543445 - Change 'Archive' feature to simply use 'Filters' instead

Status: UNCONFIRMED

(Thunderbird :: Folder and Message Lists, enhancement)

Description

[Charles]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.2) Gecko/20100115 Firefox/3.6
Build Identifier: 3.0.1 final

Ok, bear with me...

The archiving feature has a lot of potential. When I first discovered it, I really disliked the fact that it had no way of disabling it, and filed bug 542998 to provide a way to do so - but the more I think about it, this could really be useful, if implemented a little differently. I hope you'll read this all the way through before just dismissing it out of hand.

I'd like to see the archiving functionality moved out of the 'Copies & Folders' options - which really limits its usefulness and applicability - and added as a new/special type of 'filters' available under the 'Tools' menu as 'Archive Filters'.

So, under the Tools menu, you'd have 'Archive Filters' and 'Message Filters'.

The 'Archive Filters' would have some special capabilities not available to regular message filters - ie, the ability to use system variables for various reasons - ie, %AccountName%, to assign custom TAGs on the fly (%Year%, %Month%, etc) as well as regular TAGs, the ability to assign the 'root' Archive folder, the ability to assign keyboard shortcuts to the filter, etc.

This way, you could have multiple archiving actions that could be applied to currently selected messages - or folders - depending on which keyboard shortcut you execute...

Or, you could also set them to auto-execute 'daily' (first TB startup of the day), if they are based on message age or some other user defined parameter specified in the filter.

Reproducible: Always




To me it would be a lot more intuitive, and provide a lot more flexibility - and could reuse a lot of the UI for managing mail filters too...

I'm curious what the devs might think of this...

Comment 1

[Kent James (:rkent)]

I think that much of what you are asking could be met by more general issues, that have been mentioned before:

1) Allow filters to be triggered on a schedule, in addition to the current Incoming and Manual.

2) Add an Archive filter action.

3) Add a search term for Folder.

I have all of these items on my request list for features for my FiltaQuilla extension. As for me (and I am the main developer interested in filters), I am more likely to try out new features first in FiltaQuilla if they can be implemented in an extension.

I think that your points about keyboard shortcuts for specific filter actions, that could result in archive actions, is interesting, though once again I see no reason to limit this to archives instead of doing it more generally for all filters. I tried to deal with some issues of keyboard shortcuts in my TaQuilla extension, and found that the current internal system is not very friendly toward customization, as this is a theme, system, and language-dependent issue that is not easy to modify. For TaQuilla, I just gave the user the ability to choose whatever keyboard shortcut he wanted, and put the issue upon him to test if it worked or not in his setup. I doubt that approach would fly in core though.

Still, I'll at least add to my (quite long) feature request page for FiltaQuilla to allow keyboard shortcuts for apply specific filters to the current folder and/or message selection. You are of course welcome to file a core bug on that if you want to.

Comment 2

[Charles]

(In reply to comment #1)
> I think that much of what you are asking could be met by more general issues,
> that have been mentioned before:
> 
> 1) Allow filters to be triggered on a schedule, in addition to the current
> Incoming and Manual.
> 
> 2) Add an Archive filter action.
> 
> 3) Add a search term for Folder.

This sounds very good to me... :) I was actually going to suggest just doing this in the regular filters, but for some reason changed my mind...

> I have all of these items on my request list for features for my FiltaQuilla
> extension. As for me (and I am the main developer interested in filters), I am
> more likely to try out new features first in FiltaQuilla if they can be
> implemented in an extension.
> 
> I think that your points about keyboard shortcuts for specific filter actions,
> that could result in archive actions, is interesting, though once again I see
> no reason to limit this to archives instead of doing it more generally for all
> filters.

Agreed. I'll go install FiltaQuilla (intersting name - why not FiltaZilla? ;)

> I tried to deal with some issues of keyboard shortcuts in my TaQuilla
> extension, and found that the current internal system is not very friendly
> toward customization, as this is a theme, system, and language-dependent issue
> that is not easy to modify. For TaQuilla, I just gave the user the ability to
> choose whatever keyboard shortcut he wanted, and put the issue upon him to
> test if it worked or not in his setup. I doubt that approach would fly in
> core though.
> 
> Still, I'll at least add to my (quite long) feature request page for
> FiltaQuilla to allow keyboard shortcuts for apply specific filters to the
> current folder and/or message selection. You are of course welcome to file a
> core bug on that if you want to.

Thanks, I'll do that - since it sounds like it would be the hardest of these things to do for you?

