Forgetful columns

Frustratingly, the work-around does not help me in that I need the "All Messages" mailbox to be different to Default Columns. It's the one that is selected when searching and so I want it to display some extra columns: To and Source Mailbox).

I set those columns multiple times per day, and every time the mailbox is re-selected, my settings are gone and it reverts (presumably to default columns).

Screen recording: https://curated-my.sharepoint.com/:v:/g/personal/christianbailey_cu...

(And to confirm, running defaults delete com.freron.MailMate MmMailboxRelatedStates in Terminal does not help.)

To the above list, we should now add:

№ 3190 (**new**), 2021-01-31. Bart Lipman. default columns don’t stick

Just caught up to this. It didn't work for me -- I followed the directions, but the option Benny says to select is greyed out... Possibly related to another ticket I just added that MailMate is not working at all for me now...

@Bart, usually the problem when “Use as Default Columns” is grayed out is that you need to change the “Outline Column” using View > Columns > Outline Column >.

I’ve never been able to suss out what this “outline column” is actually for — but once you’ve changed it to something other than what it’s set to, you should be able to select “Use as Default Columns.”

HTH...

@Alan, thanks for that. I never use threaded view, so I haven’t had a chance to notice #1.

Now that you point it out, I see just what you mean about #2, though. It’s kind of cool that we can set that!

@Erik: Impressive work on the collection of links. I'm sorry you had to spend time on that, but maybe it's what was needed to get this issue onto the top of my list. As I've stated quite a few times, I do find it to be an embarrassing issue, but it's just not easily fixed. There are 2 somewhat mixed reasons for that: 1. It's hard to reproduce. 2. The system itself is badly designed/inflexible. I would prefer fixing it by focusing on item 2, but that has also meant that I keep having to postpone doing it (some times after attempting a rewrite).

Enough excuses. I'll revisit my (many) notes on mailbox state and see if I can come up with some plan for either more easily debugging this part of MailMate or rewriting it. Simple reproducible steps using the latest test release of MailMate (after clearing MmMailboxRelatedStates) are always helpful.

(With respect to junk state on some tickets. There's a bug in the lighthouseapp system which puts some tickets into a semi-junk state. I fix it when I see them, but the real fix is probably to stop using lighthouseapp -- most likely switching to a Github issue tracker instead. Another item on the todo.)

@benny my video linked above has simple, reproducible steps after clearing MmMailboxRelatedStates. Let me know if you prefer me to write them out, but I think the images are much clearer than written description. I cropped the video for privacy, though the main steps are still clear. And I am happy to send you a full capture to let you see exactly what I'm doing.

@Christian: Still cannot reproduce it. It seems you have added other columns before the video starts, but I don't know if that might matter. Note the “View > Distortion Mode” which is useful when making screenshots/captures.

There might be some error message involved when it fails. Could you try reproducing it after launching MailMate from a Terminal window like this:

defaults delete com.freron.MailMate MmMailboxRelatedStates
/Applications/MailMate.app/Contents/MacOS/MailMate

Also, how do you switch mailbox and to which one? (This might also matter.)

I usually switch between mailboxes with:
- custom key bindings - perform a search which defaults to the "All Messages" mailbox

I launched from Terminal as above and was able to recreate "Forgetful Columns" first time.

Then quit, reset defaults again, and recorded a video. This time columns were remembered!

Tried it a third time and columns remembered. So I don't think worth sending the video.

There must be something else users are doing at some point to trigger the behavior.

Okay, I was able to recreate it. After resetting defaults.

• set custom columns for All Messages (add To & Source Mailbox, disable threading)
• switch between mailboxes several times using Custom Key Bindings.
• perform a search (takes you to All Messages mailbox) [columns are forgotten]

video: https://curated-my.sharepoint.com/:v:/g/personal/christianbailey_cu...

@Benny, thank you so much for turning to this. I understand the context (and embarrasment and frustration) all too well, and I suspect most of us reading here are probably developer-adjacent enough that we can all empathize, or at least sympathize, with your position.

