Rick Lecoat said: >On 23/11/07 (23:46) MB said: > >>Indexes are such things I, and I suspect many users with me, generally >>would expect to be rebuilt without user intervention in most cases. > >So whilst it >might be okay to automatically rebuild indexes in the background, the >user *should* IMHO be given an indication that it is going on, in order >to prevent them from quitting PM or shutting down their mac or whatever >mid-process. If the user is not supposed to be informed that the index is missing, which is the current behaviour, then it's logical the rebuild should take place in background. It shouldn't be silent about the problem, however. Silence on something that affects basic functionality and leads to Powermail to display incorrect search results is unacceptable. Is there a point in letting that happen ever? I don't see one.
I find it important that if the user deletes the index he/she should be prompted about the consequences and asked to choose between appropriate options. >perhaps letting people choose the time by initiating it manually is not >such a bad idea, just in terms of being courteous to the user. Well, what I was proposing wasn't that the user shouldn't be able to affect the rebuild process at all, but rather that it shouldn't be a requirement that the user should have to know that deleting the index file will *not* result in a fully rebuilt index. Now PM silently startup and does not inform the user. That's really bad behaviour! Actually not even in the search dialog does the user in with a deleted index get to know that the search index needs to be updated. Which is odd. It just silently says nothing was found. Didn't it used to be that PM informed about the situations with the index and asking whether one wants to search with the out-of-sync index or first index unprocessed messages and then perform the search? The user can go weeks before they realize they need to manually rebuild as it works now. At least in my short test I got zero information from PM, even after I had fetched a load of new messages. PM didn't even perform the common pre-firstsearch index update, which I find odd. I was advocating that the user that had deleted the index should at startup or even the minute the index file got missing if running already, be prompted with appropriate information, asked to put it back - perhaps by the asking the user where to look for it- or to rebuild it from scratch. This whether it happened intentionally or not. If none of the two options of relocate or rebuild was chosen, possibly by the user canceling the dialog, PM could be used without an index. but the user would at least be informed something needed to be done at some point. Then at certain times for example at startup PM could remind the user that a rebuilt index was needed to retain proper search functionality. Mikael Technoids: PM 5.5.3 build 4480 sv / SpamSieve 2.6.4 sv | OS X 10.4.8 | Powerbook G4 / 400 | 1GB | 80GB
