[ale] message header to identify "read" email

[Michael H. Warfield]

Hey Jim...

	Small world (inside joke)...

On Fri, 2007-10-26 at 19:23 -0400, Jim Popovitch wrote:
> I need some general input/advice.  I am using something (think:
> procmail) to tag some emails prior to reading them in Evolution.  What I
> want to do is add a header to the message (easy enough) and then a
> filter in Evolution to recognize the header and set the message as
> already read (again, easy enough).  NOTE: This will be something
> distributed to others.

> What I need input on is the name of the message header field.  I thought
> of using something like "X-MessageRead = Yes", but was wondering if
> there is a standard header that might be used elsewhere for the same
> purpose.  Ideally it would be nice if there was a known header that
> email applications would automatically recognize and use.

> Any and all feedback is appreciated.

	Ok...  I don't know how "standard" this is (since it involved some "X-"
headers, obviously not totally) but this is what I see with Dovecot and
mbox mailboxes.  Mutt seems to intrinsically understand these in local
mailboxes as well, so it's not just imap.

New:
	No special header (rather absence of "Status:" or "X-Status:" headers).
If you strip the Status: header from a message in an mbox mailbox, it
becomes "New".  Using the change status mode in mutt to change a message
back to "New" removes all Status: and X-Status: headers.

Old:	"Status: O"
	(Old?  Observed? ???)

Read:	"Status: RO"
	(Read Old?)

Deleted:
	"Status: RO"
	"X-Status: D"

Replied to:
	"Status: RO"
	"X-Status: A"

	New is unseeen and unindexed.  Old, in this case, seems to be that it's
been seen (subject, whatever) but not read.  Read means that the MTA
actually viewed it or previewed it.  Deleted adds the "X-Status D" to
"Read".  I'm guess that "A" is answered.

	There must be some documents on these somewhere but I'm not sure where,
and they don't apply to Maildir mailboxes, which store the status in the
file name (or maybe they do, I just haven't looked).

> Thx,

> -Jim P.

	Mike
-- 
Michael H. Warfield (AI4NB) | (770) 985-6132 |  mhw at WittsEnd.com
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