Re: [Evolution] IMAP - Junk and Trash folder appear twice




In particular for those whose mother-tongue isn't English: The RFCs are
not distinguishing between mailbox and folder, e.g. IMAP4 clients can
create, rename, and/or delete mailboxes (usually presented to the user
as folders) on the server, and copy messages between mailboxes. Multiple
mailbox support also allows servers to provide access to shared and
public folders ...

... since in German, we wouldn't term a folder a mailbox !?


Hmm, semantics. In the context of mail, mailbox and folder are the same
thing. Would it be easier to say mail-box and mail-folder?

The logic is:

   a folder holds "things": files, bits of paper, homework ...

   so a mailbox is a folder that holds mail messages

Even the mailbox icons look like folders.

I think some of the confusion comes from the historical aspects of
internet messaging that became email. The terminology comes from the
fact that a message that was transmitted across the wires (by UUCP?)
had to be placed somewhere and that was termed a "mailbox" because the
USAians (who claim to have invented it) call the place the postman
delivers letters (aka "mail") to the "mailbox".  It was never really
thought you would have many of these things, but you might have an
"inbox" and an "outbox" and a "trash".  Fast forward 20 years, and
email is proliferating - you need somewhere to file all your old mail
because your inbox is becoming unmanageable when it got to over 100
messages, so other mailboxes were created where you could "file" the
messages into "folders".

So in the end the naming is a hangover from trying to impose office
terminology onto electronic communications - I suppose it was an
attempt to make it more accessible to non-geeks.

And then you layer onto the top of that a translation into German,
which, even German speakers must admit, has some unique features. (aka
lets just push a whole load of words together and take out the spaces
to make a completely new word half a line long)  Not that English is
without its oddities.

P.


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