GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 262536
Custom message list viewing/sorting by specific mail headers
Last modified: 2021-03-22 17:57:15 UTC
It would be great if you implement feature of using custom mail headers not only in message filtering system, but in message viewing/sorting interface as well. In particular, I have got a lot of mail that contains RT-Ticket header, and I'd like to have a possibility to show this header in message list and sort messages by it. PS: None of the following mail clients offer such feature: Microsoft Outlook/Outlook Express/Mozilla mail/Mozilla Thunderbird/Balsa :)
changing component to "Mailer" to get rid of the UI component, also reassigning as discussed with nags... adding UI keyword.
Bumping version to a stable release.
*** Bug 613104 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Looking at 4fd6e00afa491bd490f5c44f5abe6858b860e5ff , fixing this would likely require changes in mail/message-list.c mail/message-list.etspec mail/message-list.h I guess? Cumbersome workaround might be to abuse labels for this: Set up an incoming filter that sets a label (e.g. with the value of the specific header), as labels can be displayed as columns.
I think you would need to descend into the deep dark corners of ETable and think about how "Add a Column" and "Customize Current View" would work for this when right clicking on the message list header bar. I don't think we have any other examples of dynamically-defined table columns, so this would be an enhancement to ETable itself and its column specification machinery, which hasn't seen much attention in probably a decade. Bring a torch.
I think this could be done with some predefined number of columns with ability to set there header name and then this header would be picked to read its value and compare it as string, and so on - say about 5 such columns, but the main issue with this is that the headers are not indexed, thus they are unknown in time of drawing the view. To be able to read the headers one needs to fetch the message from a remote server and save somewhere the headers, but each open of the folder will require this "give me a message and I'll take from it the headers" routine (approximately each folder open), which is useless and time and resource consuming action, which might have significant impact on performance when entering the folder (even with already downloaded messages, with folder of thousands messages). Note for example IMAP provider can fetch only headers, or set of headers, but most of other providers requires download of a whole message to get list of headers on it, like if the user has selected "Cache for offline usage" for the account. It would be possible to index headers of the message, and add them only when they are known (and show nothing in the column where the headers will be required, or some "* Unknown *" value), but I'm not sure whether it'll be acceptable and understandable to regular users, or those who would use such feature. Opinions?
*** Bug 710701 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
This is fille din the GitLab instance now: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/evolution/-/issues/1433