Comment 3

[Charles]

(In reply to comment #1)
>> Still, I'll at least add to my (quite long) feature request page for
>> FiltaQuilla to allow keyboard shortcuts for apply specific filters to the
>> current folder and/or message selection. You are of course welcome to file a
>> core bug on that if you want to.

> Thanks, I'll do that - since it sounds like it would be the hardest of these
> things to do for you?

Done: bug 543717

What do you think about the other items in my request above:

> the ability to use system variables for various reasons - ie, %AccountName%,
> to assign custom TAGs on the fly (%Year%, %Month%, etc) as well as regular
> TAGs, the ability to assign the 'root' Archive folder,

So, for example, I could then assign the same root Archive folder for all accounts, then have the filter tag them with %AccountName%|%YEAR%|%MONTH then Archive them.

Would this be difficult?

Comment 4

[Kent James (:rkent)]

(In reply to comment #3)
> (In reply to comment #1)
> 
> What do you think about the other items in my request above:
> 
> > the ability to use system variables for various reasons - ie, %AccountName%,
> > to assign custom TAGs on the fly (%Year%, %Month%, etc) as well as regular
> > TAGs, the ability to assign the 'root' Archive folder,
> 
> So, for example, I could then assign the same root Archive folder for all
> accounts, then have the filter tag them with %AccountName%|%YEAR%|%MONTH then
> Archive them.
> 

I've never realy understood why someone would want to archive everything to a single folder (which I realize is the current implementation), so it is hard for me to get into your tagging scheme. But to answer your specific question, it would not be hard to setup a filter action (again more likely in an extension like FiltaQuilla) to add custom-generated tags like you suggest. I'll also add that to my FiltaQuilla bugzilla list of suggested features.

Comment 5

[Charles]

(In reply to comment #4)
> (In reply to comment #3)
>> (In reply to comment #1)
>> 
>> What do you think about the other items in my request above:
>> 
>>> the ability to use system variables for various reasons - ie, %AccountName%,
>>> to assign custom TAGs on the fly (%Year%, %Month%, etc) as well as regular
>>> TAGs, the ability to assign the 'root' Archive folder,
>> 
>> So, for example, I could then assign the same root Archive folder for all
>> accounts, then have the filter tag them with %AccountName%|%YEAR%|%MONTH then
>> Archive them.

> I've never realy understood why someone would want to archive everything to a
> single folder (which I realize is the current implementation), so it is hard
> for me to get into your tagging scheme.

I had a hard time coming around to this way too, but actually, it makes it much easier to work with messages. Rather than having dozens or hundreds of physical folders that a search has to traverse, there is only one. Tags then substitute in a way for folders, like they do on GMail - but the neat thing is - and this is what sold me on it once I got my head around it - since you can apply multiple tags to a single message, you can easily/quickly create custom views based on these tags, without having to have duplicate messages or create some messy folder hieararchy. This is how TBs Virtual folders (Saved Searches) work, and is how Dovecots server side virtual folders *will* work when implemented.

> But to answer your specific question, it would not be hard to setup a filter
> action (again more likely in an extension like FiltaQuilla) to add custom-
> generated tags like you suggest. I'll also add that to my FiltaQuilla
> bugzilla list of suggested features.

Cool, thanks... I'll probably go add that as an enhancement request too - who know, one of the devs might like the idea and run with it (that's why I'm not too shy about adding one)...

Comment 6

[Charles]

Changed bug Title to more properly reflect the current status...

Comment 7

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

bug 661271 is a duplicate?

Comment 8

[Arthur K. (he/him)]

(In reply to Charles from comment #0)

I'd like to see the archiving functionality moved out of the 'Copies &
Folders' options - which really limits its usefulness and applicability -
and added as a new/special type of 'filters' available under the 'Tools'
menu as 'Archive Filters'.

Hmm, this really sounded like a feature request more than an issue with Filters. Even with 78.9.1 portable and 88.0b3.

Being that in the Copies and Folders section of an account's settings it defaults to All Mail (in GMail's case), setting it to "Keep Messages Archive In: Archives Folder on: <the present user account>", some other kind of action that isn't a common filter would need to take place. I don't use the Archive function so I can't really say. But as I look at it and if I am getting the gist of what the OP meant way back when, it would ask the filter rule to invoke a backup operation on the Archive folder if one exists. I don't know if that's in the scope of what the filtering mechanism is supposed to do. AIUI, the Archive feature isn't the same as just a generic filter that routes mail coming into the Inbox (point A) to some other folder/location (point B).