subject:"Re\: Very disturbing feature in icedove"

Am 2007-02-14 22:32:43, schrieb Roberto C. Sanchez:
> Unless you are the sort of person who keeps 20,000 messages in a folder
> or mailbox.  I have seen such a thing.

Where is the problem?

My INBOX.ML_debian.user/ has arround 18 Messages and my
[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ environement 37.

OH, currently I am using Courier-Imap but will switch to
"tdcserver" if it run stable...  (have to code many things and
is based on courier but use PostgreSQL instead of Maildir)

Thanks, Greetings and nice Day
Michelle Konzack
Systemadministrator
Tamay Dogan Network
Debian GNU/Linux Consultant


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Re: Using courier-imap (was Re: Very disturbing feature in icedove)

Am 2007-02-16 12:35:44, schrieb Roberto C. Sanchez:
> That is more of a policy issue than a technical limitation.  I think it
> has more to do with Debian trying to adhere closely to the traditional
> Unix philosophy.

This is WHY I love Debian!

...and Debian should never go away from the philosophy!

Thanks, Greetings and nice Day
Michelle Konzack
Systemadministrator
Tamay Dogan Network
Debian GNU/Linux Consultant


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Re: Using courier-imap (was Re: Very disturbing feature in icedove)

Am 2007-02-17 03:29:31, schrieb Chris Bannister:
> > Mutt can directly read Maildir folders?  (I don't see why it
> > shouldn't, but it just never occurred to me.)
> 
> set mbox_type=Maildir

This is only for writing!

Mutt can read mbox, Maildir and MH without changes by default.

> > Procmail?  You probably like Perl, too.
> 
> Well, umm, there's heaps of recipes out there ...

:-)

> local delivery? say from logcheck. mutt depends on an MTA, which
> delivers to /var/spool/mail/ but set spoolfile=imap://haggis/INBOX
> ...  ... ah! muttprofile? ... I think I *need* a map.

:-S

> > >> set folder=imap://haggis/INBOX. set move=no set copy=yes set
> > >> record=imap://haggis/INBOX/Sent
 ^
On courier it should be:   

set folder=imap://haggis
set record="+Sent"
set postpone="+Drafts"
mailboxes =INBOX =IN-debian-looser
 
Thanks, Greetings and nice Day
Michelle Konzack
Systemadministrator
Tamay Dogan Network
Debian GNU/Linux Consultant


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Re: Using courier-imap (was Re: Very disturbing feature in icedove)

Am 2007-02-14 16:45:42, schrieb Chris Bannister:
> That would be great! Would this be ok:
> # Mailboxes which get new mail.
> mailboxes `echo $HOME/.Maildir/*`

No it would not since you have to setup:

set folder=imaps://localhost

mailboxes =INBOX \
=INBOX.IN-debian-user \
...

You need to creatre a small BASH/Perl/Python/Whatelse-Script
to generate the list.

And then, poll the mailboxes under IMAP take 100 times longer
then polling a Maildir directly local.

> When mail arrives into one of the mailboxes i.e. will mutt say "New mail
> in $HOME/.Maildir/IN-debian-user" then if you press c then return will
> mutt 'open' $HOME/.Maildir/IN-debian-user and the new message is flagged
> as new just as it does now?

Yes, but you should not use more then 50 "mailboxes" to poll.
Oterwise you can give you a shoot while mutt is checking the Mailboxes for
new messages.

I have 5800 Mailfolder and must check 180 of them permanently...
Now I run 6 instances of mutt parallel with different "mailboxes" settings.

Thanks, Greetings and nice Day
Michelle Konzack
Systemadministrator
Tamay Dogan Network
Debian GNU/Linux Consultant


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Re: Very disturbing feature in icedove


Freddy Freeloader wrote:
...
... Any message 
that has been deleted in Icedove/Thunderbird/SeaMonkey is recoverable, 
at least up until the time the folder is compacted or the Trash folder 
is emptied, from the Trash folder.  After that happens then, no, the 
message is not recoverable.   What is so odd about this?  I have yet to 
see a graphical email client that doesn't act pretty much the same way.


You might need to distinguish between messages that are recoverable
by non-hacker users (via the tool) vs. messages that are recoverable
if you know how to clear the appropriate X-Mozilla-Status bit.


Daniel




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Re: Very disturbing feature in icedove


Steve Lamb wrote:

Dave Sherohman wrote:

OK, one more time:  Delete by default does not have to mean delete
*immediately* by default.  Look at the underlined text above.  I already
explicitly stated that I didn't mean immediate deletion and that delete-
on-folder-change or delete-on-exit are probably better,


Uh, not in my mind.  Maybe it stems from my years in the ISP business but
generally users only want things deleted when they say they want it deleted.
That doesn't mean "When they press the delete key" or even "After pressing the
delete key and changing folders" or "after pressing the delete key and exiting
the program."  After they say, in its most conservative setting, is after they
have configured the client to delete the way they want.

And before you or anyone else jumps up with more of your preferences and
ignorance about the reality of computers let me remind you of one simple fact.

Windows and OSX, by default, require the user to "empty the trash".  ...
... until the end user twiddles
the knob they want to keep as much as possible because the expected behavior
is that the user has to tell the computer to "delete it, really, and this time
I mean it!"

This is no different.


Actually, it is.

We're not talking about Seamonkey's Trash folder to which tentatively
deleted messages are moved and from which users can recover or really
delete those tentatively deleted messages, working like Windows' and
OS X's trash folders that you you mention.

We're talking about physically deleting deleted copies of messages.
(When you logically tentatively delete a message from the Inbox
folder and Seamonkey logically moves it to the Trash folder, there's
still a physical copy of the data in the file that implements the Inbox
folder.  That physical copy is never available to the user through the
tool.)

