Re: Opening mailboxes from the command line

[Jack <ostroffjh sbcglobal net>]

On 2011.10.22 07:46, Peter Bloomfield wrote:
> On 10/22/2011 02:05:41 AM Sat, Konrad Hinsen wrote:

> > > The change in '-o' behavior stems from around commit  
> > > 6412f6aa5ddaf3e9ea598c98fa1e7d0ff3fef3e5
> > > We added some code to ensure that the mailbox that's selected when  
> > > Balsa closes is reselected when Balsa is restarted; that wasn't  
> > > previously the case: all open mailboxes were remembered and  
> > > reopened, but the mailbox that was selected on reopening was  
> > > usually not the one that was selected on closing.
I vaguely recall that discussion.  Prior to that change, the order of  
opening mailboxes and the one selected was not predictable - at least  
not by the casual user, and the change made things more as expected by  
the casual user.

> > So what exactly does "opening" a mailbox mean? I thought it was the  
> > same as selecting it. I don't see operations for opening or closing  
> > mailboxes, just adding/removing and selecting.
>
> Opening a mailbox means getting information about its messages from  
> the mail-store (disk, IMAP server, whatever), and Balsa generally  
> defers that until the first time you select it (for a faster  
> startup).  Once it's open, Balsa keeps the info, so it can switch to  
> it faster if you select another mailbox and then reselect the first  
> one.  There's also a pref checkbox Startup: Remember open mailboxes,  
> which makes Balsa save the list of mailboxes that are open when you  
> quit, and reopen them at next startup; that makes for a slower  
> startup, but faster switching when you select one of them.
>
> > If opening and selecting are distinct operations, one solution would  
> > be to introduce a command line option for selecting rather than  
> > opening a specific mailbox.
>
> Well, perhaps it should have been -s for 'select' instead of -o for  
> 'open'...but -s is already taken, for 'stats', so it couldn't be  
> that...so it'll probably always be -o now.  BTW, an undocumented  
> option is a semicolon-separated list of mailboxes after -o.  Probably  
> best to have the first in the list showing when they've all been  
> opened?

Since multiple mailboxes can be open at the same time, but only one can  
be selected, can we look at all this as how to determine which of  
several open mailboxes is selected when Balsa starts up?  I'll propose  
that the first one specified on the command line by -o is selected  
otherwise it is the one selected when Balsa last closed.  However, if  
more than one -o is allowed on the command line, I can see the code  
being easier to select the last one rather than the first.

I'll be glad to log this as an enhancement request, if the developers  
think it will help track it.

Jack