209077 - enormous data file size. (enhancement request)

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(MailNews Core :: Database, enhancement)

Description

[Tom Koller]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.3) Gecko/20030312
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.3) Gecko/20030312

First any good corporate IT dept has all data on backed up file servers and
never on a user hard drive. Second, for many good reasons, some people have
their email clients keep all previous text and/or atttachments appended to
replys. Third, a copy of this is kept in the 'Sent' or 'Deleted' data
folders/files. This causes huge files occupying the file servers.

My suggestion, have an option to scan the appropriate data file when sending or
deleting an email. If the newer file has all the history needed to keep a proper
trail, then the older files will be permanently and totally deleted. This gives
a viable way to limit the bulk filling file servers. It can be a lesser help to
individual machines too.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.
2.
3.



Expected Results:  
I hope to see an email client that can track a history of replys without he
inefiency of massivley repeated data. This of course should be an option that
can be controlled by an admin or the user when appropriate.

Comment 1

[Matthias Versen [:Matti]]

This is near impossible because this leads to lost messages.
Wouldn't it not better to use Imap (does it handle such problems ?)
BTW: Do you use "compact folders" sometimes to remove deleted messages in the
mail-files ?

Comment 2

[David :Bienvenu]

He basically wants groupware, structured discussions, etc. It's a nice idea, but
it's not going to be part of mail. Or some sort of fancy object oriented
database that notices that large blocks of text are the same...anyway, we're
using berkeley format mailboxes because they're a standard, and we're not going
to change that anytime soon. For IMAP, it's up to the imap server to figure out
how to store messages. I'm resolving WONTFIX, not because it's a bad idea, but
because we're never going to get there.