Surely you're not ignorant of that reality.

Daniel



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Re: Very disturbing feature in icedove - monolithic files not always bad


Steve Lamb wrote:
...


And before we get into this again I only have to ask one question.  If a
single file is such a bad thing why is it MySQL (and other) databases don't
store records per file but, instead, per table?  You'd think the corruption
problem would be just as bad for them.  And yet companies around the world
routinely store immense amount of data in monolithic files without much
concern.  Far more than the piddly amount of mail any individual on here would
worry about.


Whether a single file is bad (or requires copying to a new file to reliably
make changes) all depends on the file format.

Making a logical change to the data involves making a set of one or more
physical changes to the file.

If making the first changes in the set and "forgetting" to make the rest
of the changes (e.g., in case of a power failure) leaves the file
corrupted and unrecoverable, then it's not a good format for making
incremental changes without copying to a new file for reliability.  The
mbox format that Seamonkey uses is like that.

However, if making the first part of the changes without making the
second part leaves the file in a state such that things are recoverable
(e.g., either the partial change is backed out or the partial change is
completed), then you can make incremental changes without needing to
copy to a new file for reliability.




Daniel



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Re: Very disturbing feature in icedove


Dave Sherohman wrote:

On Wed, Feb 14, 2007 at 02:30:48PM -0500, Daniel B. wrote:

Dave Sherohman wrote:

On Sat, Feb 10, 2007 at 12:36:55PM -0500, Roberto C. Sanchez wrote:
I was complaining solely about the use of "compact" to mean "delete".

Are you confusing the logical level (what the user almost always deals
with) with the physical level?


I would instead say that the Netscape/IceDove/Mozilla/SeaMonkey developers
are forcing the end user to deal with the details of the physical layer
rather than allowing users to exist, as they normally do, in the logical
realm.


Yes, that seems true.

Of course, sometimes users have to deal with the physical layer.  I
guess the question is how much (how much is reasonable).

If you delete files from a disk (past any temporary Trash folder as on
Windows), it's true that you don't have to deal with really deleting
the files in the sense of making the space available for other files,
but you _do_ have to deal with really erasing the data (overwriting the
sectors) if you want to make sure the data is really gone.

The question in the current case is probably whether the user should
control when Seamonkey takes the time to compact folder since the
physical-layer aspect of the time it takes to re-write the files
(presumably) can't be hidden from the user (within the constraint of
using a standard mail-file format and reducing risk of corruption
from crashes or power failures).




At the logical level, the messages are already deleted (from the folder).
There is no way to get them back (from th[e] folder from which they're
deleted) going through the tool (Seamonkey).


If the tool does not provide a means to undelete messages, then I also
find the decision to not make permanent deletion (either when the user
changes folders or exits the program; it doesn't need to be immediate
for reasons which have been repeatedly discussed in this thread already)
a default action to be questionable at best.  If you can't undelete it,
then why keep it around?


It might be part of the physical layer that the user does have to deal
with: reliability.

It's not so much that deleted messages _are_ explicitly _kept_ around;
it's that they are _not_ _deleted_ right away.  That, of course, is
because trying to delete a message right away by re-arranging the file
(given the current file format, or course) would increase the risk of a
corrupted file in case of crash or power failure during the re-arranging
(and because immediately copying all non-deleted messages to a new file
when a message is deleted would be too slow).

But yes, since (non-hacker) users can't recover messages deleted from
a folder, it would be good if users didn't have to deal with it.

However, given the time it takes to compact a large folder, I don't
know if automatically compacting on, say, exit would be good.


Maybe Seamonkey/etc. should default to compacting on exit or some other
reasonable time, but display a "why is Seamonkey compacting" message or
button that explains what it is doing and points the user toward the
appropriate settings.



...>

But that's the same as deleting a file:  Deleting a file tells the file
system to forget about remembering the data, but it doesn't usually
overwrite the data, so it or pieces of it are still on the disk unless
you perform some other operation to actually remove (overwrite) it.


Not really a very good analogy, as the file system will reuse the disk
space without requiring any additional action ('compact', 'purge',
'expunge', whatever) after the file has been deleted.


How is it not a perfect analogy?  I didn't talk about the physical aspect
of re-using the space, which the file system _does_ handle for the user;
I talked about the physical aspect of making sure your data was erased,
which users have to be aware of (whether or not they should have to be).


Daniel









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Re: Using courier-imap (was Re: Very disturbing feature in icedove)

2007-02-16 Thread Roberto C. Sanchez

On Fri, Feb 16, 2007 at 10:35:23AM -0600, Ron Johnson wrote:
> 
> Modularity is one of the main reasons why I like Debian, and won't
> willingly go back to an RPM system.
> 
> Mandrake packaged Python and all the miscellaneous libraries into
> one big RPM.  Install Python and in comes XFree.  Too stupid.
> 
That is more of a policy issue than a technical limitation.  I think it
has more to do with Debian trying to adhere closely to the traditional
Unix philosophy.

Regards,

-Roberto

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Re: Using courier-imap (was Re: Very disturbing feature in icedove)

2007-02-16 Thread Ron Johnson

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On 02/16/07 10:06, Roberto C. Sanchez wrote:
> On Fri, Feb 16, 2007 at 09:50:10AM -0600, Ron Johnson wrote:
>> If you're behind a firewall, all should be fine.
>>
>> The "rule" against putting X on servers is based on "don't put
>> anything on a server that you don't need".  The reasoning is two-
>> fold:
>> 1. Security: more "stuff" means a bigger hackable surface area.
>> 2. Resources: why waste RAM and CPU on a gooey, when the machine's
>>task is to process data?
>>
> I find it hilarious (in a sick twisted sort of way) that the default
> RedHat install includes a complete GNOME/KDE desktop environment.  Now,
> I know that you can take those off during the install part where you
> pick your packages, but they are on by default.

