to either LiveJournal being temporarily broken or NTL's web caches confusing it as to my IP address [given that LJ's login screen allows you to lock your login to a single IP address], and it went away eventually so I don't think I ever got to the bottom of it.(no subject)
Date: 2004-09-24 02:14 am (UTC)I don't usually log in from work, just authenticate the posts I make. Hence my confusion *&)
(no subject)
Date: 2004-09-23 08:13 am (UTC)I hardly use e-mail any more, except for mailing lists and talking privately to Meg - most of the people I want to talk to can be reached through LJ.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-09-23 08:15 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-09-23 09:19 am (UTC)Home: Mozilla Thunderbird, delete or move everything from the inbox almost immediately - I have one message in the inbox, a long one from my cousin which I ought to reply to.
Gmail: LJ notifications only, deleted when read (or more usually unread if I've already read the comment on the web).
(no subject)
Date: 2004-09-23 11:14 am (UTC)You do know about the Outlook bug which means that if your .pst file goes above 2GB then Outlook flat out refuses to read it any more...?
(no subject)
Date: 2004-09-23 04:26 pm (UTC)On the other hand, I would dearly love to set about Microsoft a baseball bat for the fact that Outlook not only used to have that limit, but also just crashed when you exceeded it, rather than giving any kind of sane diagnostic.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-09-23 11:27 am (UTC)