Re: Send Mail / messaging / misc. ramblings

[Jules Bean <jmlb2 hermes cam ac uk>]

On Wed, 8 Dec 1999, Jim Bowen wrote:

> 
> On 08-Dec-1999 Jules Bean wrote:
> > On Wed, 8 Dec 1999, Mike Palczewski wrote:
> > 
> >> as far as the mailboxes close current will close the mailbox that is 
> >> in the front in the main window.  close will close the the window selected
> >> in the mailbox list.  
> >> IMHO that whole mailboxes menu is not neaded.  how about a close button
> >> on the toolbar.  and automatic commits, deleting a message will move
> >> it to the trash and commit the mailbox. 
> > 
> > Automatic commits as an option, yes.  But not required.
> > 
> > There are really two different approaches to message deletion.  One is the
> > 'mark deleted' followed by 'actually delete'.  The other is 'move to
> > trash' followed by 'empty trash'.
> > 
> > The first approach is the traditional one used in IMAP, so I think we
> > should support it at least for IMAP.  The second is more familiar to many
> > people, and we should definitely support that too.
> 
> The problem with instant delete is that it does not scale at all well to large
> MBOX format mailboxes.
> 
> If you have 500 7k emails and you want to delete one of the ones in the middle,
> then you have a 3.5Mb file copy to perform. If you are going through the
> mailbox deleting a lot of the messages, then...
> 
> A good option is to flag them as deleted, and also copy to trahs, and don't
> show them on screen, and then garbage collect as some future point. (As done by
> Netscape, Eudora, Outlook Express (well, kinda), etc.

Ah. You're right, of course.  I'd forgotten that there was a technical
justification too.  (Only applies to mbox format, of course, it's a moot
point if we ever decide to support maildir).

Personally, I'm not particularly in favour of hiding information from our
users (i.e. pretending we've deleted messages when we haven't actually,
yet).  However, I can see Yet Another Config Option (YACO?) which controls
whether or not deleted messages are visisble to the user. (And also,
whether 'commits' or 'expunges' have to be explicit, or can be implicit)

While I'm rambling, one of my big wishlists is for cascading options on
mailboxes. Options which logically apply at the individual mailbox level
can be set to be 'All mailboxes do this *except* this group which does
this *except* this group which does this'.

Jules

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|  Jelibean aka  | jules@jellybean.co.uk         |  6 Evelyn Rd	       |
|  Jules aka     | jules@debian.org              |  Richmond, Surrey   |
|  Julian Bean   | jmlb2@hermes.cam.ac.uk        |  TW9 2TF *UK*       |
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