[VM] Info node "External Messages"

[Alan Wehmann]

I tried out some of what is described in Info node "External Messages"
yesterday.  I chose to limit message size to 50K bytes and I used the
IMAP server at work.  Since I am used to how Thunderbird implements
its size limitations I was surprised to find myself being asked yes or
no for each over-sized message.  I answered no in each case (there
were 533 messages and 30-odd were oversized); I was then asked whether
or not to delete them from the "maildrop".  I got confused at this
point and chose to delete them (a bad choice, it turned out).  My
memory of Thunderbird's behavior is that a choice of deleting a
message means that the message is moved to some sort of trash folder
(or is marked for deletion).  I found out that in the case of VM, the
message on the IMAP server is deleted and is completely gone.

My memory of how Thunderbird behaves may be colored by the fact that
work used to have a different IMAP server & I have had more experience
using that one--as compared to the current one.

Based on this experience I would recommend that the Info node
"External Messages" have wording added to it, so that the user is
warned in some manner that the treatment of oversized (and deleted)
messages differs from what he might have experienced with Thunderbird.

I was using the trunk version of VM (at revision 1390).

One lesson for me is that I need to clean out my IMAP inbox folder at
work (by deleting messages that I don't want and moving others to a
different folder).  I used to do this more diligently (using e.g. the
server web interface).  In those times I moved messages with
attachments that I wished to keep, to a different folder.  

I did note that VM seemed "slow" when it went through my ~500 messages
for a second time and remarked that all of them had already been
downloaded already.

-- 
Alan Wehmann
address@hidden