RE: [Evolution] IMAP Trash folder?

[Eric Lambart <lambart got net>]

NotZed may consider this off-topic merely by virtue of the fact that it's a topic Not Open To Discussion, but 
I'll answer 
your question anyway.  It certainly has to do with Evolution and the Evolution User Experience.

10/23/2001 6:19:38 PM, Eric Newman <enewman ati com> wrote:

>       > -----Original Message-----
>       > From: Eric Lambart [mailto:lambart got net]
>       > Sent: Tuesday, October 23, 2001 5:51 PM
>       > To: Zot O'Connor; NotZed
>       > Cc: Evolution List
>       > Subject: Re: [Evolution] IMAP Trash folder?
>       >
>       > I find it really annoying to
>       > lose my messages permanently when I expunge the source
>       > mailbox; they should remain in the Trash until I
>       > expunge/empty that, too.
>
>       Why would you ever expunge a source mailbox at all, except to
>       remove all the deleted messages in it? Are you saying you want to
>       have 2 kinds of deleted messages? 

I only want one kind of deleted message.  The kind that gets copied into my Trash folder (not vfolder) and 
marked 
deleted in my source folder.

Of course, the larger a mailbox gets (as long as you're using mbox or another one-file format anyway), the 
harder it is to 
find the wheat amongst the chaff, so to speak, and of course, the slower the MUA gets.  

So like most folks I delete messages I don't want to save, which (with all mail clients I've used before) 
doesn't really 
delete the message; it just flags it for deletion.  That's the first step; less clutter to look at.  When I 
want to clean up and 
optimize my mbox file, I purge/expunge/whatever the folder.

What if I realize I actually need some information from one of those messages I deleted?  No problem, it's in 
my Trash... 
might be hard to find, but I know it'll be there.  With Evolution, you're Out Of Luck.  Byebye.

Yeah so meanwhile, there is this Trash folder that of course gets bigger and bigger and bigger but that's not 
a problem 
for me as I rarely look in it.  New deleted messages get appended to the end which is a fairly clean and 
quick operation 
no matter how big the file.  Periodically I'll go into the Trash mailbox, and clear out anything more than a 
few months old; 
at that point I probably won't ever go looking for those things.  My Trash always remains a manageable size, 
my normal 
mail folders remain As Small And Quick As Possible.

So to answer your question, you'd expunge a source mailbox to optimize it (by deleting the messages in it).  
The Trash 
folder would have "backups" of all those messages until you eventually CHOOSE to send them into the void as 
well.  If 
you use maildir I suppose you don't care about mailbox size but I haven't chosen to make that change yet.  
mbox format 
has worked fine for me for countless years.

>       there when you want to _really_ delete them. Seems silly to me.

Well, Eric, everyone's favorite system seems silly to someone else.  I wouldn't call Evo's silly... just 
annoying and 
counterintutive to ME (though I'm obviously not alone) as well as a deviation from a methodology that, IMHO, 
didn't 
need fixing.  But so be it, it's done.  I'm not asking them to change it, I'm just sympathizing with Zot's 
surprise at Ximian 
choosing to do things their own way; I don't think it was fair to flame him for that.

Anyway, I care a lot less about all this now that all (?) the new-message-in-folder bugs seem to be fixed.  
Until recently I 
would have to perodically open each folder and toggle Show/Hide Deleted Messages to get new messages to 
appear.  
That was incredibly annoying on its own but what really got me was having to see (and wait for Evolution to 
digest and 
display) all the messages I'd recently deleted.  Because of that, I expunged folders much much more often 
than I 
normally would, and discovered to my dismay that my Trash was getting emptied simultaneously (without 
warning) when 
I went looking for messages I'd changed my mind about deleting.

> One kind that stays in the
>       folder, and one kind that you dragged or moved into the Trash
>       folder? Then why even use a trash folder? You might as well just
>       move / drag them into a regular folder and delete / expunge them

Perhaps I would; but there's no one-keypress way to do that so it's out of the question.

Please forgive my silliness, and I'll forgive yours :-)

--Eric