[imp] Unseen and Unread

[Michael M Slusarz]

Quoting "Roger B.A. Klorese" <rogerk at queernet.org>:

| > I've actually made the change from "New" to "Unseen" since
| > this is more
| > correct from an IMAP flag standpoint.  Also, I removed the
| > "Seen" entry
| > since we don't have corresponding "Unanswered" and "Undeleted" legend
| > entries.
|
| I should have replied here...
|
| Aren't you more interested in reflecting information that is useful to
| end-users and expressed in terms that are meaningful to them, rather than
| "reflecting IMAP flag names"?  What percentage of users do you think can
| tell an IMAP flag from a Confederate flag?!
|
| I don't know about you, but I don't walk in my front door and say,
| "Honey, is there any unseen mail?"...

This is a logical argument except for one problem... it is completely
against the RFCs.  According to RFC 3501, the unseen flag means simply:
      UNSEEN
         Messages that do not have the \Seen flag set.

When a user clicks on a message and selects "Mark as: Unseen", all that is
happening is that the \Seen flag is being unset.  When a user logs into the
mailbox, we are simply checking Thus, it is completely correct to call that
message unseen.

It is also completely *incorrect* to call that message new.  Once again,
directly from the RFCs, a "new" message for IMAP servers is:
      NEW
         Messages that have the \Recent flag set but not the \Seen flag.
         This is functionally equivalent to "(RECENT UNSEEN)".
Currently, we are only checking to see if the Seen flag is set or unset.  We
are doing nothing to check the recent flag.  Thus, under the current code,
the changes I made are completely correct.

However, I noticed when doing my changes that we don't actually check to see
if a message is "new" or not (i.e. we never do a Recent and Unseen check). 
So this definitely does need to be fixed (I'm surprised this has never been
caught before).

michael

______________________________________________
Michael Slusarz [slusarz at bigworm.colorado.edu]
The University of Colorado at Boulder