491304 - `Move/copy to <folder> again` needs config for how many most recent folders are shown (not just one)

Status: UNCONFIRMED

(Thunderbird :: Preferences, enhancement)

Description

[Frank Griswold [:griswolf] [:fgriswold]]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.5; en-US; rv:1.9.1b5pre) Gecko/20090504 Shiretoko/3.5b5pre
Build Identifier: version 2.0.0.21 (20090302)

My email handling cycle doesn't usually let me refile to the same folder repeatedly, so the "move again" and "copy again" options aren't too good. But because my usage kind of spirals around, the heuristic that decides what to show me for "Recent" moves and copies isn't right either. I want an option to keep the N most recent moves in that list (and another option to put them at the top of the list, or interleave alphabetically).

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
Desired behavior never happens: Enhancement request

Comment 1

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

that's two additional preferences, but really we try to add or improve features in such a way that don't involve adding preferences and attendant UI.  Do the issues listed in bug 370324 help address your problem?

Comment 2

[Frank Griswold [:griswolf] [:fgriswold]]

Those issues are also annoying, but peripheral to this problem. 

I'll restate it: The current heuristic for deciding what to show in the "Recent" option of "Move To" or "Copy To" hides my several most recently targeted folders. One isn't enough, so the "again" option as implemented is useless. 

The option I want effectively lengthens the list of choices for "move to Xxx again" or "copy to Xxx again" from the one most recent target to to some smallish number (I need as many as 5, usually). 

One simple way to do it would be to keep them in the existing "Recent" list(s) that is currently populated by the failing (for me) heuristic. Another way would be to extend the "again" menu to pop open a (short) list of targets.

The option to keep some actually-most-recently-targeted folders is the one that matters most; and I don't really care which way it shows up in the GUI.

A nice option, useful if putting these into the "Recent" list would allow me to also specify whether these few most recently moved/copied targets would show up sorted into the list or show up at the top. That option is not so important. Best default behavior for me would be 'at the top'.

Note that this whole issue arises from the need to index messages by associating them with more than one folder. Gmail's 'tagged archive' system avoids that issue by allowing multiple tags per message. A system like that would solve my issue without any change to the 'move' UI. If I trusted it...

Comment 3

[Bryan Clark (DevTools PM) [:clarkbw]]

This would be fairly easy to implement as an extension that expanded the list of copy to XXX again locations.  Making some of them sticky would take some additional work but wouldn't be that hard in the scope of things.

I don't think we would have the time to implement this feature for the 3.0 Thunderbird release but as an extension it could be implemented in parallel and then used as a reference for something that could eventually be included.

Comment 4

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

"Again" is by definition "one" choice so I don't forsee it ever getting more than one choice.  "Recent" OTOH exists for the purpose of providing choice. And the pollution therein is definitely mitigated by Bug 370324 - "Recent" folder context menu doesn't seem to work, shows wrong folders for copy and move.

Extensions in this area:
nostalgy, quickfolders, quick folder move, archive this

However, your usecase of needing to copy to multiple folders seems quite unsuited to a typical mail UI and addon and thus probably needs a custom add-on because 
1. the operation performed by "again" is either copy or move, depending on the action taken on the last message
2. most addons assume a message goes to one target and are therefore move is the default or only action available

Comment 5

[Fred Stluka]

I too would like to see the recent folders list increased to more than 15 folders.  Ideally a configurable number.

--Fred

Comment 6

[Fred Stluka]

The recent folders list is now 25 long, not just 15.
Is that a new hardcoded value, or is it now configurable?

BTW, this change request has gotten to be much lower priority for me.
About a year ago, I started using Axel Grude's QuickFolders add-on for
Thunderbird. It works REALLY well. I rarely use the native Thunderbird
mechanisms anymore, for moving or copying messages to folders, or
for navigating among folders to see the messages already in them.
Good stuff!

--Fred