*** bug 259295 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Yes. Dragging something to the Trash folder should mark it as deleted.
I think this used to work in an older version of evo, but I don't have
1.4 installed anywhere to test with.

Yes, In 1.4.6 dragging a mail and/or folder into the Trash. 
This deletes the folder/mail from its position.

This is 1.4.6 on a old debian sarge box.

*** bug 270842 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

This should also work for the Junk folder, to mark a message as junk.
And, dragging a message from the Trash folder to another folder should
undelete the message and move it to the desired folder.

Moving to mailer. We should definitely do this.

*** Bug 321357 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

How did this end up as an enhancement? It is a usability issue, and actually is (well, once was) a regression. Setting Severity, adding Keyword.

We definitely should implement this feature again.

0) Writing down my findings (to help my poor memory and to - most likely - confuse others).

1) This looks relevant in mail/em-folder-tree.c:emft_drop_target()
[...]
               /* don't allow copying/moving into a vTrash/vJunk folder */
                if (!strcmp (full_name, CAMEL_VTRASH_NAME)
                    || !strcmp (full_name, CAMEL_VJUNK_NAME))
                        goto done;
[...]

2) Code was added in revision 24765, on 17 February 2004 (irrelevant renaming in 26457). According to ChangeLog entry that commit should fix (now) bug #254060.

3) The only thing relevant in bug #254060 is part of a comment by Not Zed (see http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=254060#c4):
"FWIW we need options to disable folder picking anyway, e.g. move to a
vfolder, import to a vfolder tree or a folder under trash/junk."

Not sure what that meant, tough: might also be about dropping and dragging of folders.

Well, after removing the four lines quoted in comment #9 and some rather light testing, at least drag and drop to Trash seems to be still working as expected (I don't really need local spam filtering, so haven't looked at drag and drop to Junk). 

Anyone an idea why those four lines were added and what side effects removing them could have?

If no one knows, I'll be glad to attach the trivial) patch to reenable drah and drop to Trash (and Junk)

(In reply to comment #10)
> Anyone an idea why those four lines were added and what side effects removing
> them could have?

My guess at the rationale is that dragging messages to Trash or Junk may mislead the user into thinking the messages have been /moved/ there, when in fact the messages have stayed put and have only been /flagged/ as Trash or Junk.  Allowing drag and drop there kind of breaks the UI abstraction a bit and introduces the potential for more confusion.

I think the core problem surrounding Trash and Junk is the fact that they are presented in the UI as /places/ rather than /views/, and so naturally the user wants to drag things there.  But I've not yet figured out how to clarify the UI.  All I have so far is a rough notion that each account should consist of four different views, possibly presented as tabs:

   Messages (i.e. normal view), Trash, Junk, and Search Results

Trash and Junk would then no longer show up amongst the other folders.

(In reply to comment #11)
> My guess at the rationale is that dragging messages to Trash or Junk may
> mislead the user into thinking the messages have been /moved/ there, when in
> fact the messages have stayed put and have only been /flagged/ as Trash or
> Junk.  Allowing drag and drop there kind of breaks the UI abstraction a bit and
> introduces the potential for more confusion.

I would need more evidence to share your guess at the rationale (the comments at bug #254060, the commit message and the comment in the code do not really point in that direction). None of the people involved in this bugreport mentioned it, not even the developers. No other developers dropped by to tell about this shift in paradigm (at least, it feels like a shift to me) and close this bug as WONTFIX (or whatever).

However, I did notice you also can't move to Trash or Junk, which does add weight to your guess.

> I think the core problem surrounding Trash and Junk is the fact that they are
> presented in the UI as /places/ rather than /views/, and so naturally the user
> wants to drag things there.  But I've not yet figured out how to clarify the
> UI.  All I have so far is a rough notion that each account should consist of
> four different views, possibly presented as tabs:
> 
>    Messages (i.e. normal view), Trash, Junk, and Search Results
> 
> Trash and Junk would then no longer show up amongst the other folders.

There is a lot to say about this. I'll have to restrict myself to a few comments:
- wouldn't this need a _major_ (rethink and) redesign of the UI and the code? If so, can that redesign be done in some reasonable amount of time?
- why would dragging (and moving) of mail to Trash and Junk actually be at odds with these views? Does it really break the abstraction?
- wouldn't it be better, even within the concept of those of views, to keep Junk and Trash separate places. The nature of Junks and Trash is that you don't want to be bothered with those messages again. (I'd guess they would by default not show up in any view, which would basically mean that those messages remain in their own places at the end of the day). That is how gmail is basically structured, by the way. That structure does make sense.

> There is a lot to say about this. I'll have to restrict myself to a few
> comments:
> - wouldn't this need a _major_ (rethink and) redesign of the UI and the code?
> If so, can that redesign be done in some reasonable amount of time?

It was kind of a brainstorm.  I haven't fully thought through the design implications yet, but I've had a nagging feeling for some time now (years, in fact) that something is fundamentally broken about the way we're presenting these Junk and Trash abstractions in the UI.  The fact that new users invariably get confused by this is evidence that it needs rethought.  But lacking any formal design experience, I'm still struggling to form a coherent alternative.

That said, I think most of the pieces are there already, and it's mostly a matter of rearranging them.  So I don't think it would be quite as major a redesign as you may think.  But it's all speculation at this point.


> - why would dragging (and moving) of mail to Trash and Junk actually be at
> odds with these views? Does it really break the abstraction?

The drag-and-drop abstraction generally deals with moving (or copying) data from one location to another: from a source to a destination.  Junk and Trash are not destinations, they're just tags.  Dropping a message there doesn't make it "go" anywhere; it's still there in the source folder.  My thought is that maybe by presenting Junk and Trash (somehow) as views instead of locations, it might help clarify the misconception and make the UI more intuitive.

Not sure if what I'm saying makes any sense yet...

Note that both reverse operations do work: you can drag from Trash and move from Trash (tough some messages do get copied to the other folder but not removed from Trash - that could be yet another bug). So whatever the idea was, it was not implemented very consequently.

(In reply to comment #13)
> The drag-and-drop abstraction generally deals with moving (or copying) data
> from one location to another: from a source to a destination.  Junk and Trash
> are not destinations, they're just tags.  Dropping a message there doesn't make
> it "go" anywhere; it's still there in the source folder.  My thought is that
> maybe by presenting Junk and Trash (somehow) as views instead of locations, it
> might help clarify the misconception and make the UI more intuitive.

And I  still think people actually want their messages _moved_ to Trash or Junk. People would be _very_ surprised to have their spam still show up in vFolder searches and the like. With deleted messages they would probably be just surprised. (No way to _prove_ this tough.)

For the bug at hand the choices seem to be:
1) allow drag and drop (and moving) to Trash and Junk; or
2) admit the current behavior is confusing, but do nothing until something overall better is agreed upon.

With comment #14 in mind (assuming that allowing drag and drop/moving can be implemented with reasonable effort and that the reverse operations aren't too buggy) I tend to prefer 1).

*** Bug 372534 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Closing as WONTFIX since dragging a message to search results doesn't make sense.