306561 - Compact selected folders. [was Compact should compact sub folders]

Status: UNCONFIRMED

(Thunderbird :: Folder and Message Lists, enhancement)

Description

[dgn]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7.10) Gecko/20050715 Firefox/1.0.6 SUSE/1.0.6-4.1
Build Identifier: version 1.0.6 (20050716)

I have folders with sub folders for organising email.

When I compact a folder it does not compact the sub folders.

I think that this should occur.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.Create a folder and give it a sub folder
2.Add messages
3.Delete messaages in folder
4.Delete messages in sub folder
5.compact folder (compacts)
6.compact follder (compacts - wasn't compacted when parent folder was)

Actual Results:  
Sub folders have also to be manually compacted

Expected Results:  
Sub folders should be compacted when the parent folder is.

Comment 1

[Adam Guthrie]

How do you know the subfolder wasn't compacted?

Comment 2

[David :Bienvenu]

it wasn't, but there aren't any actions that when applied to parent folders get
applied to sub-folders, and a lot of users wouldn't want that anyway. So I'd say
this is won't fix. What would be nice would be to allow multiple selection in
the folder pane, and apply a command to multiple folders at once.

Comment 3

[David :Bienvenu]

actually, delete/move/copy do get applied to sub-folders, but things like mark
read, and compact don't. 

Comment 4

[Thorsten Edler]

"Enhancement bug" (even for windows-versions): Is it perhaps a good idea to
think about an "Auto compact folders when idle"?! Problem: If you don't compact
folders manually and regularly,  the TB-databases are growing up more and more,
because mails are resting in the databases, nevertheless you deleted them from
the list. Especially in network-systems with limited fileshares this is a
problem. If TB for example would perform an "auto-compact" in his idle-times,
this could be more efficient?!

Comment 5

[dgn]

(In reply to comment #2)
> it wasn't, but there aren't any actions that when applied to parent folders get
> applied to sub-folders, and a lot of users wouldn't want that anyway. So I'd say
> this is won't fix. What would be nice would be to allow multiple selection in
> the folder pane, and apply a command to multiple folders at once.

A simple solution here would be for e.g. another item such as "Compact folder
and sub folders"......

I think this would be very very useful.

Given the responses, can somebody mark this as confirmed. I thought it would let
me but it doesn't

Comment 6

[dgn]

(In reply to comment #3)
> actually, delete/move/copy do get applied to sub-folders, but things like mark
> read, and compact don't. 

good point.

However David does raise a valid point that the user may not want this, or at
least expect this.

So it should either be another option, or if the current working is changed, it
should be clearly documented in the associated (pre)release.

Comment 7

[dgn]

(In reply to comment #4)
> "Enhancement bug" (even for windows-versions): Is it perhaps a good idea to
> think about an "Auto compact folders when idle"?! Problem: If you don't compact
> folders manually and regularly,  the TB-databases are growing up more and more,
> because mails are resting in the databases, nevertheless you deleted them from
> the list. Especially in network-systems with limited fileshares this is a
> problem. If TB for example would perform an "auto-compact" in his idle-times,
> this could be more efficient?!

Periodic automatic-compacting of folders sounds like a good suggestion to me.

Though slightly different than this particular issue, it could be for some a
solution for this issue. (set auto compact so you don't have to manually do it
for 'busy' folders).

However, I believe this particular suggestion of auto-compacting deserves it's
own 'ticket number'. Could you add another 'bug/enhancement', if one does not
already exist.

Comment 8

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

That's bug 286888. I wouldn't want this bug though. Either you "just want it done" and use File | Compact folders, or then you want control, and use Compact for a particular folder in the context menu.

Comment 9

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

dgn, do you have compelling examples of why File | Compact folders is an undesirable solution?

(In reply to comment #8)
> That's bug 286888. I wouldn't want this bug though. Either you "just want it
> done" and use File | Compact folders, or then you want control, and use
> Compact for a particular folder in the context menu.

bienvenu, do you agree with magnus?

Comment 10

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

comment 2 would make this wontfix. Morphing to multiple selection scenario, rather than closing the bug.