Modularity is one of the main reasons why I like Debian, and won't
willingly go back to an RPM system.

Mandrake packaged Python and all the miscellaneous libraries into
one big RPM.  Install Python and in comes XFree.  Too stupid.

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Re: Very disturbing feature in icedove

2007-02-16 Thread Steve Lamb

Ron Johnson wrote:
> *Solving* the corrupted-mbox problem means moving to Maildir (or,
> less popularly, mh) storage.

 Which is not a panacea.  All it does is introduce a different set of
problems.  ~20,000 individual files in a directory may be more resilient
against corruption part way through and faster on some operations but trust
me, 20,000 open/read/close calls is noticeably slower than 1 and just with
many reads.  This doesn't even get into the issue of lost disc space nor the
problem of inodes if on an ext2/3 system.

And before we get into this again I only have to ask one question.  If a
single file is such a bad thing why is it MySQL (and other) databases don't
store records per file but, instead, per table?  You'd think the corruption
problem would be just as bad for them.  And yet companies around the world
routinely store immense amount of data in monolithic files without much
concern.  Far more than the piddly amount of mail any individual on here would
worry about.

Pardon duplicate, hit reply-to-all, trimmed wrong address.

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Re: Very disturbing feature in icedove

2007-02-16 Thread Steve Lamb

charlie derr wrote:
> No, we use dovecot which stores email files in Maildir format on the
> server.

Dovecot *can* store mail in MailDir.  It is not a given.

dovecot-common - secure mail server that supports mbox and maildir mailboxes
dovecot-imapd - secure IMAP server that supports mbox and maildir mailboxes
dovecot-pop3d - secure POP3 server that supports mbox and maildir mailboxes
 

Pardon duplicate, hit reply-to-all, trimmed wrong address.

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Re: Using courier-imap (was Re: Very disturbing feature in icedove)

2007-02-16 Thread Roberto C. Sanchez

On Fri, Feb 16, 2007 at 09:50:10AM -0600, Ron Johnson wrote:
> 
> If you're behind a firewall, all should be fine.
> 
> The "rule" against putting X on servers is based on "don't put
> anything on a server that you don't need".  The reasoning is two-
> fold:
> 1. Security: more "stuff" means a bigger hackable surface area.
> 2. Resources: why waste RAM and CPU on a gooey, when the machine's
>task is to process data?
> 
I find it hilarious (in a sick twisted sort of way) that the default
RedHat install includes a complete GNOME/KDE desktop environment.  Now,
I know that you can take those off during the install part where you
pick your packages, but they are on by default.

Regards,

-Roberto

-- 
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http://people.connexer.com/~roberto
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Re: Using courier-imap (was Re: Very disturbing feature in icedove)

2007-02-16 Thread Ron Johnson

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On 02/16/07 08:29, Chris Bannister wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 14, 2007 at 12:01:41AM -0600, Ron Johnson wrote:
>> On 02/13/07 21:45, Chris Bannister wrote:
>>> from your mail data flow diagram: (plus your IMAP server is
>>> haggis)
>>>
>>> fetchmail -> postfix -> SpamAssassin -> maildrop -> Maildir
>>>
>>> All those programs run on haggis?
>> Sure.  And the Courier imapd.  And Icedove and Iceweasel and
>> PostgreSQL and X and cups and a pot-load of other stuff.
> 
> I didn't think you were supposed to run X on servers. Hang on, Icedove
> and Iceweasel ... is that also a workstation?

Yes, it's my home PC, not a production server.

>> Are you surprised?
> 
> Didn't think haggis could stomach it. :-? Not surprised, just thinking

Sigh... [slowly shakes head]

> of the overall picture. I have a couple spare machines, and want to run
> PostgreSQL + Apache + PHP + mail + firewall and thought that I read
> somewhere that it was not a good idea to have them all on the one
> machine. I have an old laptop which I will have a go at using it as some
> sort of thin-client but also able to be used as a 'laptop'.

If you're behind a firewall, all should be fine.

The "rule" against putting X on servers is based on "don't put
anything on a server that you don't need".  The reasoning is two-
fold:
1. Security: more "stuff" means a bigger hackable surface area.
2. Resources: why waste RAM and CPU on a gooey, when the machine's
   task is to process data?

However, this is my box.


>>> Changed to maildir ages ago. Never regretted it. Simple as
>> Mutt can directly read Maildir folders?  (I don't see why it
>> shouldn't, but it just never occurred to me.)
> 
> set mbox_type=Maildir
> 
>> Procmail?  You probably like Perl, too.
> 
> Well, umm, there's heaps of recipes out there ...

Line noise is what it is.

 set imap_user= set spoolfile=imap://haggis/INBOX
>>> Right. So postfix will need be informed.
>> Huh?  Informed of what?
> 
> local delivery? say from logcheck. mutt depends on an MTA, which

Postfix already knows what the local domain is.  That's a separate
configuration issue from whether it passes the email to maildrop or
appends it to /var/spool/mail/.

