Re: [Evolution] Message Filter vs. Search Folders - Open Discussion

[Philippe LeCavalier <support plecavalier com>]

On Wed, 2010-11-03 at 14:45 -0430, Patrick O'Callaghan wrote:
> On 11/3/10 2:24 PM, Philippe LeCavalier wrote:
> > On Wed, 2010-11-03 at 14:12 -0400, Philippe LeCavalier wrote:
> >>
> > <snipped>
> > I omitted the previous discussion because of this...
> > In the spirit of self-help I decided to play with Search Folders and I 
> > certainly answered my own question as to whther or not they're faster 
> > than mail filters - they are *allot* faster. Evo displayed ~2600 msg 
> > just about instantly. So my question now is, how do you handle the 
> > mail when using search folders?
>
> I'm not sure what you're comparing here. You mean downloading 2600 
> messages using filters is slower than visiting a search folder that 
> already has the messages in it?
> > It's been stated that one can have to much mail in a single folder. 
> > That said, it appears I still need msg filters to move mail into 
> > folders and then use search folders to drill down further. Thus, not 
> > achieving my goal of abandoning msg filters. Aren't msg filters a 
> > kind-of retro thing now anyway? What are all you guys doing?
>
> We old fogies are still using lots of filters (besides Junk, which is 
> always a filter of course). Of course I use some search folders as well, 
> but IMHO they would be more useful if one could rearrange the folder 
> list to locate them where one wants, not just at the end. I'd also love 
> to be able to quickly set up a search folder for mail to and from a 
> given correspondent, in order to keep track of conversations (sets of 
> threads involving the same people).
I think by internet standards I'm an 'old fogy' to.
> As to efficiency, I can't off-hand think of an obvious reason why search 
> folders should be faster than filters unless the criteria are just 
> simpler. In fact I suspect it's more a matter of perception than 
> reality, given that filters act just once and search folders need to do 
> some processing every time you visit them. And of course you need to 
> compare like with like in terms of matching criteria.
All my mail gets filtered when the headers are downloaded and since I've chosen to download mail locally the filters take a surprising amount of time to complete.
In other words, if I loaded all my mail in my Inbox and simply used search folders the speed is only limited by the time it would take to select the appropriate search folder.
However, and this is significant for me, if I do leave all my mail in the Inbox when I load my mail in a webclient I'll be wading through thousands of emails because those search folders
won't exist server-side. I take it this is where Reid's suggestion of offlineimap comes into play but search folders are virtual right? This would only be helpful if I stay with msg filters. But again,
I'm confused about this because my msg filters are moving the mail to the appropriate folders both locally and server-side so what difference would offlineimap bring?
> As to keeping folders below a certain size, Evo 2.32 now uses 64-bit 
> indices, so that limitation is gone. Of course smaller might still be 
> faster. Maybe someone should actually measure these things and tell us ...
I know MS Outlook becomes somewhat unstable beyond 5k per folder. However, I've seen it "operate" as high as 20k in the Inbox for both POP and IMAP. I might actually have enough mail to make
the comparison...
Phil
> poc
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