Comment 30 for bug 365270

  Dear Peter Smith,

I have managed the implementation os several email clients with a larger
distribution than "Evolution".
You have some serious misunderstandings to cope with.
How "Trash" is implemented in "Evolution" is not my concern. If this is
a virtual folder, the bug is even worse.
Just implement a bit that flags that the message has been deleted and is
not to be shown, and attach it to the "freelist" of spare slots in the
MBOX. That will DELETE it. Just never show it as "recoverable".

IMAP - do not care. If they do not have a MOVE it is their problem - and
as you say you have to write a dummy "MOVE" that makes a COPY+ERASE+
EXPUNGE. Report this problems with MS Exchange to Microsoft. Attach a
Mp3 dictation of the bug you find in MS Exchange - it makes it easier
for them to read the message. Writing an IMAP server will teach you a
lesson or 10 about that side of the fence. It is very easy with a RDBMS
to implement it.

If you cannot maintain conceptual clarity on a simple software module as
Evolution, you have a huge problem.

If it cannot be done this simple, then scratch the entire Evolution
project - it is obviously not in a state that is manageable. it is
simpler to start all over without a history of patches to trace.

No - I report a problem, I get angered by ignorant response, I find in
the Bugzilla several errors that are indicative to not knowing the right
number of objects held, and I get fed up by silly responses.

Regarding your vision of the future bugs with e.g. mobile phones
attached, rest assured I know vastly more about this than you. I use
Thunderbird, and have no problems what so ever, and recommend to those
left using the Evolution spaghetti, move toi this and regain control of
your Inbox - and allow synchronisation and other functionality. And Paul
Smith is not around to waste your time.

On ma-20.09.2010 07:02, Paul Smith wrote:
> Knut: your comments reveal a relatively shallow understanding of the
> email environment. And they show you haven't understood the real
> situation with Evolution. As for discussions of how IMAP servers ought
> to work, you should be filing those bugs with the teams that create the
> IMAP servers; I'm sure they'll welcome your input.
>
> The comments around moving files into/out of Trash shows you haven't
> read the various discussions of the problem (even to bugs marked as
> duplicates in Gnome Bugzilla). There is no "real" Trash folder in
> Evolution, so there is no move or copy of email from any other folder
> into Trash. Trash is a virtual folder: it doesn't exist physically, but
> instead is constructed as a user-interface artifact, containing all the
> messages that are marked as deleted. Thus, to delete a message (have it
> appear in Trash) all that has to be done is mark that message as
> deleted. To undelete a message, you just remove the deleted attribute
> and it reappears exactly where it was before... because it was never
> moved anywhere else. There is no copy involved with delete, no extra
> space consumed, etc. And similarly, there is no copy involved with
> undelete either.
>
> This is why messages appear in "Trash" when you move them to another
> folder: as I've described there is no MOVE operation in IMAP, so a MOVE
> must be implemented as a COPY followed by a delete. When you mark a
> message deleted that message appears in the Trash folder.
>
> I do understand Mathias's frustration, but unfortunately it's not so
> simple. Mathias you suggest it's just a matter of Evolution hiding
> these details, but that cannot be done reliably. There is only one
> delete flag in IMAP, so there is no way to make a distinction on the
> server between messages that are deleted by hand, and those that are
> deleted as a side-effect of a desired move operation. They are
> identical as far as any IMAP client is concerned.
>
> Yes, of course, Evolution could maintain its own local list of messages
> that should be hidden rather than displayed in Trash because they are a
> side-effect of a copy/delete. However this list would be present only
> in that instance of Evolution. If you ever attached to your IMAP server
> using a different Evolution (say on a laptop or work system), or you
> used a webmail client or another IMAP client (maybe on your smart phone,
> etc.), all those extra deleted messages WOULD appear there, and you'd
> have even more confusion and bugs reported.
>