Re: What does check-new in browser menu actually do?

[Ian Zimmerman]

At the risk of following up to myself (one foot in internet hell!),
having done another little investigation, here's what I found.

The code responsible for the check-new command is in browser.c, in
functions _mutt_select_file (public) and examine_mailboxes (static).
examine_mailboxes ultimately passes the job to mutt_buffy_check, but
calls the latter with the force argument set to 0, which means nothing
will happen unless the mailbox checking timeout has expired.

Since this code executes in response to an explicit user request, this
seems strange.  What is the reason for not passing force = 1 here?

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What does check-new in browser menu actually do?

[Ian Zimmerman]

I often spend lots of time in the browser view, in fact it is my default
interface to mutt.  When I get bored I hit the check-new key combo.  I
think I have never once seen new mail detected that way, though.  When I
get _really_ bored I hit the y key to return to the index of the last
mailbox I was in.  And lo, many times _immediately_ after doing that I
see a buffy notification on the bottom telling me about new mail in
other mailboxes.

So, I have a sneaking suspicion that check-new doesn't do what it's
supposed to, or else I quite misunderstand its purpose.  I cannot get
any more detail from the documentation; I could of course check the
source code but I feel lazy today.  Can the experts help?

As a bonus question, why can't mutt automatically check for new mail in
the background when it is in the browser, the same way as it does in the
index?  It's yet another irritating inconsistency.

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Please *no* private copies of mailing list or newsgroup messages.
Rule 420: All persons more than eight miles high to leave the court.