Automatically moving marked mails?

[julian at precisium.com]

On Wed, 01 Jul 2009 23:46:00 -0000, Jorey Bump <list at joreybump.com> wrote:

> julian at precisium.com wrote, at 07/01/2009 05:26 PM:
>
>> Personally I agree it would be nice if Cyrus would do something
>> to compensate for the deletion issue - but I can understand if there is  
>> a
>> reluctance on the part of the developers to do this.
>
> This issue involves the IMAP protocol and is not specific to Cyrus. The
> only meaningfully defined special mailbox is INBOX. It would be
> disastrous for Cyrus to change deletion behaviour by moving "deleted"
> mail to some arbitrarily named mailbox. What name should it use? One
> that pleases users of Outlook? Thunderbird? Some random webmail
> application? Until the IMAP protocol is updated or replaced, delete &
> expunge is a fact of life.
>
> It's true that the concept of delete/expunge is difficult for many new
> users to grasp. In my experience, the worst consequence is when users
> who delete but never expunge exceed quota and don't know why because
> deleted messages are hidden from view. A visual indicator (such as a
> strike-through, symbol, special color) is far more preferable, as it at
> least makes the problem evident. I agree that the whole process borders
> on the ridiculous, but that's a problem with IMAP, not Cyrus (and most
> users would probably clamour for similar functionality if the behaviour
> was removed).
>
> In any case, users expect to control this in the MUA, so it's probably
> best to keep it out of the server.
>

I'd dare suggest some sort of ugly hack whereby an MUA need only create a  
special folder named e.g
"_deleteto_Deleted Items" .. which doesn't even need to be subscribed to.

The existence of such a folder would tell the server to move 'deleted'  
mail to the "Deleted Items" folder
(or whatever name followed the magic _deleteto_ prefix)

It doesn't need to be an 'automatic' fix for outlook out of the box - just  
one that is relatively easy for helpdesks to talk someone through - or to  
describe on a web page.

I guess this sort of hack would give most of you the horrors though!

Julian