Re: [Evolution] Rules bug?

[Ángel <angel 16bits net>]

On 2021-07-21 at 10:28 +0200, Milan Crha via evolution-list wrote:
>       Hi,
> the idea behind the default value is that the filters may forward
> multiple message, thus it's better to pile them up and flush the
> Outbox at once, rather than connect to the sending server for each
> message separately.

If you receive 5 emails, and 3 of them match a rule (or two) which
forward them to both Alice and Bob, it makes sense not to create 6
separate connections, but to batch them at once.

However, I think the expectation would be that they _do_ get sent
automatically, not that the user will need a manual outbox flush.
The tricky part would be when mixed with normal outbox mail.

Trying to make it behave as expected without complicating it, maybe it
could do something like this:

When going to apply the rules to a bunch of emails, set a variable
filters_outbox_mails to 0
When running a forward-to in a rule, if the number of mails in the
outbox are the same as the value of this variable, increment the
variable before putting the new email in the outbox.
After the filters have run, if the value of the variable is non-zero
and equal to the number of emails in the outbox, then perform an
automatic outbox flush.

The goal is that if the user is using the outbox himself (the user
already had emails waiting in the outbox, or he does a send using
outbox while the filters are being run), the emails from the filter
would get piled there, as the user is expected to do a flush at some
point. Otherwise, sent them automatically.

Does this seem to make sense and result in an intuitive behavior?



> Another benefit is to have a chance to check what is forwarded.

This seems mostly useful for debugging, probably few people review
every time what their filters send.


Best regards