Re: [Geary] conversation list sorting criteria

[Federico Bruni <fede inventati org>]

Il giorno mer 12 ott 2016 alle 5:54, Michael Gratton <mike vee net> ha 
scritto:
> Hey Federico,
>
> On Tue, Oct 11, 2016 at 11:49 PM, Federico Bruni <fede inventati org> 
> wrote:
> > As far as I understand, the conversation list is sorted by 
> > _receiving_ date/time.
> > This means that if I reply to an old conversation, this conversation 
> > will stay in the bottom of the list until someone replies to my 
> > message.
> >
> > I'm used to a different behaviour, as in Gmail, where sent messages 
> > are taken into account when sorting conversations.
> > I like this approach, because I want recent conversations to stay on 
> > top and IMO sent messages count as much as received messages.
> >
> > What's your feeling about it?
>
> I think this would make a lot of sense, so much so that I wonder if 
> it's actually a technical limitation or a bug. Did you find one 
> related to this?

No, I didn't. Should I open a new bug?

Three open bugs about sorting:

- custom sorting: https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=755325
- sort conversation list in either direction: 
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=713654
- conversation list mis-sorts when new email arrives: 
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=713190

In the last bug there's a lot of discussion about the internals for 
sorting. You may find out if it's by design or a bug.

> Thinking through the UX a bit: The conversation in the list will 
> likely be selected and visible since it's being replied to. When the 
> sent message is appended to the conversation in list, the selected 
> conversation will potentially disappear when it gets re-sorted up the 
> top. Do we then scroll up to it and hence lose the user's place in 
> the list, do we just allow it to vanish like that (I guess this 
> already happens if another message is received for an existing 
> conversation anyway), or is there another option?

I wouldn't mind if the conversation gets re-sorted up the top (actually 
it's what I'd expect to happen). The top is the easiest place to find 
something and once you get used to this behaviour (I was used to it 
when I used Gmail) it's quite "natural".