Since I provide computer assistance for my father, I get feedback on ways of using Evolution different from the way in which I normally use it. Yesterday, he asked me why he could not "delete" (expunge appears to be the term used here) an individual message in his Trash folder.
At first, I tried to explain the Trash can analogy, and that such an operation would not be logically consistent with the way a trash can is used, i.e. one does not retrieve an individual item from the trash bin and toss it into the pickup truck, assuming it comes along whenever necessary. However, after some reflection, this analogy does not offer a very satisfying answer. Reviewing the messages on this mailing list, back to Jan. 2008, there are several references from frustrated users about the lack of such a capability. It appears to me that the problem is not with the Trash can analogy, but with lack of a feature that we have access to in the real world. With real mail trash, we can run it through a shredder and toss the result into the trash can. This prevents anyone from reading the mail, even if it's in the trash bin. Then, it's perfectly logical to empty the trash bin contents all at once. Therefore, I would like to suggest a "Shred Message" feature, available from any folder. The Shred function could scramble the order of the data in the message, using a random number generator, and place the result in the trash bin. The data from any shredded message could go into a special shredded data message, which displays the cumulative number of bytes in the message, which allows for some form of feedback to the user, akin to looking into the trash bin and seeing a growing pile of shreddings. I believe this could be a very useful feature to add to Evolution. Krishna Myneni _______________________________________________ Evolution-list mailing list Evolution-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/evolution-list
