GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 554542
"Default" sort order of mail folders is random (previously by arrival)
Last modified: 2009-10-22 14:20:18 UTC
Please describe the problem: Since the 2.23.x release where the summary format switched to sqlite, the "default" sort order of a folder has gone from being useful by arrival to effectively random. Steps to reproduce: 1. Wipe .evolution directory 2. Start evolution and let it sync with mail server Actual results: INBOX is in a strange order. Expected results: INBOX is in by-arrival order. Does this happen every time? Yes. Other information: Am using "sync mail locally", I'm not sure whether that makes a difference or not.
An obvious workaround is to click the Date header. IIRC the default sort order was never strictly "by arrival", I think it just happened to work out that way. But there were usually some messages out of place. I think it's just _more_ random now than it was before.
Before it was the IMAP sort order, no? The server is dovecot, it provides a very useful ordering. "Date" order and "Arrival" order are different. The previous default (and default in every other mail client) order of arrival means that when a mail arrives in my INBOX, it's always at the bottom. "Date" means that if that mail has been delayed a couple of days, it goes somewhere back in scrollback and confuses me.
I can confirm this bug. It is very annoying. And I agree that arrival time and "Date" order are not the same. "Date" is dependent on things like the accuracy of the sender's clock and TZ setting, even if the message was not long in transit. My IMAP server provides UUIDs which provide the same ordering as arrival time, so would be a decent key to use for a default sort order. What is the sort key used if there is no explicit user choice?
As the other bug contains a committed patch, I'm closing this one as a duplicate. *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 563954 ***