Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!cos!pae
From: pae@cos.com (Paul A. Ebersman)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.elm
Subject: Re: Behavior of ' ' considered inconsistant
Message-ID: <17839@cos.com>
Date: 10 May 89 13:45:22 GMT
References: <377@ladcgw.UUCP>
Organization: Corporation for Open Systems, McLean, VA
Lines: 23

From article <377@ladcgw.UUCP>, by frank@ladcgw.UUCP (Frank Mayhar):
> I, too, have been bitten by this.  My suggestion is that there be a new
> command in pager mode, analogous to space, that traverses the mailbox in
> whatever order the user specifies, by default the sort order.  Controlled
> by a new option (say, traverse-order), that may be set to any of the values
> of sort-order.  If left unset, it uses sort-order.  How does that sound?
> It would certainly solve my problem, and Steve's as well.  AND, it would let
> Rob do what he wants, too.

Seems somewhat complicated, like creeping featurism. I don't think that
anyone would argue that if you specify reverse-sort, elm sorts the index
page in reverse-order and that using space in the pager, you will go
through the messages in reverse-order. This is very easy to explain to
a novice. Adding an extra tweek to have two sort orders seem hard to add.
I would rather see enhancements to the pager that noone has objected to,
such as being able to scroll backwards within a message, like less.

My 2 cents worth.
-- 
               Paul A. Ebersman @ Corporation for Open Systems
  pae@cos.COM or pae%cos.com@uunet.uu.net or {uunet, sundc, hadron}!cos!pae
     ( The difference between practice and theory in practice is always
      greater than the difference between practice and theory in theory. )