"Richard Bang" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: >I have implemented the protocol. What I'm proposing is an option on a >users mailbox settings that says "When deleting mail move it to folder >XXXXX". ... >Customers don't give a RA about what's in the protocol, they don't want >to do "delete, expunge" they want their deleted items stored for a given >duration and if we cant give it to them then we should not complain when >closed systems (Exchange) wins on usability.
You surely don't mean all the subscribers of the IMAP mailing list when you say "we", so I'm not sure what complaining this is warning against. When a user demands a feature, architects (and marketing...) must listen very closely to separate out what would solve their problem(s) and what is just part of the analogy the user is using to describe their vision of the Right Thing. >I know this because we implemented the delete/expunge in our WebMail >system. The single biggest complain we get is "why doesn't it delete >when I press delete", when we explain about delete/expunge, we get >"that's stupid why did you do that". An answer of "because that's how >the guys that wrote IMAP think it should work" will not cut it and WILL >result in more sales of Exchange. The IMAP protocol does not require any particular style of display by clients, so a complaint about how deleted messages are displayed can only be 'passed back' to the protocol when there is no practical way to do otherwise. Short of that, it's a client issue. So, do users *really* require that the "list of messages that I have deleted" be per-user (ala many POP3 MUAs) instead of per-folder? If not, then treating the list of messages in a mailbox that have the \deleted flag set as distinct from the not-so-marked messages and displaying them separately would seem to answer the request. With that style you can even apply different expiration policies to different folders. The client would only send an EXPUNGE or CLOSE command when it wanted to 'empty the trash'; partial emptying/expiring would be performed using UID EXPUNGE. (Having used a form of per-folder 'trash' for years, I have a hard time imagining a situation where they would have a poorer interface/feel than a common trash. Thus my wondering whether that aspect is truly part of the users' requirements.) (If a user wants to use multiple clients, one or more of which doesn't use this method of handling deleted messages, then they've generated their own problem. Note that extending the protocol to, say, add a "file to trash" command would *not* solve their problem, because the involved clients wouldn't know to use it. Altering the meaning of existing commands, on the other hand, breaks *all* clients because no existing client could know about the new behavior; users would have no way of knowing what to expect from a server. Clients that already provide some idiom for undoing deletes would have their work duplicated or interfered with.) Philip Guenther [EMAIL PROTECTED]
