[Users] Views keep getting changed on exit ?

[Dustin Miller]

One thing I had forgotten about was that this issue only shows up for
me when I exit Claws (CM) with the message view hidden. I thought I
would look into this in more detail for two of my systems and include
some information here in case it is helpful for anyone to understand
what may be going on. The systems are:

* Linux Mint 20.3, Xfce, Greybird-Pro theme, CM v4.1.0 ("LM")
* Linux Mint Debian Edition 5, Xfce, Greybird-Pro theme, CM v4.1.1
  ("LMDE")

For the relevant settings from the '.claws-mail/clawsrc' file, I will
use the following key:

S = summaryview_height value. M = messageview_height value. On/Off =
messageview_visible value.

* 1. If message view (MV) is off when CM starts, it doesn't matter what
  the S and M values are; when MV is shown it ignores the values in
  clawsrc and applies 'default' (i.e. always the same) values of S = 95
  and M = 555 (LM), 551 (LMDE). If no other changes are made, these
  values are then written to clawsrc when CM closes.

* 2. If MV is on when CM starts, then whatever S and M values are in
  clawsrc will be honored throughout that entire session.

* 3. So the reason why the issue only appeared for me when I closed CM
  w/ MV hidden is not because my changes had not been saved as S = 170
  and M = 480 (LM), 476 (LMDE) (i.e. my current preference), but rather
  because MV was set to 'off' in clawsrc. If I manually changed this
  setting to 'on' before starting CM again, then I have the same result
  as in #2 above with my desired values being correctly applied.

So it seems like the trouble-point for my case is when the MV is
manually shown (in the context of CM starting with it hidden). Under
our current assumption that this is not a CM bug, then at the point
when I instruct CM to show the message view, it appears that something
outside of CM is forcing CM to ignore the values in clawsrc and use a
different but consistent set of values, which CM will then remember
throughout the session and write to clawsrc on exit unless I change
them.

I don't really know what to make of this, but I thought I'd post these
extra details here on the list in case others have any ideas on how to
move forward with troubleshooting this. Meanwhile I'll keep trying to
learn more about how GTK3 is used by various software as they interact
with each other.

Cheers,
Dustin