> delivers to /var/spool/mail/ but set spoolfile=imap://haggis/INBOX
> ...  ... ah! muttprofile? ... I think I *need* a map.
> 
 set folder=imap://haggis/INBOX. set move=no set copy=yes set
 record=imap://haggis/INBOX/Sent
>>> So everything is under INBOX? So a cp ~/.Mail/ ~/.Maildir/ won't
>>> work.
>> On my system, INBOX is virtual.  Think of it as an IMAP construct.
> 
> I'll try.
> 

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Re: Using courier-imap (was Re: Very disturbing feature in icedove)

2007-02-16 Thread Chris Bannister

On Wed, Feb 14, 2007 at 12:01:41AM -0600, Ron Johnson wrote:
> On 02/13/07 21:45, Chris Bannister wrote:
> > from your mail data flow diagram: (plus your IMAP server is
> > haggis)
> > 
> > fetchmail -> postfix -> SpamAssassin -> maildrop -> Maildir
> > 
> > All those programs run on haggis?
> 
> Sure.  And the Courier imapd.  And Icedove and Iceweasel and
> PostgreSQL and X and cups and a pot-load of other stuff.

I didn't think you were supposed to run X on servers. Hang on, Icedove
and Iceweasel ... is that also a workstation?

> Are you surprised?

Didn't think haggis could stomach it. :-? Not surprised, just thinking
of the overall picture. I have a couple spare machines, and want to run
PostgreSQL + Apache + PHP + mail + firewall and thought that I read
somewhere that it was not a good idea to have them all on the one
machine. I have an old laptop which I will have a go at using it as some
sort of thin-client but also able to be used as a 'laptop'.

> > Changed to maildir ages ago. Never regretted it. Simple as
> 
> Mutt can directly read Maildir folders?  (I don't see why it
> shouldn't, but it just never occurred to me.)

set mbox_type=Maildir

> Procmail?  You probably like Perl, too.

Well, umm, there's heaps of recipes out there ...

> >> set imap_user= set spoolfile=imap://haggis/INBOX
> > 
> > Right. So postfix will need be informed.
> 
> Huh?  Informed of what?

local delivery? say from logcheck. mutt depends on an MTA, which
delivers to /var/spool/mail/ but set spoolfile=imap://haggis/INBOX
...  ... ah! muttprofile? ... I think I *need* a map.

> >> set folder=imap://haggis/INBOX. set move=no set copy=yes set
> >> record=imap://haggis/INBOX/Sent
> > 
> > So everything is under INBOX? So a cp ~/.Mail/ ~/.Maildir/ won't
> > work.
> 
> On my system, INBOX is virtual.  Think of it as an IMAP construct.

I'll try.

-- 
Chris.
==
Don't forget to check that your /etc/apt/sources.lst entries point to 
etch and not testing, otherwise you may end up with a broken system once
etch goes stable.

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Re: Very disturbing feature in icedove

2007-02-15 Thread Roberto C. Sanchez

On Thu, Feb 15, 2007 at 01:00:22PM -0800, Andrew Sackville-West wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 14, 2007 at 10:32:43PM -0500, Roberto C. Sanchez wrote:
> > > 
> > Unless you are the sort of person who keeps 20,000 messages in a folder
> > or mailbox.  I have seen such a thing.
> 
> does that mean I have a problem?
> 
Of course not.  It just means that you are an uncommon sort of person.
:-)

Regards,

-Roberto

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Re: Very disturbing feature in icedove

2007-02-15 Thread charlie derr

Ron Johnson wrote:

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On 02/15/07 15:21, charlie derr wrote:

Andrew Sackville-West wrote:

On Wed, Feb 14, 2007 at 10:32:43PM -0500, Roberto C. Sanchez wrote:

Unless you are the sort of person who keeps 20,000 messages in a folder
or mailbox. I have seen such a thing.

does that mean I have a problem?

For whatever it's worth, I'm writing this message using icedove, and
there are currently 96179 messages in my inbox. Sorting by thread takes
60 seconds or so, but everything else is pretty quick (i have a
high-bandwidth connection to the IMAP mailserver). In the past, I've
occasionally been up over 200,000 messages in a single folder without
any problem (other than increased slowness when doing things like
sorting and/or searching).

With IMAP, slowness is the only issue (unless your Uni's IT dept
uses uw-imap, which uses mbox).

No, we use dovecot which stores email files in Maildir format on the server. Thanks for clarifying that though, as I hadn't the
energy to scroll up this rather long thread to see that that was the issue under discussion.

I still wouldn't want 96,000 emails in my Inbox.

Yeah, lots of people tell me that :-] I find that it works pretty well for me
though,

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Re: Very disturbing feature in icedove

2007-02-15 Thread Ron Johnson

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On 02/15/07 15:21, charlie derr wrote:
> Andrew Sackville-West wrote:
>> On Wed, Feb 14, 2007 at 10:32:43PM -0500, Roberto C. Sanchez wrote:
>>> Unless you are the sort of person who keeps 20,000 messages in a folder
>>> or mailbox.  I have seen such a thing.
>>
>> does that mean I have a problem?
>>
>> A
>>
> 
> For whatever it's worth, I'm writing this message using icedove, and
> there are currently 96179 messages in my inbox.  Sorting by thread takes
> 60 seconds or so, but everything else is pretty quick (i have a
> high-bandwidth connection to the IMAP mailserver). In the past, I've
> occasionally been up over 200,000 messages in a single folder without
> any problem (other than increased slowness when doing things like
> sorting and/or searching).

With IMAP, slowness is the only issue (unless your Uni's IT dept
uses uw-imap, which uses mbox).

I still wouldn't want 96,000 emails in my Inbox.

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Re: Very disturbing feature in icedove

2007-02-15 Thread Ron Johnson

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Hash: SHA1

On 02/15/07 15:00, Andrew Sackville-West wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 14, 2007 at 10:32:43PM -0500, Roberto C. Sanchez wrote:
>> Unless you are the sort of person who keeps 20,000 messages in a folder
>> or mailbox.  I have seen such a thing.
> 
> does that mean I have a problem?

