Pine Help suggestion re 'enable-dot-folders'

[NM Public]

The Pine built-in Help for enable-dot-folders is this:

When this feature is set, folders beginning with dot (".")
may be added and viewed.

But, setting this feature actually lets you view both folders and
directories that begin with a dot, so I suggest that this Help
text be changed to this:

When this feature is set, folders and directories beginning
with dot (".") may be added and viewed.

I discovered this while I was trying to figure out a way to hide
my folders that are empty, but still display my directories with
the same name that are not empty. I was hoping that if I named
all my directories with a leading dot and unset this feature I
might get what I want. Unfortunately I didn't. What I really
need, and I've mentioned before is a feature named something like
this:

quell-empty-folders

Thanks for considering this!
Nancy

--
Nancy McGough ~ <http://www.ii.com> ~ <http://deflexion.com>
IMAP, pine, procmail, data deflexion, infinity, and more
> > > Please keep the discussion in the group < < <

[Gopi Sundaram]

On Fri, 18 Nov 2005, NM Public wrote:

> But, setting this feature actually lets you view both folders and
> directories that begin with a dot, so I suggest that this Help text be
> changed to this:

The terminology here is so muddled that I'm not sure what the right
wording would be. To many, "folder" and "directory" are synonymous. If
only people would start calling them "mailboxes".

> --

Ummmm, I think you're missing a space there.

--
Gopi Sundaram
http://www.zrox.net/Mail/Pine/

[Mark Crispin]

On Fri, 18 Nov 2005, Gopi Sundaram wrote:
>> But, setting this feature actually lets you view both folders and
>> directories that begin with a dot, so I suggest that this Help text be
>> changed to this:
> The terminology here is so muddled that I'm not sure what the right wording
> would be. To many, "folder" and "directory" are synonymous. If only people
> would start calling them "mailboxes".

That's a battle that was lost many years ago.

Personally, I detest the term "folder". It's technically inaccurate and
ambiguous in multiple ways. In popular use, it goes back to the Macintosh
GUI and its icon of a file-cabinet folder for a directory; and now has
come to mean "any named collection of things".

The problem is that there are now many types of "folders", and there is no
compatibility or commonality between a "folder" and a "folder".

For what it's worth, other people reject the term "mailbox" for INBOX (and
other IMAP named objects that hold messages) as being technically
inaccurate and ambiguous! :-)

For historical (hysterical?) documentation, the debate went something like
this:
"Mailbox means an email address. IMAP has folders."
"But, email address is a perfectly good name, and folder is ambiguous.
Why have two names for one thing, and an ambiguous name for something
else?"
"No, you got it wrong. The mailbox is the part to the left of the @.
That's different from what IMAP has."
"But, the part to the left of the @ also has a name: it's called a local
part."
"Nobody will ever say local part. It's a mailbox."
"Arrrrrrrrrrrgh!"

Even the IMAP specification, which otherwise uses the term "mailbox"
throughout, is compelled to define "mailbox" in terms of the evil f-word:
[...] IMAP4rev1 permits manipulation of mailboxes (remote
message folders) in a way that is functionally equivalent to local
folders.

So we're stuck with the f-word. I still spit against the wind and prefer
to use "mailbox" in the name of technical precision, but even I am
sometimes compelled to use the f-word with novice users.

Of course, we could just start calling them "blurdybloops":
http://staff.washington.edu/mrc/blurdybloop.html

:-) :-) :-)

-- Mark --

http://panda.com/mrc
Democracy is two wolves and a sheep deciding what to eat for lunch.
Liberty is a well-armed sheep contesting the vote.

[Eduardo Chappa]

*** Gopi Sundaram (pgop...@cs.sc.edueth) wrote in comp.mail.pine today:

:) On Fri, 18 Nov 2005, NM Public wrote:
:)
:) > But, setting this feature actually lets you view both folders and
:) > directories that begin with a dot, so I suggest that this Help text
:) > be changed to this:
:)
:) The terminology here is so muddled that I'm not sure what the right
:) wording would be. To many, "folder" and "directory" are synonymous. If
:) only people would start calling them "mailboxes".

