[Alpine-info] Inbox Zero with Alpine, anyone ?

[Lucio Chiappetti]

On Mon, 11 Sep 2023, jason-alpine-info at shalott.net wrote:


> I'm not sure that "Inbox Zero" is really a "strategy" that one practices;


I've never heard the term, although I practice something not too 
different.


> but I always keep my inbox small enough that the whole thing fits within 

> a single 80x25 terminal window (i.e., fewer than ~20 messages).


Let us say that is a design goal. At the moment I have 40 messages in mt 
(local) inbox.


> Long long ago, I used to use multiple folders for saving messages, and

> organized the saved messages based on time or subject matter or sender.


Yes, I still use such policy. I save messages in mail folders according to 
subject (usually project/subproject) ... and the folder is defaulted for 
each sender-or-recipient (*) via the Fcc entry in alpine's addressbook.

(*) I always *hated* separate saving of sent-mail and received-mail. The 
colour coding tells me whther the message is/was ingoing or outgoing.

I also use a special colour coding and status codes in inbox. A status of 
"S" (red) means the message was already saved in the destination folder 
but is still pending in the inbox to be disposed of. A status of "*" 
(cyan) means it is (saved and) important, prioritary. "N" green is new. 
Otherwise pending messages in inbox are probably less important, still to 
be dealt with (say a memo about a trip, to be deleted once I've 
travelled).

By the way, I have currently 1043 folders grouped in 66 directories (done 
of the directories are also grouped in a [local] folder collection. Of 
these 787 in 22 directories are of the .Old/Old-yyyy series. I do archive 
once per year.

I would hate having a single long folder (and also would think it to be be 
slow/unefficient).


> If it's possible to run alpine directly on the mail servers, accessin 

> the mail store directly, rather than through an IMAP daemon,


Ah ... all the above is still stored locally on my work machine. Until a 
few years ago mail was delivered in such local inbox by our MX. Then we 
were forced to use gsuite (gmail). My arrangement is to use fetchmail to 
"receive" mail in such local inbox, emulatying the "old way". I fetch 
gsuite mail every 5 min, and from another rarely used POP server every few 
hours (all via crontab).


> In a case like this, I would definitely NOT remove the messages from the

> remote side when mirroring, nor allow changes to the local mirror to be

> propagated back to the server.


For the POP server fetchmail automatically removes fetched mail. For 
gsuite it should do the same. Due to the peculiar (read: non-standard) way 
google servers work, this moves them to a Bin gmail pseudo-folder. For 
privacy reason I clean that once per day.

I usually read mail (from home, or from a laptop) in ssh on my work 
machine. In principle I could activate a local UW IMAP server on my work 
machine and use a web-alpine web mailer while away, but I do that VERY 
seldom.

In extreme cases only I use the gmail server directly (e.g. for one day 
this summer when I was on holiday and my work machine was off for the 
local electrical room). Then I reverted to my standard usage asap.


-- 
Lucio Chiappetti - INAF/IASF - via Corti 12 - I-20133 Milano (Italy)
For more info : http://www.iasf-milano.inaf.it/~lucio/personal.html
------------------------------------------------------------------------
A middle rank researcher at end career is not rich but is in the top 5%
of the Italian income tax taxpayers. Does it not sound strange ?