You have a response-time aggravation if you want to delete an email.
 You have a *problem* if the file gets corrupted near an early
emails.  19,950ish emails suddenly go poof.

Both issues can be mitigated by (a) filtering mails into topical
folders (family, debian-user, etc) and archiving by date to history
folders.  I make a new debian-user folder every quarter, each folder
holding between 10 & 12 thousand emails, depending on how busy the
list was that quarter.

*Solving* the corrupted-mbox problem means moving to Maildir (or,
less popularly, mh) storage.

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Re: Very disturbing feature in icedove

2007-02-15 Thread charlie derr


Andrew Sackville-West wrote:

On Wed, Feb 14, 2007 at 10:32:43PM -0500, Roberto C. Sanchez wrote:

Unless you are the sort of person who keeps 20,000 messages in a folder
or mailbox.  I have seen such a thing.


does that mean I have a problem?

A



For whatever it's worth, I'm writing this message using icedove, and there are currently 96179 messages in my inbox.  Sorting by 
thread takes 60 seconds or so, but everything else is pretty quick (i have a high-bandwidth connection to the IMAP mailserver). 
In the past, I've occasionally been up over 200,000 messages in a single folder without any problem (other than increased slowness 
when doing things like sorting and/or searching).


~c


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Re: Very disturbing feature in icedove

2007-02-15 Thread Andrew Sackville-West

On Wed, Feb 14, 2007 at 10:32:43PM -0500, Roberto C. Sanchez wrote:
> > 
> Unless you are the sort of person who keeps 20,000 messages in a folder
> or mailbox.  I have seen such a thing.

does that mean I have a problem?

A



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Re: Very disturbing feature in icedove

2007-02-15 Thread Dave Sherohman

On Wed, Feb 14, 2007 at 10:58:19PM -0800, Steve Lamb wrote:
> Dave Sherohman wrote:
> > OK, one more time:  Delete by default does not have to mean delete
> > *immediately* by default.  Look at the underlined text above.  I already
> > explicitly stated that I didn't mean immediate deletion and that delete-
> > on-folder-change or delete-on-exit are probably better,
> 
> Uh, not in my mind.  Maybe it stems from my years in the ISP business but
> generally users only want things deleted when they say they want it deleted.
> That doesn't mean "When they press the delete key" or even "After pressing the
> delete key and changing folders" or "after pressing the delete key and exiting
> the program."  After they say, in its most conservative setting, is after they
> have configured the client to delete the way they want.

Going back two of my posts on this subthread, my statement calling the
decision to never permanently delete anything without an explicit request
from the user "questionable at best" started with "If the tool does not
provide a means to undelete messages..."  I was responding to someone who
said that IceDove does not provide any way to access deleted messages,
in which case they would just be wasting disk space and providing no
security blanket for the user.  Freddy Freeloader has since chimed in
and stated that IceDove does provide access to deleted messages, via
a Trash folder, so the basis of my earlier statement was incorrect.
Since IceDove allows undeletion, it is reasonable for it to not clean
out all marked-for-deletion messages at the earliest opportunity.

> Windows and OSX, by default, require the user to "empty the trash"...

> This is no different.

My original entry into this thread was a complaint about the terminology,
not the function.  The average user understands that "empty the trash"
means "get rid of things I threw out."  He is less likely to understand
that "compact disk" has that meaning.[1]  That is, IMO, a very significant
difference.

(Your earlier post about "compact" having been used in databases since
forever is well taken, but the average user is not a DBA and cannot be
expected to be familiar with database terminology.)

> You have been told, repeatedly, where the knob is.  Go twiddle it on your 
> own!

I claim only that the knob is mislabeled.

Given Freddy's correction on the availability of undeletion, I don't
particularly care what the default setting is.

> Here's a bit of advice for you on software, a bit I give everyone about
> it.  Your first step on any new piece of software, esp. applications and games
> (if you play them) is to see what you can configure and where.

Excellent advice, indeed.

[1]  Unless the "trash can" is changed to a "trash compactor", I suppose,
but I've seen nothing in this thread to indicate that IceDove has made
that metaphoric change.  Going to "trash compactor/compact disk" would
also carry the risk of users initially interpreting "compact disk" to
mean "delete everything on the disk", much as happened with early Macs,
where you dragged a floppy disk to the trash can to eject it.

-- 
Windows Vista must be the first OS in history to have error codes for things
like "display quality too high"
  - Peter Gutmann, "A Cost Analysis of Windows Vista Content Protection"
http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.html

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Re: Very disturbing feature in icedove

2007-02-14 Thread Steve Lamb

Dave Sherohman wrote:
> OK, one more time:  Delete by default does not have to mean delete
> *immediately* by default.  Look at the underlined text above.  I already
> explicitly stated that I didn't mean immediate deletion and that delete-
> on-folder-change or delete-on-exit are probably better,

Uh, not in my mind.  Maybe it stems from my years in the ISP business but
generally users only want things deleted when they say they want it deleted.
That doesn't mean "When they press the delete key" or even "After pressing the
delete key and changing folders" or "after pressing the delete key and exiting
the program."  After they say, in its most conservative setting, is after they
have configured the client to delete the way they want.

And before you or anyone else jumps up with more of your preferences and
ignorance about the reality of computers let me remind you of one simple fact.

Windows and OSX, by default, require the user to "empty the trash".  Yes,
they can be set to automatically cull what's kept there.  And the default is
set insanely high.  It is set so precisely because until the end user twiddles
the knob they want to keep as much as possible because the expected behavior
is that the user has to tell the computer to "delete it, really, and this time
I mean it!"

