[2022] in athena10
Re: Mail folder policy
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Evan Broder)
Fri Apr 3 17:30:40 2009
Message-ID: <49D67FE1.3040304@mit.edu>
Date: Fri, 03 Apr 2009 17:30:09 -0400
From: Evan Broder <broder@MIT.EDU>
MIME-Version: 1.0
To: Tim Abbott <tabbott@mit.edu>
CC: debathena@mit.edu
In-Reply-To: <alpine.DEB.1.10.0904031606010.19656@vinegar-pot.mit.edu>
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This is a hard to avoid problem. As it stands, it's already possible for
people's sent mail to end up in two different places - they just have to
send mail from two different clients.
- Evan
Tim Abbott wrote:
> It seems to me that there are transition issues with changing the
> sent-mail folder from the default, as it would result in any existing
> users having their sent mail in two different places.
>
> Or am I missing something?
>
> -Tim Abbott
>
> On Sun, 29 Mar 2009, Evan Broder wrote:
>
>
>> I started trying to hammer out a config file for Thunderbird, and I'm
>> kind of unsure about how to deal with mail folders. Different
>> applications like to put things in different places. In particular,
>> alpine saves sent mail and drafts on the IMAP server, while Thunderbird
>> and Evolution both default to saving them within their profiles.
>>
>> So there are, I guess, four options:
>> - Configure the MIT mail server, but leave all other folders at their
>> default
>> - Configure Evolution and Thunderbird to use IMAP folders for sent and
>> drafts, but match the local config and use the names "Sent" and "Drafts"
>> - Configure Evolution and Thunderbird to use IMAP folders with the same
>> name as alpine uses - "sent-mail" and "postponed-msgs"
>> - Configure Evolution and Thunderbird to use IMAP folders, and
>> configure alpine to use their folder names ("Sent" and "Drafts")
>>
>> This is a bit of a balancing act between taking a hands-off approach to
>> configuration vs. making it easy for users to go back and forth between
>> mail clients. Given those two options, I have a strong preference for
>> the latter. If someone who usually uses Evolution logs in over ssh and
>> uses alpine, it seems pretty sucktastic that their sent mail wouldn't
>> normally be available to them.
>>
>> Those 4 options are ranked in increasing order of my personal
>> preference, because I have a preference for the Evolution/TB-style names
>> over the alpine-style ones, but that's not for any reason other than the
>> fact that I'm used to them.
>>
>> Another similar issue to this is what to do when a user deletes a
>> message - whether to mark them as deleted in the same folder or move
>> them to a trash folder.
>>
>> At this point I have a fairly specific view of how I want /my/ mail
>> client to act, and I'm having a hard time telling if that's crowding my
>> design decisions, so I'd appreciate feedback.
>>
>> - Evan
>>
>>
