[Alpine-info] weird behavior in saving messages from one folder to another

[Jacob Wegelin]

On Mon, 30 Jun 2008, Benjamin R. Haskell wrote:


> On Mon, 30 Jun 2008, Jacob Wegelin wrote:

>

>> 

>> I went into saved-messages, which contained 2156 messages.

>> 

>> $ d  -- to sort them by date

>> 

>> The first few messages look like this:

>>

>>  A    1 02/26/2003 james levy                                    (25K) Re: 

>> seeking Swiss German language instruction + A    2 02/26/2003 james levy 

>> (19K) Re: seeking Swiss German language instruction + A    3 02/26/2003 

>> james levy                                    (21K) Re: seeking Swiss 

>> German language instruction +      4 06/06/2007 Debie Schilling (5K) 

>> Requesting your May CTSC / CCRC Activity Reports +      5 08/09/2007 Elaine 

>> Odell

>> 

>> Then I did

>> 

>> ; a  -- to select all

>> 

>> a s saved2008_06_30  y -- to save a copy of every message in the 

>> newly-sorted message folder to a new folder, which is supposed to be sorted 

>> by date.

>> 

>> Then I went into saved2008_06_30  and did

>> 

>> ctrl w ctrl y -- to go to the first few messages. This is what I see:

>> 

>>

>>       1 08/28/2007 Mail Delivery System                           (2K) 

>> Undelivered Mail Returned to Sender + A    2 Jan  4     Ryan Schmidt (6K) 

>> Re: error installing DarwinPorts or MacPorts: no acceptable C compiler - 3 

>> Jan  5     To: apu1 at weibell.no                            (8K) Re: 

>> [Alpine-info] how to set up alpine to receive and send email + A    4 Jan 

>> 5 macports-users-request at lists.macosforge.org    (3K) confirm 

>> 16400e633959fc13453a2da52453baeff28cdadd +      5 Jan  5 

>> macports-users-bounces at lists.macosforge.org    (2K) You have been 

>> unsubscribed from the macports-users mailing list -      6 Jan  5     To: 

>> Ryan Schmidt

>> 

>> 

>> Both folders have the same number of messages. It appears that no messages 

>> have been *dropped*; it's just that in the process of copying them to a new 

>> folder, they are unsorted, or re-sorted.

>> 

>> Is there a better way to permanently sort the messages in a pine "folder"?

>> 

>> Jake

>

> Perhaps you have the following set?

>

>  [ Advanced User Preferences ]

> ...

>      [ ]  Save Combines Copies (may be out of order)


Bingo. I did M S C (main, setup, config), and then scrolled down (by repeatedly hitting spacebar and so forth) to Advanced User Preferences. As the help file says, this had been X-ed "on" by default. I un-X-ed it, and then was able to save messages in the order in which they appeared in the source folder *after* sorting.

Is there a way to sort messages on more than one field? For instance, can one sort by name and, within name, by date?

Thanks

Jake


>

>

> The help text:

>

>                     FEATURE: Save Combines Copies (may be out of order)

>

> This feature will optimize an aggregate copy operation, if possible, by 

> issuing a single IMAP COPY command with a list of the messages to be copied. 

> This feature is set by default. This may reduce network traffic and elapsed 

> time for the Save. However, many IMAP servers (including the UW IMAP server) 

> do not preserve the order of messages when this optimization is applied. If 

> this feature is not set, Alpine will copy each message individually and the 

> order of the messages will be preserved.

>