This is no different.

You have been told, repeatedly, where the knob is.  Go twiddle it on your 
own!

> And besides...  If messages marked for deletion are cleaned out by
> default every time you exit your mail client, that mbox file won't get
> to be 500MB nearly as quickly (if ever).

Exactly.  'lo and behold, look at these numbers...

[EMAIL PROTECTED]:~/mail} ls -lhS
-rw--- 1 grey shared  25M 2007-02-15 01:45 Trash
-rw--- 1 grey shared  21M 2007-02-09 22:53 archive
-rw--- 1 grey mail20M 2007-02-14 17:05 /var/mail/grey
-rw--- 1 grey shared  12M 2007-02-13 20:45 jediprax
-rw--- 1 grey shared 7.1M 2007-02-12 17:54 outbox
-rw--- 1 grey shared 5.7M 2006-01-04 03:13 2004-outbox
-rw--- 1 grey shared 5.7M 2006-01-04 03:15 2005-outbox
-rw--- 1 grey shared 2.6M 2007-02-14 18:57 exim-users
-rw--- 1 grey shared 2.0M 2006-01-11 17:34 2003-outbox
-rw--- 1 grey shared 1.7M 2007-02-15 01:51 ubuntu-user
-rw--- 1 grey shared 1.1M 2007-02-15 01:45 debian-user
-rw--- 1 grey shared 533K 2007-02-06 04:55 b5jms
-rw--- 1 grey shared 371K 2007-02-14 14:05 enigmail
-rw-r--r-- 1 grey shared  35K 2007-02-14 10:56 ham
-rw-r--r-- 1 grey shared 6.8K 2007-02-14 10:55 spam
-rw--- 1 grey shared  672 2006-01-11 17:36 Drafts
-rw--- 1 grey shared  617 2007-02-14 03:15 sa-unsure

   There's all my active mail.  Top of the list, Trash, configured in
Thunderbird to purge anything older than 2 weeks.  Took me less time than your
first post to find and configure.  Point is *I* configured it.

Here's a bit of advice for you on software, a bit I give everyone about
it.  Your first step on any new piece of software, esp. applications and games
(if you play them) is to see what you can configure and where.  Until you do
that you have no clue what the piece of software can do nor can you possibly
have it tweaked to your liking.  Because what *you* like isn't what anyone
else is probable to like.  So it is incumbent on you, especially in the Linux
world, to look for the knob and give it a good yank first before complaining
about the defaults.  We already know the defaults aren't to much of anyone's
liking.  They are often designed to do as little damage as possible.  You have
the power, use it.

-- 
 Steve C. Lamb | But who decides what they dream?
   PGP Key: 8B6E99C5   |   And dream I do...
---+-

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Re: Very disturbing feature in icedove

2007-02-14 Thread Roberto C. Sanchez

On Wed, Feb 14, 2007 at 04:23:17PM -0600, Dave Sherohman wrote:
> 
> OK, one more time:  Delete by default does not have to mean delete
> *immediately* by default.  Look at the underlined text above.  I already
> explicitly stated that I didn't mean immediate deletion and that delete-
> on-folder-change or delete-on-exit are probably better, along with an
> allusion to the performance reason which keeps being brought up.  Later
> in my message (in a part that you snipped), I even referred to the
> deferred deletion as being done for *good* reasons.
> 
So then it is OK for the program to become unresponsive for a minute, or
five minutes or more (worst case) when the user changes folders or
exits?

> And besides...  If messages marked for deletion are cleaned out by
> default every time you exit your mail client, that mbox file won't get
> to be 500MB nearly as quickly (if ever).
> 
Unless you are the sort of person who keeps 20,000 messages in a folder
or mailbox.  I have seen such a thing.

Regards,

-Roberto
-- 
Roberto C. Sanchez
http://people.connexer.com/~roberto
http://www.connexer.com


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Re: Very disturbing feature in icedove

2007-02-14 Thread Freddy Freeloader


Dave Sherohman wrote:

On Wed, Feb 14, 2007 at 02:30:48PM -0500, Daniel B. wrote:
  

Dave Sherohman wrote:


On Sat, Feb 10, 2007 at 12:36:55PM -0500, Roberto C. Sanchez wrote:
I was complaining solely about the use of "compact" to mean "delete".
  

Are you confusing the logical level (what the user almost always deals
with) with the physical level?



I would instead say that the Netscape/IceDove/Mozilla/SeaMonkey developers
are forcing the end user to deal with the details of the physical layer
rather than allowing users to exist, as they normally do, in the logical
realm.

Or, to put it another way, users tend to think "I've read my email
messages, so now I'll delete them" rather than "I've read my email
messages, so now I'll make the folder smaller."

  

At the logical level, the messages are already deleted (from the folder).
There is no way to get them back (from thr folder from which they're
deleted) going through the tool (Seamonkey).



If the tool does not provide a means to undelete messages, then I also
find the decision to not make permanent deletion (either when the user
changes folders or exits the program; it doesn't need to be immediate
for reasons which have been repeatedly discussed in this thread already)
a default action to be questionable at best.  If you can't undelete it,
then why keep it around?

  

However, yes, copies of the data still exist in the files.  And, yes,
although the user doesn't _usually_ deal with that, the user sometimes
does, e.g., when you want to make sure the data has been actually
been deleted.



"Deleted and inaccessible, but still around" does not have a place in most
users' mental model of the world and, even if that state actually does
exist (with good reason) somewhere in the guts of the software, those
details should not be forced upon them.  Good user interface designs
generally mirror the users' expectations, not the internal workings of
the software.

