[Evolution] Mail Folder Re-syncronize (feature request)

[Mark Phillips <mark ist flinders edu au>]

Recently I wrote to the list about the corruption of my "Sent" folder.
Evolution is almost at the stage where I could use it properly, except I
can't afford to have mail folder corruptions happening now and then
causing me to lose my mail.  The solution, I thought, is to do regular
backups of the mbox file in each folder.  That way, if one gets
corrupted, I can just restore the backup.

The only problem with this, is that I believe evolution extracts various
bits of information from the mbox file, and stores this elsewhere.  So
just restoring the mbox file won't necessarily work.  What is needed is
some kind of folder "resyncronize" option, which causes the folder to
look at the mbox file and recreate all the related files so that they
match mbox.

And this leads me to a more general comment about the philosophy of
Evolution...

Evolution seems to be modelled on MS Windows mailer, Microsoft Outlook,
so I'm told.  I don't use windows so I don't know from first hand
experience.  While Evolution has borrowed many good ideas from the
Windows environment, I think it should endevour to take the best from
both worlds.  Ie don't lose the good things about the unix way of doing
things.

An example of this is cut and paste.  The unix "select text with left
and right buttions and paste with the middle button" doesn't work
consistently within Evolution.

Another deeper example is with the design philosophy of Evolution.  The
windows philosophy is to "hide the underlying structures from the user,
and only allow him to play with settings you want him to play with".
The unix philosophy is roughly "let the user see as much of the
underlying structure as he wants to see, and let him play with as much
of the structure as he wants to --- at his own risk."

I think Evolution should incorporate a bit more of the unix philosophy
into Evolution.  That is, give the user the option of seeing more of the
underlying structure if he so desires.  If he wants to play with folders
and surrounding structures manually, then he should be able to.  If he
wants to play with internal representations of things, then let him.
(There will be some limits of course, but it
would be nice to be able to get a better handle on what the internals
are doing, especially when the software is still a bit buggy.)

Perhaps some of these things will be included with Evolution later?  Or
perhaps people disagree on these design philosophy ideas?  I thought I
would raise them anyway.

Cheers, and keep up the good work,

Mark.

-- 
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        "They told me I was gullible ... and I believed them!"