[OU] sorting email

[Malcolm Austen]

On Wed, 04 Jun 2008 16:49:33 +0100, James Card <james at jdcard.com> wrote:

> ... If you click the header again the message list is
> presented in its natural, unsorted state -- with the messages *received*
> last at the bottom of the list -- and the sort icon is removed. This same
> scheme is used when sorting by From, Subject, or Size; click once to sort
> in ascending order, again to sort in descending order, and a third time  
> to return to unsorted.

Unfortunately James, that doesn't (IMHO) represent a useful definition of  
'received'. For instance, if I have my unread view in this 'unsorted'  
state and delete a message, then undelete it, it reappears at the end of  
the list rather than in it's priginal position.

> Alas, it is not possible to sort by the time received with the most  
> recent messages at the top of list, but the unsorted list is "sorted" by  
> the
> order the message was received. As far as I know, Opera does not actually
> store the date and time the message was received (and it is not part of
> the standard e-mail headers, like the Sent time is) so it not possible to
> sort by that criteria.

Outlook Express manages it, therefore Opera should be able to manage it :-)

> Each message is added to the end of the list as it
> is received, but no record is maintained of when that occurred.

I believe OE uses the most recent (i.e the first one to be found in a  
linear scan) mail server 'Received:' header in the message. As this  
timestamp comes from a server it is generally a meaningful quantity to  
sort on - and far more reliable than sorting on the basis of the arbitary  
timestamp of a users' computer!

= Malcolm.

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