MBOX-Line: From bhayden at umn.edu  Tue Dec 29 16:24:54 2009
To: imap-protocol@u.washington.edu
From: Brian Hayden <bhayden@umn.edu>
Date: Fri Jun  8 12:34:43 2018
Subject: [Imap-protocol] Childless noselect mailboxes
In-Reply-To: <alpine.OSX.2.00.0912291425140.18442@hsinghsing.panda.com>
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Message-ID: <Gophermail.2.0.0912291824540.21747@vs-w.tc.umn.edu>

On Dec 29 2009, Mark Crispin wrote:

>On Tue, 29 Dec 2009, Brian Hayden wrote:
>> Has anyone studied this from a user perspective? I suspect that you'd 
>> have to
>> come up with an interaction method that is both new and intuitive 
>> (something
>> that is quite the rare gem) to have the concept have any meaning to the 
>> user
>> in a client interface -- \NoSelect seems quite foreign to everything 
>> else
>> they encounter on a computer system (or in any other interface, for that 
>> matter).
>
>Oh?
>
>The UNIX and Windows shells, with mkdir and rmdir are "quite foreign"?
>
>The Windows Explorer and the Mac OS X Finder are "quite foreign"?
>
>The FTP and SSH protocols are "quite foreign"?
>
>In EVERY other environment besides IMAP, you must create a directory 
>before you can put something into it.  In EVERY other environment besides 
>IMAP, directories don't vanish when you delete their children.
>
>The ONLY reason why IMAP hides directories under this cloak of "\NoSelect 
>names" was to pacify the CMU people who wanted to make everything look 
>like NetNews.  Giving in was a HUGE mistake which I have regretted 
>enormously ever since.

Sorry if I was unclear. As noted I wasn't talking about the creation 
action, but the concept of \NoSelect itself. I can't think of any object in 
any interface that the average person uses which has an analogue (except, 
obviously, for the ones of concern here--"directories" in mail clients 
which are either connecting to an IMAP server with a single-use mailbox 
format, or which hard-code a single-use view of the world).

A directory in Windows, OS X, or most of the Linux desktop environments 
(for example) is "selectable", both conceptually and in IMAP terms--because 
it is "dual-use". If the idea of a non-selectable object is foreign to the 
very large majority of users then it would follow that the details of its 
creation/use/destruction would then also not have a ready mental map. But 
to get at the root a client designer might want to tackle creating a 
meaningful mental model of \NoSelect.

This is somewhat tangential to Timo's original topic; I only meant to 
address the client/user interaction point that came up.

-Brian

