I'm feeling a little cornered. Evolution was the only GUI mail client
with Maildir support so I've pushed it on my boss. The problem is
that it doesn't handle deleting mail well. It only allows "mark for
deletion". To actually delete a message, the user must manually
expunge a folder. This means that a user can go through deleting a
bunch of messages at home yet they'll all be waiting when he arrives
at the office.

Other mail clients have selectable behaviors so that "deleted" mail
is either marked (like Evolution), moved to a trash folder, or
immediately deleted. I miss having those other options. I'm trying to
come up with a kludge to simulate one.

So...I could create a trash folder and add a shortcut for it. Then
the user would have to drag each message to the trash instead of
deleting it. That would be a drag(ha!) but should avoid the situation
of having mail that looks deleted but isn't.

Another possibility is to send ctrl-e to the main Evolution window
every few seconds. This would allow the user to continue to simply
delete messages (using the trash icon, delete key or ctrl-d) yet the
message would really be deleted within seconds. This horrible kludge
would likely break every so often, would be terribly inefficient
(constant activity on a laptop), and would not give the user much of a
chance to undo an accidentally deleted message.

Is there an option I'm missing (besides adding a feature to the
Evolution code)? Is there some macroish capability that I could use
to cause the delete key to move messages to a trash folder? Could I
create a filter that would delete/refile any message that's been
marked for deletion? (I don't mind Scheme, but I don't see how I'd
filter based on deletion mark.) Is there some way to make the
delete key and icon run FolderExpunge after MessageDelete?

Any other ideas?

Thank you.

--kyler

On Wed, 15 Oct 2003 15:12:54 +0000, Kyler Laird wrote:

Well, under the Evolution Settings:Mail Preferences, there's an option to
"Empty trash folders on exit", which will expunge the trash when you quit.

And if you want, you can check under View and check off the hide deleted
messages so instead of having the message visible with a strikethrough,
it'll just be gone, but you'll have a copy sitting in the trash.

Matt Ng <bgc_fan@hotmail.com> writes:

Yeah, I've even considered having a process that kills Evolution every
so often and then restarts it. That could become *really* annoying
though.

No, the message will still be sitting exactly where it was before,
which means it'll show up in every other tool as an undeleted message.

--kyler

Not that I really have any new ideas, I just have a few questions on what
you want exactly.

On Thu, 16 Oct 2003 18:13:03 +0000, Kyler Laird wrote:

So, basically you want an instantaneous purge right? I'm just wondering
why. Are you leaving Evolution running 24/7?

Based on your original post I understand that you plan on accessing the
mail with other mail clients, so that's the problem. But I don't
understand why you wouldn't shut off evolution before checking with
another mail client.

Yeah, sorry, it's just an esthetic thing, not a solution. I.e. if you
wanted to mimic delete=removal of message from folder, and with the
expunge on exit, it's gone.

Matt Ng <bgc_fan@hotmail.com> writes:

Yup.

So that, as I described, the messages won't be sitting there when my
boss gets to the office.

Usually. Not on the laptops though.

It's mostly because I'd feel like an idiot telling my boss that he has
to shut down an application any time he walks away from it.

I'm about ready to give up on mail clients supporting Maildir well.
I've offered a $500 bounty to put IMAP executable handling in Mozilla.
That would allow me to use my choice of IMAP server to deal with
Maildirs without the inefficiencies of IMAP over IP. If I get a nibble
on that, I'll just switch back to Moz.

--kyler

On Fri, 17 Oct 2003 15:13:05 +0000, Kyler Laird wrote:

Ah okay, sorry I can't really help, though maybe adding a feature request
to the evolution development might help.

Well, good luck then.