GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 312016
spam not being expunged periodically
Last modified: 2012-08-10 08:58:11 UTC
IMAP accounts should by default perform automatic, periodic cleanup: - cleaning the trash and expunging deleted messages (for now you must Ctrl+E manually) - cleaning messages marked as spam (for now you must go to the spam folder, select them all, and delete them, and then Ctrl+E to clean them from the trash) All in all, the mailer should perform all "normal" maintenance tasks by itself without requiring user intervention. Other information:
so changing the subject to be more clear. it's definitely not a minor bug, but an enhancement.
wrong, expunging deleted messages is in irrecoverable step, it must be under some user control. there is already a feature to control this - expunge automatically on exit/after x days. auto-delete of spam doesn't exist though
> wrong, expunging deleted messages is in irrecoverable step, it must be under > some user control. Normal users don't know the difference between deleting and expunging. Incidentally, the main UI function is called "delete", not "expunge". There is no hint in the UI that deleted messages are just hidden and not completely deleted. But if the user doesn't expunge manually and the client doesn't expunge automatically, deleted mail will grow in the user's mailbox, unnecessarily eating up space. > there is already a feature to control this - expunge > automatically on exit/after x days. Where is that feature ? Couldn't find it in 2.2.3.
you realise that all imap clients (and non-imap clients, really) don't remove messages from the mailbox when a user hits Delete, right? You normally have to hit Expunge (or, in some mailers it's called "Compact Folder") to remove them from disk. This is not a new concept. > Where is that feature ? Couldn't find it in 2.2.3. have you looked in, oh, say, the Preferences dialog? I hear that's where preferences can be set :)
> you realise that all imap clients (and non-imap clients, really) don't remove > messages from the mailbox when a user hits Delete, right? The fact that other clients may not necessarily do it (and I'm not sure about it, btw) does not imply it is not the right thing. The most we can conclude is that others did not bother to do it. Even if nobody fixes it right away, you could acknowledge it's a real bug/improvement and not a fantasy. > You normally have to > hit Expunge (or, in some mailers it's called "Compact Folder") And that's what I think is a bug. When you "delete" something, the concept of having to "expunge" it afterwards is awkward and unintuitive. Especially that deleted messages are actually moved to the trash (with IMAP at least), so having to expunge *in addition to emptying the trash* is completely awful. At least in the normal life of non-geek people who don't want to know about the internals of IMAP servers. The mailer is supposed to offer an intuitive abstraction that hides the mail protocol and mail server specifics. If the mailer exposes things such as "expunging deleted messages" to the user, then it is a leaky abstraction. AFAIK Gnome is about making the UI simple, intuitive and undeceptive. At least that's what I understand, and what I experience in daily use with many Gnome apps. > have you looked in, oh, say, the Preferences dialog? I hear that's where > preferences can be set :) I've already looked in the preferences dialog and it's not there, at least in the French translation. Not in the general preferences, and not in the IMAP account specific preferences. So maybe you could answer my question: where is it precisely ? If I've overlooked it, it's simpler (and more useful ;-)) to give the precise answer than trying to be sarcastic...
> > have you looked in, oh, say, the Preferences dialog? I hear that's where > > preferences can be set :) Ok, I've found, its French name says "empty trash on exit" and I didn't think it was expunging too (which it does - just tried it). I stand corrected ;) I guess the remaining point is about spam not being deleted periodically.
Based on comment #6, modified the subject and confirming the bug.
bug 499319 request looks similar
*** Bug 302681 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
related to bug 263350
"Delete junk on exit" setting is available in 3.2.3. *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 260830 ***