  

But that's the same as deleting a file:  Deleting a file tells the file
system to forget about remembering the data, but it doesn't usually
overwrite the data, so it or pieces of it are still on the disk unless
you perform some other operation to actually remove (overwrite) it.



Not really a very good analogy, as the file system will reuse the disk
space without requiring any additional action ('compact', 'purge',
'expunge', whatever) after the file has been deleted.

  

Would "Purge Deleted Messages" work?



Yes, I think it would, since it follows the typical user's mental model
of "get rid of the message(s)".  They still might be a little surprised
by it being a two-stage operation (delete, then purge), but at least
"purge" is more obviously related to "delete" than "compact" is.

  
I guess I don't get the reason for most of this debate.  Any message 
that has been deleted in Icedove/Thunderbird/SeaMonkey is recoverable, 
at least up until the time the folder is compacted or the Trash folder 
is emptied, from the Trash folder.  After that happens then, no, the 
message is not recoverable.   What is so odd about this?  I have yet to 
see a graphical email client that doesn't act pretty much the same way.


http://kb.mozillazine.org/Undelete_a_message

The above link is the first one returned by doing a search of the 
Mozilla KB for "undelete" reached by clicking on Help -> Icedove Help in 
Icedove. 



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Re: Very disturbing feature in icedove

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

On 02/14/07 16:23, Dave Sherohman wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 14, 2007 at 03:42:15PM -0600, Ron Johnson wrote:
>>> If the tool does not provide a means to undelete messages, then I also
>>> find the decision to not make permanent deletion (either when the user
>   
>>> changes folders or exits the program; it doesn't need to be immediate
> ^
>>> for reasons which have been repeatedly discussed in this thread already)
> ^^^
>>> a default action to be questionable at best.  If you can't undelete it,
>>> then why keep it around?
>> Speed.  Deleting an email from the beginning of a 500MB (or, 10
>> years ago, 50MB) mbox file can be slow.
> 
> OK, one more time:  Delete by default does not have to mean delete
> *immediately* by default.  Look at the underlined text above.  I already
> explicitly stated that I didn't mean immediate deletion and that delete-

You're right, I'm wrong.

(Note to self: read email when you have time to carefully read it.)

> on-folder-change or delete-on-exit are probably better, along with an
> allusion to the performance reason which keeps being brought up.  Later
> in my message (in a part that you snipped), I even referred to the
> deferred deletion as being done for *good* reasons.
> 
> And besides...  If messages marked for deletion are cleaned out by
> default every time you exit your mail client, that mbox file won't get
> to be 500MB nearly as quickly (if ever).

Unless you keep a lot of email.


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Re: Very disturbing feature in icedove

2007-02-14 Thread Dave Sherohman

On Wed, Feb 14, 2007 at 03:42:15PM -0600, Ron Johnson wrote:
> > If the tool does not provide a means to undelete messages, then I also
> > find the decision to not make permanent deletion (either when the user

> > changes folders or exits the program; it doesn't need to be immediate
^
> > for reasons which have been repeatedly discussed in this thread already)
^^^
> > a default action to be questionable at best.  If you can't undelete it,
> > then why keep it around?
> 
> Speed.  Deleting an email from the beginning of a 500MB (or, 10
> years ago, 50MB) mbox file can be slow.

OK, one more time:  Delete by default does not have to mean delete
*immediately* by default.  Look at the underlined text above.  I already
explicitly stated that I didn't mean immediate deletion and that delete-
on-folder-change or delete-on-exit are probably better, along with an
allusion to the performance reason which keeps being brought up.  Later
in my message (in a part that you snipped), I even referred to the
deferred deletion as being done for *good* reasons.

And besides...  If messages marked for deletion are cleaned out by
default every time you exit your mail client, that mbox file won't get
to be 500MB nearly as quickly (if ever).

-- 
Windows Vista must be the first OS in history to have error codes for things
like "display quality too high"
  - Peter Gutmann, "A Cost Analysis of Windows Vista Content Protection"
http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.html

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Re: Very disturbing feature in icedove

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

On 02/14/07 15:26, Dave Sherohman wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 14, 2007 at 02:30:48PM -0500, Daniel B. wrote:
>> Dave Sherohman wrote:
>>> On Sat, Feb 10, 2007 at 12:36:55PM -0500, Roberto C. Sanchez wrote:
>>> I was complaining solely about the use of "compact" to mean "delete".
>> Are you confusing the logical level (what the user almost always deals
>> with) with the physical level?
> 
> I would instead say that the Netscape/IceDove/Mozilla/SeaMonkey developers
> are forcing the end user to deal with the details of the physical layer
> rather than allowing users to exist, as they normally do, in the logical
> realm.
> 
> Or, to put it another way, users tend to think "I've read my email
> messages, so now I'll delete them" rather than "I've read my email
> messages, so now I'll make the folder smaller."
> 
>> At the logical level, the messages are already deleted (from the folder).
>> There is no way to get them back (from thr folder from which they're
>> deleted) going through the tool (Seamonkey).
> 
> If the tool does not provide a means to undelete messages, then I also
> find the decision to not make permanent deletion (either when the user
> changes folders or exits the program; it doesn't need to be immediate
> for reasons which have been repeatedly discussed in this thread already)
> a default action to be questionable at best.  If you can't undelete it,
> then why keep it around?

Speed.  Deleting an email from the beginning of a 500MB (or, 10
years ago, 50MB) mbox file can be slow.

(Yet another reason why mbox is a poor storage format.)


