Re: [Evolution] IMAP and Expunge

[Patrick O'Callaghan <poc usb ve>]

On Tue, 2008-10-21 at 13:52 -0700, Al Niessner wrote:
> According to the manual (where the worms have not eaten yet anyway) and
> the tests I performed to double check the documentation given yours and
> Art's view of expunge, expunge means something different depending on
> context. If a folder is selected, ctrl-e empties just that folder but
> leaves the Trash folder in tact. Well, my 200 TB of trash is still there
> anyway including messages that used to be in the folder (an IMAP folder
> as I said before) that I expunged. Meanwhile, if I expunge the Trash
> folder or "empty trash", then they all go. All that seems to be in
> accord with the documentation. Sorry if there is a different idea of
> what expunge means, but the documentation and system behavior agree in
> this case.
>
> Yes, I read about the virtual delete and figured the trash folder was
> really just a reference to all of the messages that are hiding in other
> folders. How it is actually implemented did not seem all that important
> to me since it does have the behavior I am looking for. I can still
> imagine how you can expunge a single folder without loosing everything.
> If the email is copied to another folder (as move does with IMAP), then
> expunging a folder should leave messages in the trash that exist in
> another folder and have been deleted as well.
>
> Anyway, I am glad to know that it is the expunge term that has been
> causing the confusion. I am just glad that it works the way it does.

Sorry, I don't see where the confusion lies. Your definition of expunge
is exactly the one Evo uses, which is the standard IMAP definition:
permanently remove messages marked for deletion in a specific folder.

"Emptying the Trash" is simply the expunge action applied to all folders
with messages marked for deletion. In fact it couldn't mean anything
else given that IMAP has no inherent notion of a Trash folder and
different clients have different ideas of how to do this.

poc