[Dovecot] OT: Looking for a robust IMAP client

[Charles Marcus]

On 12/15/2008 2:34 PM, Stewart Dean wrote:
>>> Thunderbird was able to do a mass select of one of the two messages,
>>> and deleted 65,000, but after that it locked up.

>> I'd never try to delete that many at once...
>>
>> It very likely wasn't locked up though, it probably was working
>> furiously to try to do what you told it to do - the problem is, it can
>> *appear* to be locked up, even for many minutes, but if you let it go,
>> it will eventually finish (or time out)...

> Pine did it in2-3 minutes  with one imapd instance; TBird was thrashing
> mightly for 20+ minutes with 4-8 imapd instances, and no progress in
> site....even after Pine had deleted the inbox down to 2000 messages.

I never said TBird was 'better' than Pine, I merely commented on how
TBird works with lots of messages in my experience...

Also, from what you just said, you were working with that many messages
with Pine at the same time as with TBird?

TBird is an excellent IMAP client, as long as you understand its quirks
and work with them.

Bottom line - if you expect it to behave exactly like Pine - or like you
think it *should* - then expect to be disappointed.

>> But, if you ever try this again, it helps a LOT if you do a
>> 'SHIFT-delete' (press/hold the shift key, then tap the Delete button on
>> the keyboard) - this bypasses the Trash - otherwise, it isn't deleting
>> them it is MOVING them to the Trash, which can take a long time for that
>> many messages.

> Was not moving to Trash, just directly expunging stuff that had been
> marked for deletion

I don't know what that means in TBird-speak. There is no 'expunge'
command that I am aware of, either as a toolbar button or a menu choice.

There is a 'delete' button on the toolbar, and you can select messages
and hit the 'delete' key on the keyboard.

You can also right-click on the Trash and 'empty' it.

The only place I know of that contains the word 'expunge' is in the
Account Settings, where you can tell it to expunge the Inbox on exit.

So, I'm curious - what, exactly, did you do in TBird? You selected all
of the messages in the Inbox, then... ?

>> I usually work with a thousand or so at a time if I need to do something
>> like this, and it works, although it certainly isn't instantaneous...

> With <sigh, I know, I know> a mbox format inbox, I don't know that it
> matters much whether it's 10 files or 10,000...it's still gotta haul out
> the whole ugly thing.

Ok, well, I only use maildir format, so can't speak to TBirds
performance or quirks wrt mbox...

-- 

Best regards,

Charles