[2047] in athena10
Re: Mail folder policy
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Evan Broder)
Sat Apr 4 18:34:28 2009
Message-ID: <49D7E053.5040809@mit.edu>
Date: Sat, 04 Apr 2009 18:33:55 -0400
From: Evan Broder <broder@MIT.EDU>
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To: Evan Broder <broder@mit.edu>
CC: Tim Abbott <tabbott@mit.edu>, debathena@mit.edu
In-Reply-To: <49D67FE1.3040304@mit.edu>
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Does anybody actually have an opinion on this? Because if not, then I'll
just do what I want, which is option 4 (all clients are configured to
store in Sent and Drafts on the IMAP server).
I'll give people until Thursday to object, at which point I'll declare
consensus and start implementing.
- Evan
Evan Broder wrote:
> 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
>>>
>>>
>>>
