Purging Deleted Messages prompt
There already is a thread discussing the dialog box "Compact Folders". However this related to the purging of DELETED messages. It did not relate to messages which have been MOVED to a different folder for which the same dialog box appears. Could someone please tell me: 1 Why do I get the "Compact Folders" dialog when I MOVE a file. This should not change the disc storage requirement since presumably only the relevant entry in the file allocation table is changed not the 1.7GB suggested in the dialog - see attached image. 2 What would happen after MOVING a file if I pressed Proceed 3 This "feature" was not present in earlier versions of Thunderbird (there was "Compact" after a deletion) so what is the reason for including it in the newer one (78.9.1 (32-bit).
Thank you
Modified by Wayne Mery
Chosen solution
The best analogy I can offer is to copy a paragraph from one document to another. That is essentially what every move or deletion in Thunderbird is. There are no files, just paragraphs in a document. With each folder being the document.
Moving is copy then mark as deleted. Interestingly deletion is also copy and delete because it is a move to the deleted/trash folder. Leaving the original paragraph exactly where it always was, just marked not to be displayed.
This Compact / Purge thing is about actually getting rid of that marked as deleted parragraph from the source document.
Explaining the process is inherently difficult because folks assume an email is a file and will be stored as such. The state currently is nothow it is. That will come with the maildir lite storage that has been years in the experimental stages. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/maildir-thunderbird With maildir there will be no need for a Compact / Purge because your assumption that a mail is a file will be true.
Read this answer in context 👍 0All Replies (4)
Any reference in dialogs to purging is a reference to compacting.
1. E-Mails are stored in one file per folder... you move it from say inbox to "keepers" and you are in effect deleting it from inbox and adding it to "keepers" under the hood. 2. The folder is compacted 3. Some changes to the text of the compact dialog were made by a group that though that were making the process clearer. You can read all the gory details of the discussion here https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=716412 and then the new bug requesting that it again be clarified because the last clarification is nothing of the sort. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1678856
Hi Matt Thank you for that. Do I understand you correctly that if you MOVE a file, you create another copy on the hard drive and now effectively have two separate files on your hard drive, rather than keeping the original on the HD and just changing the details in the file allocation table? According to the dialog box, there is something like 1.67GB occupied by "Moved" files that would be deleted. Really? (The discussion in your attached links are beyond me.) Cheers Graham
Seçilmiş Həll
The best analogy I can offer is to copy a paragraph from one document to another. That is essentially what every move or deletion in Thunderbird is. There are no files, just paragraphs in a document. With each folder being the document.
Moving is copy then mark as deleted. Interestingly deletion is also copy and delete because it is a move to the deleted/trash folder. Leaving the original paragraph exactly where it always was, just marked not to be displayed.
This Compact / Purge thing is about actually getting rid of that marked as deleted parragraph from the source document.
Explaining the process is inherently difficult because folks assume an email is a file and will be stored as such. The state currently is nothow it is. That will come with the maildir lite storage that has been years in the experimental stages. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/maildir-thunderbird With maildir there will be no need for a Compact / Purge because your assumption that a mail is a file will be true.
Thanks Matt. I will now respond to the dialog box with "Continue" and cross my legs. Will await with interest, notification that maildir is bug free. Thanks for your help Cheers Graham Garden