Re: [Evolution] Applying filters automatically.

[Paul Smith <psmith gnu org>]

On Fri, 2008-02-01 at 20:36 +0000, Pete Biggs wrote:
> Sure it can be annoying, but doing things another way can be annoying
> to other people.  If all mail programs did everything exactly the same
> way, it wouldn't matter what you use.

This issue comes up every week or two on the list, it seems.  It's
obvious that Evolution is not behaving as people expect, regardless of
the technical details behind it.  In situations like that we MUST either
(a) fix the behavior to work as expected as much as possible, OR (b)
document the situation so people can understand what's going on!

Although I don't suffer from this problem myself, I feel for people who
do have it.

I think the first step is to add a note to the Evo FAQ describing how
Evo works today: at least then when people write in asking what's going
on we can point them to a definitive explanation.  There is an entry in
the Evo FAQ today but it's REALLY minimal: it mostly talks about
mis-ordered filters rather than "new" vs. not-new messages.

Next, we need to investigate how other email clients handle this
situation!  If Thunderbird does the expected thing, somehow, while Evo
doesn't, then we need to find out how Thunderbird does it and then
either do something similar so Evo works just as well, OR add notes to
the FAQ describing WHY Evo won't do something similar: maybe it's a
performance impact, as Pete suggests, or maybe it's something else.
Whatever it is, we need to publish the technical reasons so people
understand them.

Maybe we can even discuss various IMAP server plugins (or whatever you
call them) and which ones have issues with "new" or not.

Finally, if the issue really is performance or something like that,
maybe we can add a configuration option to Evo to allow people to select
a slower behavior, and still get mail filtering.  I know the Gnome HIG
is against tons of configuration options, but ...

-- 
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 Paul D. Smith <psmith gnu org>                 http://make.mad-scientist.us
 "Please remain calm--I may be mad, but I am a professional."--Mad Scientist