[lug] Mozilla mail client misses messages?

[Nate Duehr]

On Monday 19 January 2004 03:22 pm, Bear Giles wrote:
> Jeff Schroeder wrote:
> > In reality, Mozilla "tags" the message as deleted and simply doesn't
> > render it in the Inbox.  IIRC it has some kind of goofy index file
> > that basically tells it what messages to show.  If you run a "compact
> > folders" command (under File, I think) it'll go through all its mail
> > files and clean up-- by removing the tagged messages for real.  At
> > that point your Java client should see the same thing.
>
> Yeah, 'compacting' the folder seems to have done the trick.  Silly
> me, I thought 'compacting' a folder would do something major like,
>   I dunno, archiving all messages older than a few months.

Yeah, there's two ways IMAP clients typically "delete" messages... one is 
the way you mention, marking it deleted but not removing it from the 
folder until "Compact" (or "Expunge" in Evolution), and the other is the 
way the other person mentioned, copy it to the Trash folder and leave it 
there until you "empty trash". 

I was used to the "Compact" type of mail setup until I switched to Kmail 
-- it does the "copy to the Trash folder" thing which is annoying as I 
have to delete everything twice.  Kmail is also MUCH faster overall if 
you use a Trash folder ON THE SERVER (so the copy is done there and not 
between the server and the client).  Also Kmail does have an "Expire" 
function -- I think that one does the "drastic" stuff like deleting old 
messages.  I've been too chicken to run it and haven't looked it up in 
the docs.  LOL.

I opened a bug once on this saying that Kmail should handle this stuff in 
the background and let the user continue on whatever they're doing, but 
they closed the bug and told me to keep my Trash folder on the server... 
sigh.  

Not even open as a wishlist item, I guess all the Kmail developers have 
local mail servers they're not connecting to across slow WAN links with 
thousands of messages in each folder... I'd think you'd want to do the 
housekeeping of keeping the client and server in sync in the background 
and keep the folder the user is currently looking updated semi-real-time.  
On a LAN, Kmail is pretty usable, over WAN pipes, the screen updates are 
obviously in strange places in the IMAP code and weird screen behavior is 
the result every time you hit "Delete" until everything catches up... and 
if you try to mess with another folder while you're waiting... forget it.  
You'll either corrupt Kmail's tracking of what's going on, or you'll find 
a bunch of things you thought you deleted pop right back up in the 
original folder when you go back.  Kmail's "not quite there yet"... but 
it's "okay" at this point, I'd say.

Oh well... Mozilla/Netscape mailers are much more intelligent about IMAP, 
but they also take forever and a day to load... and a huge memory 
footprint compared to Kmail.  :-)  Catch-22.

And then of course, there's always mutt when you really want to go fast!  
;-)

-- 
Nate Duehr, nate at natetech.com