648761 - better, customizable imap folder mapping

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 752484

(Thunderbird :: Folder and Message Lists, enhancement)

Description

[Jozsef Fejes]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1; rv:2.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/4.0
Build Identifier: 

I have 5 IMAP accounts.
- Two of them are served by courier with folders like INBOX, INBOX.Drafts, INBOX.Sent, etc.
- One of them by a Sun messenger something, with a flat folder structure and Hungarian folder names.
- In Gmail, there's an Inbox at root, and there are Drafts, Sent mail, etc. under a [Gmail] named folder. Also, in Gmail, I use "All mail" as trash (the real trash is auto-emptied and that can't be turned off, this hack works pretty well, except it doesn't look nice).
- And there's an Exchange server, with a flat structure, but with different folder names, like "Deleted Items".

Not only the different servers are messy, but Thunderbird's configuration, too. I can specify the logical trash folder under "Server settins", drafts and sent under "Copies & Folders", and junk under "Junk Settings".

What would make Thunderbird the best IMAP client in the world would be the following:

1. In the IMAP subscription dialog, the user should be able to specify what the logical use of each physical folder should be. Here I could specify that the physical "INBOX.Sent" is logically a sent mail folder, or in the Hungarian server, "Elküldött" is also logically a sent mail folder.

2. This configuration could be included in the public mail server database, too, but only as a default, so that it's customizable, too. Also there could be global common mappings, like "Sent", "Sent mail", "Sent items" are usual names for the same logical thing.

3. This configuration should affect the presentation of the folders: first of all, the icons, which works now, but also the names, which is currently left mixed as is. I'd like all of my sent folders have the same name, not 3 different names as each server calls them something slightly different. So, each physical-logical mapping could have 2 attributes: physical folder -> logical use and name alias.

4. The currently implemented folder settings under "Server Settings", "Copies & Folders" and "Junk Settings" should be able to operate on the logical folders. Most users would place a copy of sent mails under the logical sent folder, and that's a sensible default, but that can be changed to anything else. These settings shouldn't be used AS the logical-physical mapping, those configuration settings belong to another, common place as I said above.

5. The user should also be able to flatten the directory structure. I hate when I have an inbox or a [Gmail] and everything else is a child of that. All the servers are different, so at least the user should be able to map those folders in a more meaningful way. So now a mapping could have 3 attributes, eg: the physical "INBOX.Sent" is mapped as a logical sent folder, should appear with the localized name "Sent", and it should appear under the root instead of under inbox.

Reproducible: Always

Comment 1

[Jozsef Fejes]

Attachment: proof of concept

As you can see, the logical-physical mapping works fine with my current settings, you can see the predefined everywhere. The problems: different tree structures, slightly or completely (localized) different names for the same logical folders, and this mapping configuration can be achieved in 3 different account setting windows instead of one common folder mapping dialog. Also I use All mail as trash in Gmail. All the accounts should look the same as my 2nd account, or if I used TB in Hungarian, then all the accounts should look (almost) the same as my 4th account.

Comment 2

[Nikolay Shopik]

I belive you are talking about Bug 558659

Comment 3

[Ludovic Hirlimann [:Usul]]

(In reply to comment #2)
> I belive you are talking about Bug 558659

And I agree, if you disagree please reopen and state what's different.