QotD: Stacks and Queues
Posted October 29th, 2004 @ 03:33pm by Erik J. Barzeski
Question: From Jeremy comes this: is your email a stack or a queue? In other words, do you have new messages at the top or the bottom?
My Answer: My newest messages are at the top. If something requires a reply, I hit reply and save as a draft (or write the reply and send it right away). Or, occasionally, mark it as unread and come back to it a few hours later. I keep messages until they're not needed anymore, then I delete or archive them.
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Posted 28 Oct 2004 at 4:10pm #
Definitely a stack. The reason being that Mail, in it's early incarnations did not remember if you had the message area scrolled all the way to the bottom. And thus I had it set as a stack.
These days however, I have an automatic archiving rules that automatically move things into their archive folders based on age. I would really like a rule that would detect flags though. That would be nice!
Posted 28 Oct 2004 at 4:24pm #
For me, it's a stack (just personal preference, no technical reason), but I have it sorted first by flaggedness and then by date. Whenever I have an email that requires a reply, I flag it so it'll constantly be at the top of the list until I reply to and unflag it.
Posted 28 Oct 2004 at 4:28pm #
Stack.
I have all my email accounts re-routed to Gmail, so most of my mail has been pre-filtered for spam before it even arrives. Any email that does not require a follow up or a reply is either archived or deleted.
If I need a follow-up then I'll use the star feature, anything else gets a label before I archive it.
Posted 28 Oct 2004 at 4:41pm #
My inbox is sorted most recent at the bottom. Messages which need action are kept bolded (unread) until such action happens. Then it's unbolded and moved to an appropriate local folder (inbox is imap).
Speaking of email, one of my favorite recent discoveries is Portable Thunderbird. All my email (multiple accounts, local folders, rules, junk mail settings, etc.) on a 512MB USB flash drive. PC only, though. But it works great.
Posted 29 Oct 2004 at 4:08pm #
Stack. That way, I can see the most recent emergency first. If older emergencies really are emergencies, someone will come find me anyway. I'd rather be occasionally on time than perpetually late.
Posted 04 Nov 2004 at 4:41pm #
Stack for email, with the same basic technique as Erik (use drafts to make sure I reply to messages needing replies when I have time, then deleting or archiving everything).
With PulpFiction, however, I'm forced into queue mode. Unlike in Mail, when deleting an item which is not the first item, PulpFiction then selects the next item UP, making it difficult to navigate the stack. (I can report this more clearly as an official feature/bug report somewhere if you'd like.)
Posted 04 Nov 2004 at 10:00pm #
Chris, that's not a bug, it's a feature. Delete (the one under "help") and backspace (the one under "F13") go in opposite directions. One deletes forward, the other deletes backwards.
Posted 04 Nov 2004 at 10:37pm #
Ah, that makes perfect sense. The reason it wasn't obvious to me is that my iBook only has a delete button. Fortunately, I tried fn-delete on a whim, and it works just like a backspace button 🙂
Thanks.