360982 - Mailbox Display: Add a 'date/time received' option as well as date sent

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Penelope Graveyard :: General, enhancement, P5)

Description

[Matt Dudziak]

From the wiki:
(1) Can we get a timestamp on when an email was recieved on my machine, as well as when it was sent

Many other mail clients (like OS X Mail) have both 'Date Sent' and 'Date Received' columns. Penelope should also keep track of, and optionally display in the TOC, the date the messages was received by the client. If you agree, vote for this bug.

Comment 1

[David Morrison]

I'm not sure that two columns are needed becasue that wastes screen space. But the information should definitely be available somewhere.

Comment 2

[Matt Dudziak]

(In reply to comment #1)
> I'm not sure that two columns are needed becasue that wastes screen space. But
> the information should definitely be available somewhere.
> 

Agreed, sort of. I see no reason NOT to make it an available column, as the column can be turned off if you do not like it, but it should definitely be available elsewhere so that you do not NEED to have the column turned on...

Comment 3

[Roberta Millstein]

I know we're not supposed to just agree, but will it help if I beg???  So many people can't seem to get their computer clocks set right, and so their mail doesn't sort properly.

Comment 4

[David Morrison]

(In reply to comment #2)
> Agreed, sort of. I see no reason NOT to make it an available column, as the
> column can be turned off if you do not like it, but it should definitely be
> available elsewhere so that you do not NEED to have the column turned on...

Yes, of course a column can be disabled, so that is ok. I wonder whether people will ever want to see both the header date and the received date at the same time? Would it be possible to toggle the column betweeen the header date and the received date by, say, option-clicking the heading of the column?

Or maybe make each column heading a popup menu showing all the possible columns that could be displayed. If you the wanted to look at a normally-hidden column, it would be easy to just view it in one of the existing columns without having to go into the settings.

Comment 5

[Matt Dudziak]

(In reply to comment #4)
> (In reply to comment #2)
> > Agreed, sort of. I see no reason NOT to make it an available column, as the
> > column can be turned off if you do not like it, but it should definitely be
> > available elsewhere so that you do not NEED to have the column turned on...
> 
> Yes, of course a column can be disabled, so that is ok. I wonder whether people
> will ever want to see both the header date and the received date at the same
> time? Would it be possible to toggle the column betweeen the header date and
> the received date by, say, option-clicking the heading of the column?
> 
> Or maybe make each column heading a popup menu showing all the possible columns
> that could be displayed. If you the wanted to look at a normally-hidden column,
> it would be easy to just view it in one of the existing columns without having
> to go into the settings.
> 


The way Thunderbird works (and thus the way Penelope will work) is that you can enabled/disable columns without going to the settings. There is a popup menu on the right side of the mailbox window (to the right of all the column headers) where you can select which columns to display.

Comment 6

[David]

*** Bug 361712 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 7

[jwq]

See Core Bug 166254 for extended discussion of this.

Comment 8

[Joseph W Donahue]

This is not a current Eudora feature.  There is a related core bug.  There are going to be differences between Eudora and Penelope v1 due to the inclusion of so much Thunderbird code. 

If I could vote no, I would do so here.  I do however agree with the sentiment.  I hate it when my emails do not sort properly, but that is most often due to spam and ever since Eudora included spam filtering the issue has been less painful.

Comment 9

[David]

(In reply to comment #8)
> I do however agree with the sentiment.
> I hate it when my emails do not sort properly,

My interest is not sorting bugs but nailing down when mail was delivered, i.e. solving finger-pointing about slow delivery.

Comment 10

[Joseph W Donahue]

(In reply to comment #9)
> (In reply to comment #8)
> > I do however agree with the sentiment.
> > I hate it when my emails do not sort properly,
> 
> My interest is not sorting bugs but nailing down when mail was delivered, i.e.
> solving finger-pointing about slow delivery.
> 

I am very familiar with that issue.  A "time I received this email" time-stamp is no more reliable in the eyes of the sender or any intermediaries than the current time-stamping scheme.  But it could help cooperating parties to resolve exactly where there might be a problem.  It's a hard problem to solve in reality, but a laudable goal.

Still, it seems like a Thunderbird core issue.  Penelope v1 is about getting Eudora features implemented in Thunderbird, first, then allowing for continued evolution in accordance with its user base.  I use Eudora and have an interest in seeing as many of it's features implemented in Penelope as possible.  Issues that are as relevant to both Thunderbird and Penelope as this one, should be dealt with in Thunderbird.  At least an attempt should be made there first.

Comment 11

[Matt Dudziak]

> 
> Still, it seems like a Thunderbird core issue.  Penelope v1 is about getting
> Eudora features implemented in Thunderbird, first, then allowing for continued
> evolution in accordance with its user base.  I use Eudora and have an interest
> in seeing as many of it's features implemented in Penelope as possible.  Issues
> that are as relevant to both Thunderbird and Penelope as this one, should be
> dealt with in Thunderbird.  At least an attempt should be made there first.
> 

The whole idea of entering all the bugs and feature requests here in Bugzilla is so that we can get an idea what the end users really want and focus on those first. It is likely that many of the high-priority changes will be bringing Eudora features to Thunderbird (Penelope), but it is also likely that some Penelope features will be new ideas that are NOT part of Eudora.

By voting for the features you would like to see, and NOT voting for those you do not like, we begin to get a clear idea of what is important to users as a whole, and what is not.

This is not to say we won't put in our 'pet features' regardless of user votes, but the votes will guide us when deciding what to work on....

Matt

Comment 12

[humanengr]

(In reply to comment #11)
> 
> The whole idea of entering all the bugs and feature requests here in Bugzilla
> is so that we can get an idea what the end users really want and focus on those
> first. It is likely that many of the high-priority changes will be bringing
> Eudora features to Thunderbird (Penelope), but it is also likely that some
> Penelope features will be new ideas that are NOT part of Eudora.
> 
> By voting for the features you would like to see, and NOT voting for those you
> do not like, we begin to get a clear idea of what is important to users as a
> whole, and what is not.
> 
> This is not to say we won't put in our 'pet features' regardless of user votes,
> but the votes will guide us when deciding what to work on....

I've been opting not to vote for items I generally agree with but consider lower priority. I imagine others have been doing likewise. Perhaps the voting mechanism should be more finely grained with priorities -- in effect: Do this ASAP, Do at some point, Don't care/whatever, Don't ever do this. 

If this has been discussed and not adopted, can someone give me a pointer to the discussion.

humanengr

Comment 13

[Matt Dudziak]

We currently support both a 'Date' column which is based on the sender's date (the Date: Header) and a 'Received' column in the message list, so I am marking this as 'worksforme' (as it is already there ;-) )