Re: Evolution email (problem?) (IMAP, Gmail, email compacting)
On Sun, 2023-04-30 at 18:26 +0100, Tixy wrote:
> On Sun, 2023-04-30 at 11:19 -0400, Default User wrote:
> > (BTW, if anyone does have information about compacting folders in
> > Evolution, I would love to hear about it!)
>
> What is 'compacting', what is it meant to do? Sounds like
> 'compressing'
> to me, don't know if protocols like IMAP has a way to ask the server
> to
> compress it's folders. (I would have though how emails are actually
> stored would be an internal implementation detail of the server).
>
> If it just means really deleting email, then you can select the menu
> option File > Empty Wastebasket which does that for all accounts. Or
> for just a single account, right click on it's Wastebasket. There is
> also Folder > Expunge which I believe does it for a single folder.
>
> You can also configure Evolution to empty the wastebasket after a
> period of time, or as I have it configured, whenever you close
> Evolution. (I've always hated the idea of Wastebaskets, if I delete
> something I want it deleted, not just hidden and taking up space).
>
Hi Tixy.
I don't know technically what "compacting" is supposed to mean, but
just as a total guess, I wonder if it is something like the 'vacuuming"
operation for databases.
According to this:
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/compacting-folders
compacting does not:
- delete messages
- remove messages
- compress folders
Note that this just says that compacting improves performance. But I
believe I have read elsewhere that not compacting regularly can have
potentially dire consequences, such as corrupted email storage files
and lost email messages.
Also consider this:
https://thunderbirdtweaks.blogspot.com/2011/07/compacting-what-is-it-and-why-must-i-do.html
So "expunging" emails may not be the same thing as compacting. FWIW,
in Evolution I had multiple email accounts with more than 1,000
messages each, including one which had over 24,000 messages! Spending
many days, deleting sometimes several hundred messages at a time, I
have now reduced that to less than 6,000. No lost messages or file
corruption yet . . .
It does occur to me that Evolution may use the maildir format rather
than the mbox format. I just ASSumed that it used mbox, since in Menu
> File, there is an option to save messages in mbox format. If
Evolution uses the maildir format, compacting apparently does not
apply, which would seem to explain it. I have not yet determined
whether Evolution uses mbox or maildir.
BTW, I also never did really like the wastebasket (recycle bin)
concept, in any application program. After all, delete should mean
delete, right? But I must confess that the wastebasket idea has
rescued me more than once from a deletion by mistake, or when I have
"changed my mind"!
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