To me the word folder and directory are completely different. A folder is
a place where messages are saved. A directory is a place where folders are
saved. That's the way I think about it. (Before anyone starts being picky
about my explanations, please understand that I just paraphrased an idea,
I did not mean to state it precisely).

What I mean to say is that is that folder and directory are in two
different separate levels of organization. I think the word mailbox is
also correct for what I usually call folder. After all, outside my house
there is a real mailbox.

This is probably because I was not born looking at icons of folders for
directories, so I've never called directories "folders", but I can
understand why some people would use the terms as synonyms.

It seems that most people agree that a folder is a level of organization.
It is just that not everyone agrees what is the proper level of
organization that the word represents.

--
Eduardo
Patches/Help: http://www.math.washington.edu/~chappa/pine/
XML/RSS feed: http://www.math.washington.edu/~chappa/pine/pine.xml
Please send spam to webmaster@localhost

[Chris Game]

Eduardo Chappa wrote:

> This is probably because I was not born looking at icons of folders for
> directories, so I've never called directories "folders", but I can
> understand why some people would use the terms as synonyms.

Unix people grew up with directories (as part of the file storage
system), Microsoft preferred the term 'folder' as part of the path
definition of the location of a file, so folder is the preferred
term for Windows users. How Pine stores the data and presents it in
its interface is a separate issue. I noticed in setting up PC-Pine
that the various top level 'Folders' as the program calls them, and
what appears when one hits 'L' from the top level, are in fact
single files stored in the <whatever>\mail folder on my machine.
This file/folder confusion continues in various instructions on
web-sites showing how to set up incoming folders and the like, which
doesn't help newbies (like me) trying to set up their systems!

--
Chris Game

How to report bugs effectively:
http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/bugs.html

[NM Public]

I'm very aware of these terminology problems and I've struggled
with them for years while writing about email and IMAP. My latest
attempt at clarifying things is in the Terminology section of my
IMAP Service Providers page, which is here:

<http://www.ii.com/internet/messaging/imap/isps/#terms>

But, all of this irrelevant in the context of Pine because Pine
uses the terms 'folder' and 'directory' for the email objects
that look like this:

...........................
: directory :
: :
: +-----------------+ :
: | folder | :
: | | :
: | +---------+ | :
: | | message | | :
: | +---------+ | :
: +-----------------+ :
...........................

If you look at the Pine SETUP CONFIGURATION screen (by typing
MSC), you'll see lots of occurrences of 'folder' and 'directory'
and no occurrence of 'mailbox'. The issue I brought up can be
fixed in a number of ways:

* Change 'enable-dot-folders' to
'enable-dot-folders-and-dot-directories'

* Change the behavior of 'enable-dot-folders'

* Leave the feature name and its behavior as they are and fix
the Pine Help.

My suggestion was to do the last one!
I hope this makes sense,

[Mark Crispin]

On Sat, 19 Nov 2005, NM Public wrote:
> If you look at the Pine SETUP CONFIGURATION screen (by typing MSC), you'll
> see lots of occurrences of 'folder' and 'directory' and no occurrence of
> 'mailbox'.

Pine *never* uses the term "mailbox". In fact, when displaying a message
from the c-client library, it changes any occurrence of "mailbox"
(including IMAP server messages) to "folder". For example, the error
message:
Can't open mailbox foo: no such mailbox
is displayed by Pine as:
Can't open folder foo: no such folder

[Alan J. Flavell]

On Sat, 19 Nov 2005, Mark Crispin wrote:

> Pine *never* uses the term "mailbox". In fact, when displaying a
> message from the c-client library, it changes any occurrence of
> "mailbox" (including IMAP server messages) to "folder".

So it does! When I try to open my non-existent folder called
"mailbox", it claims
^^^^^^^
Can't open folder "mail/folder": no such folder.
^^^^^^
Oops. SCNR.