Re: [Evolution-hackers] Status of mail-refactor-2 branch todo

[Dan Winship <danw ximian com>]

> Actually if I think about it, I believe my common pattern is actually to
> scroll all the way down and see the most recent messages in the folder
> first, no matter what.  I wonder if this is a common enough pattern that
> it would make sense to just scroll all the way to the most recent
> message whenever we open a folder?

I wouldn't find that any better than being scrolled to the top. I want
"scroll to the first NEW unread message", as Brett suggested.

Something lots of people have probably either forgotten or never knew is
that etable does let you have an unselected cursor position. (Type
Control plus a navigation key, and the cursor will move without changing
the selection. Then type Control-Enter to select the cursor row.) So we
could have the behavior be "Put the cursor on the first unread
message/first new unread message" rather than "Select the first unread
message/first new unread message", and that would solve the problem of
the message being marked read without you reading it.

Another possibility would be to just add a keybinding for "Select the
first unread message/first new unread message in this folder", and just
make sure that the focus ends up in the message list after selecting a
folder. Then:
      * The sorted-in-reverse order people select a folder and hit the
        select-first-unread key and start reading their mail backwards,
        just like now, except without needing to use the mouse
      * People who read their mail like Brett and I do select a folder
        and hit the select-first-unread key, and start reading
      * People who read their mail like Ettore select a folder, hit
        Control-End to scroll to the bottom without selecting anything,
        and then either read mail down there, or hit the
        select-first-unread key to jump back to the beginning of the new
        mail.

-- Dan