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Re: Very disturbing feature in icedove

2007-02-14 Thread Dave Sherohman

On Wed, Feb 14, 2007 at 02:30:48PM -0500, Daniel B. wrote:
> Dave Sherohman wrote:
> >On Sat, Feb 10, 2007 at 12:36:55PM -0500, Roberto C. Sanchez wrote:
> >I was complaining solely about the use of "compact" to mean "delete".
> 
> Are you confusing the logical level (what the user almost always deals
> with) with the physical level?

I would instead say that the Netscape/IceDove/Mozilla/SeaMonkey developers
are forcing the end user to deal with the details of the physical layer
rather than allowing users to exist, as they normally do, in the logical
realm.

Or, to put it another way, users tend to think "I've read my email
messages, so now I'll delete them" rather than "I've read my email
messages, so now I'll make the folder smaller."

> At the logical level, the messages are already deleted (from the folder).
> There is no way to get them back (from thr folder from which they're
> deleted) going through the tool (Seamonkey).

If the tool does not provide a means to undelete messages, then I also
find the decision to not make permanent deletion (either when the user
changes folders or exits the program; it doesn't need to be immediate
for reasons which have been repeatedly discussed in this thread already)
a default action to be questionable at best.  If you can't undelete it,
then why keep it around?

> However, yes, copies of the data still exist in the files.  And, yes,
> although the user doesn't _usually_ deal with that, the user sometimes
> does, e.g., when you want to make sure the data has been actually
> been deleted.

"Deleted and inaccessible, but still around" does not have a place in most
users' mental model of the world and, even if that state actually does
exist (with good reason) somewhere in the guts of the software, those
details should not be forced upon them.  Good user interface designs
generally mirror the users' expectations, not the internal workings of
the software.

> But that's the same as deleting a file:  Deleting a file tells the file
> system to forget about remembering the data, but it doesn't usually
> overwrite the data, so it or pieces of it are still on the disk unless
> you perform some other operation to actually remove (overwrite) it.

Not really a very good analogy, as the file system will reuse the disk
space without requiring any additional action ('compact', 'purge',
'expunge', whatever) after the file has been deleted.

> Would "Purge Deleted Messages" work?

Yes, I think it would, since it follows the typical user's mental model
of "get rid of the message(s)".  They still might be a little surprised
by it being a two-stage operation (delete, then purge), but at least
"purge" is more obviously related to "delete" than "compact" is.

-- 
Windows Vista must be the first OS in history to have error codes for things
like "display quality too high"
  - Peter Gutmann, "A Cost Analysis of Windows Vista Content Protection"
http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.html

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Re: Very disturbing feature in icedove

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

On 02/14/07 13:30, Daniel B. wrote:
> Dave Sherohman wrote:
>> On Sat, Feb 10, 2007 at 12:36:55PM -0500, Roberto C. Sanchez
>> wrote:
> ...
[snip]
> 
> At the logical level, the messages are already deleted (from the
> folder). There is no way to get them back (from thr folder from
> which they're deleted) going through the tool (Seamonkey).
> 
> (It's not like Emacs' RMail where you can undelete messages that
> you have marked for deletion, because that tool uses user-visible
> marking

Evolution also has a config setting to display mail that is
marked-for-deletion.

> for deletion to give the user a chance to recover from errors
> instead


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Re: Very disturbing feature in icedove

2007-02-14 Thread Daniel B.


Dave Sherohman wrote:

On Sat, Feb 10, 2007 at 12:36:55PM -0500, Roberto C. Sanchez wrote:

...


I was complaining solely about the use of "compact" to mean "delete".


Are you confusing the logical level (what the user almost always deals
with) with the physical level?

At the logical level, the messages are already deleted (from the folder).
There is no way to get them back (from thr folder from which they're
deleted) going through the tool (Seamonkey).

(It's not like Emacs' RMail where you can undelete messages that you
have marked for deletion, because that tool uses user-visible marking
for deletion to give the user a chance to recover from errors instead
of Seamonkey's method of using a Trash folder.)


However, yes, copies of the data still exist in the files.  And, yes,
although the user doesn't _usually_ deal with that, the user sometimes
does, e.g., when you want to make sure the data has been actually
been deleted.

But that's the same as deleting a file:  Deleting a file tells the file
system to forget about remembering the data, but it doesn't usually
overwrite the data, so it or pieces of it are still on the disk unless
you perform some other operation to actually remove (overwrite) it.



Just because Microsoft chooses to arbitrarily redefine words does not
mean that we should follow them in doing so.


True, but Mozilla/Seamonkey is not follwing Microsoft.  It follows what
Netscape 4.x (and presumbly earlier) versions called it.


And yes, something like "Purge deleted message" or even (if it weren't
too long) "Compact to erase old copies of deleted messages" would be
clearer to users than "compact folders."

Would "Purge Deleted Messages" work?

Daniel










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Re: Very disturbing feature in icedove

2007-02-14 Thread Stephen

On Wed, Feb 14, 2007 at 03:33:47PM + or thereabouts, Paul Walsh
wrote:

[ ...]

> "You learn something new every day" the saying goes.
> 
> I hadn't realised about the function of the "Compact" option 'til I
> read this thread.  Might (partially) explain why my windozZe laptop
> goes into meltdown when I open Tbird - AV software grabs 100% CPU as
> it scans the mail (presumably because the 'Inbox' file still has the
> contents of messages marked as deleted?) and the system's pretty well
> unusable.  I'll go through the folders compacting when I get the
> chance.

This can be done automatically once you set the preference to 'compact
folders to save n kb of space' where 'n' is whatever you want it to be.


-- 
Regards
Stephen A.
   
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Re: Very disturbing feature in icedove