Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ncar!ames!amdahl!pacbell!pbhyf!rob
From: rob@PacBell.COM (Rob Bernardo)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.elm
Subject: Re: Behavior of ' ' considered inconsistant
Message-ID: <5257@pbhyf.PacBell.COM>
Date: 11 May 89 01:37:56 GMT
References: <1415@lokkur.UUCP> <5222@pbhyf.PacBell.COM> <1114@itivax.iti.org> <5234@pbhyf.PacBell.COM> <1129@itivax.iti.org>
Reply-To: rob@PacBell.COM (Rob Bernardo)
Organization: Pacific * Bell, San Ramon, CA
Lines: 52

In article <1129@itivax.iti.org> scs@vax3.iti.org (Steve Simmons) writes:
+Zowie!  Either we are having a major league misunderstanding here or
+we've stumbled into a bug.  Take this situation.  I have my mailbox
+sorted in Reverse Date Mail Sent.  I have 3 read messages which came
+in on the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd.  I have 3 unread messages which came in
+on the 4th, 5th, and 6th.  My mailbox display looks like this on
+startup:
+
+    N  1  May 6  Sender   Topic
+    N  2  May 5  Sender   Topic
+ -> N  3  May 4  Sender   Topic
+       4  May 3  Sender   Topic
+       5  May 2  Sender   Topic
+       6  May 1  Sender   Topic
+
+I read message 3 with ' '.  At the end of the message, I hit space again.
+It throws me to message 4.  Is this proper behavior?  I want it to go to
+message 2, ie, reversed like my sort order.  For the record, I see this
+performance on 4.3BSD and System V on a UNIX-PC.

Zowie! You're confused. :-)

Let's presume the messages were physically added to your folder in
chronological order.  That means the message dated May 1 is first in
your folder, May 2 is second, and so forth with the messaged dated May 6
last in the folder.  Let's also presume that you have specified
reverse-date-sent as the sort criterion.

Now when you fire up elm, you get the display as you've pictured above.
The messages are listed in reverse-date-sent order.  The numbers in the
second column reflect the sorted message sequence, not the physical
sequence of the messages in the folder.  Elm never reveals to you
in any display what the physical order of messages is, only the sorted
order.

So, although the May 2nd letter *precedes* the May 3rd letter physically
in the folder, it *follows* it in this index display.

Now, if you read through the May 3rd letter (letter #4) with ' ', at the
end of the message, you will get the first "page" of the "next" letter,
letter #4, which is the May 2nd letter.

You are reading the messages in reverse-date-sent order and the index
displays the messages in reverse-date-sent order. Next = downward
on the index screen = increasing message numbers in column #2.

Poof! You're enlightened! :-)
-- 
Rob Bernardo, Pacific Bell UNIX/C Reusable Code Library
Email:     ...![backbone]!pacbell!pbhyf!rob   OR  rob@pbhyf.PacBell.COM
Office:    (415) 823-2417  Room 4E850O San Ramon Valley Administrative Center
Residence: (415) 827-4301  R Bar JB, Concord, California