I hadn’t realized that you’d never been able to recreate the issue. I’ve really never been sure what I might be doing that causes it, but I have to say that @Christian’s steps are all things that I do from time to time — so I’ll see whether I can reproduce the problem here following his concise outline.

@Christian, FYI, for whatever reason, I’m unable to view your .mov file, either in the browser (Safari, Orion, SigmasOS) or as a download (QuickTime Player). In every environment I simply see some sort of spinner, and nothing loads. It’s quite possibly a content-blocking issue on my end, though, so if others aren’t having this trouble, forget I mentioned it.

@Erik M-H it loads for me in the browser. Possibly your firewall is blocking curated-my.sharepoint.com? Shared here also through iCloud: https://www.icloud.com/iclouddrive/0155cHf7EAARADEkJoW75c5VA#MailMa...

Just a quick update: It does appear it might be related to key bindings. At least I noticed the the disappearing column settings myself just now. I'll be looking into it today or tomorrow. Maybe there's a chance of a quick fix instead of a slow rewrite (which is still needed though).

@Erik: I have been able to reproduce issues in the past and I've also fixed them, but this feature has always been very fragile because changes to somewhat unrelated code can easily have side effects. Some times fixing one thing will just break another. We'll see if that happens again :)

For the record, the bug was introduced when fixing an unrelated key binding issue in r5928.

Can confirm that Columns have been remembered since updating to r5942.

Wow, this is a big quality of life improvement. @benny, thank you for pulling yourself ways from the long-term fixes to resolve this one Benny. And thank you @Erik M-H for compiling the threads to move this out of the not reproducible category.

@Christian: Thanks for verifying. To be honest, I thought this was about some of the long standing issues with this feature. It took me some time to realize it was a new (and worse) bug.

Was also tracking this issue and related column issues. I had reverted back to 5918 because it was so frustrating. Thanks @benny for the fix.

I clean-installed test release r5950 a couple of days ago on a new machine (to act as a drone processor), and set the columns the way I wanted them. Everything was great. I created some new mailboxes early on, and their column settings matched my default exactly as expected.

I just created three new mailboxes a few minutes ago: all three had (matching) column settings — completely different from my default. I had to change the “outline column” (as I always have to in these situations), and then tried to “revert to default.” No dice.

I ran defaults delete com.freron.MailMate MmMailboxRelatedStates and re-start MailMate. Then I was able to “revert to default” properly.

So we’re not out of the woods yet....

And then I created a few more mailboxes, and suddenly every mailbox has screwed-up columns. Deleting the “RelatedStates” preference, re-launching MailMate, and “revert to default” has no effect on any mailbox. Evidently, I now need to redefine the default layout again.

So tired....

@Erik: Sorry about that! I'm also really tired of the related code. It has always been a mess. For the record, deleting MmMailboxRelatedStates should not delete the default column states explicitly saved. I did note a bug where the use/revert menu items are wrongly greyed out. Changing a column can be used to enable them again, and then you can revert to default columns. Sigh...

I’m sure you are, Benny! I can only imagine....

FWIW, in test build r5959, I can as always change the outline column in order to enable the use/revert menu items. It’s usually stuck on “From” and I change it to “Subject,” which is how it’s set for my default layout.

If I do nothing else, that change “sticks” even when I leave the mailbox and return to it.

But if I instead attempt to revert to default columns, not only do the columns not revert to my defined default, but the outline column changes back from “Subject” (which, again, is both what I’ve just set and also the default setting) to “From” (which I don’t want and never set) — and of course this also then grays out the “use” and “revert” menu items.

I can repeat the experiment endlessly with no change of behavior. I’ll update to r5964 and will post here if anything changes.

— Erik

Fyi, i just added a video to this issue to show the Column Width not being remembered when switching the layout: https://freron.lighthouseapp.com/projects/58672-mailmate/tickets/25...

Still completely unresolved, AFAICT, in MailMate 1.14 (r6052). 😢

Yes, still a mess. Next update should fix a little bit more though.