Re: [Evolution] Mark emails as read annoyance

[Adam Tauno Williams <awilliam whitemice org>]

On Tue, 2013-08-20 at 16:20 +0100, Patrick O'Callaghan wrote:
> Here's what I'm seeing (this is Evo 3.8.4):
> 1) Opening the message (e.g. by hitting Return or double-clicking)
> *always* marks it as Read immediately, i.e. the timeout settings are
> ignored.

Seems correct to me, the message was opened, it is now seen.

> 2) If the preview pane is in the closed state at the moment the message
> is selected, it will remain Unread, independently of the timeout
> settings.

Seems correct.  The application never presented the content of the
message.

> 3) If the preview pane is in the open state at the moment when the
> message is selected, the timeout settings are obeyed *as long as the
> preview pane is left open*. Closing the preview pane will effectively
> turn off the timer for this message, even if the preview pane is
> reopened.

Seems correct to me, that is the purpose of the timer.  It is very
common to 'read mail' via the preview pane.  AFAIK every mail client
works this way;  Evolution using a timer is a nice feature,  other
clients make presented=seen immediately.

> So in a sense "preview" is not exactly equivalent to "open" because of
> the behaviour with timeouts. To put it another way, the timeout settings
> are only relevant to the preview mode (the Preferences dialogue could
> perhaps be clearer on this point). I assume that's why it's called
> preview: you can flip quickly through the messages without marking them
> as read, as long as your timeout is high enough (or it's turned off,
> which is what I do).

Yep

> I haven't looked at the behaviour when  switching folders, because
> basically I don't care, but I find the semantics of what happens with
> timers interesting in itself, especially when one is trying to describe
> them in natural languages. It's actually quite hard to get this right.

But the timing can be adjusted, or even disabled.  If disabled previewed
will never be considered seen.

Turn off:
    gsettings set org.gnome.evolution.mail mark-seen false

Change value:
    gsettings set org.gnome.evolution.mail mark-seen-timeout 1500

  value is in milliseconds


-- 
Adam Tauno Williams <mailto:awilliam whitemice org> GPG D95ED383
Systems Administrator, Python Developer, LPI / NCLA