Brandon Long <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> Mutt's IMAP handling mimics its handling of other mail folders, in
> that it doesn't store in the folder the difference between marked for
> deletion and purged.
>
> I don't understand the difference either, but that's just me.
Try this sometime.
Save a junk message into an mbox folder, then go edit the folder and add
this header to the message:
X-Status: D
Now open the folder in Mutt. You will find that the message shows up
already marked for deletion. If you quit the folder now, Mutt will
automatically delete the message.
I have a procmail recipe that adds this header to messages that it
thinks are SPAM. If I don't do anything special, the message will just
go away, but I still have a chance to notice the message before it gets
thrown away. :)
Anyway, since you can see that Mutt already has the ability to
understand a message which has had its delete flag set, but has not been
actually deleted from the folder, you have the idea of how this could
work. Suppose that Mutt were to save this flag to the folder when you
did an e(x)it from the folder, meaning to quit without saving changes?
I know that this goes against the philosophy of that command, but notice
that nothing is really lost, if that operation were performed. Indeed,
information would actually be retained, since Mutt would continue to
remember that you had marked the message for deletion, and when you come
back later, you could then confirm the deletion at a later time.
When applied to IMAP, Mutt can tell the server to mark the message, but
avoid using the EXPUNGE command, so that the server will retain the
flag.
When applied to Maildir, Mutt could simply rename the folder entry to
have a ":D" flag added to it. Some folders allow these flags to be
added to them without major work on Mutt's part. In such a case, it's
sad that Mutt has no concept of marking flags immediately, preferring to
do all of the work only at the end of the folder-close.
--
David DeSimone | "The doctrine of human equality reposes on this:
[EMAIL PROTECTED] | that there is no man really clever who has not
Hewlett-Packard | found that he is stupid." -- Gilbert K. Chesterson
Convex Division | PGP: 5B 47 34 9F 3B 9A B0 0D AB A6 15 F1 BB BE 8C 44
