I wrote, in regard to whether a plain folder (in contrast to a directory) for
backup copies of all incoming mail have its copies of newly arriving mail ap-
pended or prepended,
T> But if you personally consult the backup folder with your own eyes, you're
T> going to have a preference for having new messages at the top or for having
T> them at the end, and the human factor tips the balance.
Brock Rozen, who originally introduced the topic, responded,
R> A few issues on my end, at least. I use Pine, which sorts messages
R> according to arrival. No biggie if they appear towards the end or towards
R> the front, since the sorting takes care of that.
Pine doesn't really sort the folder: it sorts only the messages' positions
on its menu.
I was thinking of the situation where you don't want to make your MUA parse a
mailbox with one thousand messages and then sort one thousand pointers, but
rather you just want to glance into the folder with a pager, like less or pg.
I don't know about Pine, but Elm takes a while to figure out how to present
a mailbox with two hundred messages; I couldn't imagine how it would work on
one with one thousand.
When you read the folder with a pager, there will be no pointer sorting.
That's when a human preference comes into play.
| I would think that in almost any case it'd be preferable to have the cron
| job do more work.
And yet you made the opposite choice for yourself!
| If somebody didn't have the sorting ability, then I would agree that the
| human factor comes into play.
If you're reading the folder with a pager then you can't get a sorted menu.
| I haven't seen any good suggestions or code (did I miss something somebody
| else might have posted?) that does it the other way...any ideas?
Which way is "the other way"? There was a lengthy discussion about this some
time back on this list, but I can't remember how long ago it took place.