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

[Lucio Chiappetti]

On Wed, 13 Sep 2023, Steve Litt wrote:


>> I see but what's the purpose of storing mails.

>

> Yesterday I needed to know how long I'd been doing business with a

> specific customer, so I went back in my emails and found the earliest

> correspondence with them, which was 2007.


Yes, I often have to keep track of what was done/decided in a particular 
project  a few years ago (or rebuke a colleague who does not remember 

:-)). Rather recently we wanted to keep a tally of howm many students we 

had in the lst 20 years, and only the archive of (automaticlly generated) 
e-mail allowed that.


> Deleting all my email, or even most of my email, would completely uproot 

> the way I conduct my business and personal life.


The same for me.

Of course I delete any mail which is considered "transient".


>> I like the idea of multiple account in the first hand but, I do not

>> really see the added value.

>

> I do. I have a little over 400 folders in a categorized hierarchy. This

> makes it easy to find specific emails.


Yes, for me multiple accounts would be both an overshoot and a nuisance, 
but keeping things arranged in directories and subdirectories is extremely 
useful.  For an historical misunderstanding I equated the directories in 
the topmost level with Alpine "Folder Collections", though they are local. 
I generally do not access them via that way.


> I have no emails on my ISP's SMTP server because they're deleted from 

> the server upon download.


Me too after 24 hrs or so (because of Google's IMAP pecuiliarities)


> I keep all my emails on a Dovecot IMAP server on my desktop computer,


For me the (UW) IMAP is activated seldom "on request".


> Fetchmail downloads and deletes the email from my ISP's SMTP server,

> and passes it on to Procmail for categorization.


Me too. I used a complex set of procmail rules since long ago. I use 
fetchmail when local delivery was replaced by Gsuite just in order to 
preserve all my procmail stuff "running as usual".


>> In 30 years, I can count on the fingers on my two hands the number of

>> times I needed to search/access an archived message



> You and I have very different workflow patterns.


Yes, mine is rather similar to Steve's.

Also, being an astrophysicist I tend to work for long term (after all the 
standard astronomical data format, FITS, was initiated in 1979 and is 
kicking and alive ... it aroused the interest of the Vatican Library to 
store ditized manuscripts :-) and they thunk for eternity :-))

If you think, before e-mail existed, it was common to archive letters, 
correspondence of any sort, paper documents, and they (or what survives of 
them) is object of historical study after centuries ...

-- 
Lucio Chiappetti - INAF/IASF - via Corti 12 - I-20133 Milano (Italy)
For more info : http://www.iasf-milano.inaf.it/~lucio/personal.html
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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 ?