[imp] Feature request

[Richard]

--- Rich Lafferty <rich@horde.org> wrote:
>
> And do these programs empty the trash when the user
> exits the program?

Yes, if that option is selected.

[snip]

> If a user leaves a message in the "trash" folder and
> logs out without
> deleting it, what's he to think when it appears back
> in his INBOX when
> he starts up an IMAP client that decided to
> interpret the specification 
> less creatively?  Standards don't exist to pick and
> choose what you
> like, and pretending that something is a folder when
> it isn't is
> an awfully bletcherous special case.

I'm not suggesting that anything is pretended.  The
user selects one or more messages and clicks 'Delete'.
 IMP moves message(s) from current folder to Trash
folder.  User selects 'Empty trash', IMP deletes AND
expunges messages in trash.  There is no 'pretending'
of folders; it is a REAL folder.  There are no
compromises of 'standards'.  (Maybe I'm missing your
point -- especially the part about the deleted message
reappearing in the Inbox.)

> 
> What if a user has a real mailbox called "Trash"?
> 

Great.  They can use it.  Perhaps their IS people
periodically empty Trash folders, or delete trashed
messages older than a given age.

> 
> I wasn't aware that you had become the arbiter of
> how mail should
> work. For what it's worth, I'll accept the authority
> of the folks that
> wrote the IMAP spec, Mutt, Pine, Elm, and so forth,
> instead of you and
> those who decided to make their IMAP clients look
> like POP clients.

I am not declaring that I have become the arbiter of
anything.  The fact is that the clients that I support
use Netscape Messenger, Eudora and Outlook.  They use
Windows and Mac O/S (not Linux or any flavour
thereof).  *I* don't decide how mail should work.  How
user's interact with the technology predicates how
mail should work (i.e Human Factors Engineering).  And
I highly suspect that to the average end-user (not the
developer) the concept of deleting things then
expunging them is less intuitive than throwing
unwanted things in the trash and emptying the trash?

> What's abstract about "delete this message from this
> folder"?

Nothing.  But TWICE?

> Personally, I'm fond of getting *rid* of the
> stupidisms in Windows
> desktop mail programs. "But someone else did it!" is
> an awfully weak
> argument.

I'll bet that I don't like Windows any more than you
do.  However, the reality is that I have to support
Windows and Mac O/S clients.  I want their work to be
easier and I want thier tools to be intuitive to use. 
To them, the concept of a trash bin is not a
'stupidism'.  Even the last SGI that I worked with had
a trash bin; I believe it was called a 'dumpster'. 
(Those naughty SGI people and their stupidisms!)

> 
[snip]
> That's awfully poetic and all, but what on earth is
> your point?
> 
> If you design for the person you described, you've
> just designed over
> the heads of the majority of users, who don't give
> the first damn
> about squeezing ounces, and just want to read their
> mail.

Never mind.


Cheers,
Richard


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