Randy Noval wrote:
actually, default behavior for mail clients that mark as deleted rather than move the message to the trash folder is to leave it marked as unread. they are different statuses that have nothing to do with each other. what you're talking about is combining the "delete" function with the "mark as read" function. they are separate for a reason. what you're saying is when you "mark as deleted" you also want to "mark as read" which could be a user option, but not one that is by default because they are not the same.
Which mail clients? I can only test with Thunderbird, but without a doubt it marks deleted messages as "seen" and futhermore does not restore the "unseen" flag if you undelete a message. I think a perfectly rational argument could be made for both cases, and that it depends solely on how you use/interpret the "new" flag. For some the act of deleting a message is enough to mark it as seen. To use an analogy, if I throw away a piece of snail mail unopened and my girlfriend asks me if I've seen it, my response would be "yeah, I saw it, and I threw it away."
In any case, given my opinion that it could go either way, I'm more interested in the consensus of other clients. Given a scenario where there are two "right" answers, I'd prefer to program the more popular "right" answer.
-Charles