Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!usc!sdd.hp.com!decwrl!adobe!heaven!glenn
From: glenn@heaven.woodside.ca.us (Glenn Reid)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: Re: What's going on in NeXTmail?
Message-ID: <284@heaven.woodside.ca.us>
Date: 1 Oct 90 01:30:13 GMT
References: <64490@lanl.gov>
Reply-To: glenn@heaven.woodside.ca.us (Glenn Reid)
Organization: RightBrain Software, Woodside, CA
Lines: 37

In article <64490@lanl.gov> silbar@mpx2.lampf.lanl.gov (SILBAR, RICHARD R.) writes:
>What's going on here?  If I get really annoyed enough, I'll probably start
>trying some experiments of sending myself junk mail, then transferring and 
>deleting it.  But, maybe one of you already knows what's going on here.
>Maybe even there's a magical utility somewhere that cleans up the huge
>morass that my ~/Mailbox tree has become.

There's a menu option called "Compact" under the "Utilities" menu that
actually deletes the mail.  It also removes any attachments that were
in the mail messages you deleted.

If it were deleted the second you clicked "Delete", then "UnDelete"
wouldn't work.

One way to know if your mail is getting really deleted is to look at the
sequential numbers of the mail messages.  If you have only three messages
but there numbers are 797, 798, and 799, you probably have 799 messages,
all but three of which have been "marked" for deletion.

On another note, you shouldn't open Active.mbox/mbox with /bin/mail
directly.  As you noticed, the table of contents gets out of synch with
the mail.  The reason all your deleted mail returned was that you
caused the table of contents to get rebuilt from scratch when you
deleted some messages by hand from this file.

If you're going to be away for a while, quit out of the Mail application,
and it will leave your mail in /usr/spool/mail/you, and you can read it
with /bin/mail if you like without disturbing the Mail application.

I hope that helps.

Glenn

-- 
 Glenn Reid				RightBrain Software
 glenn@heaven.woodside.ca.us		PostScript/NeXT developers
 ..{adobe,next}!heaven!glenn		415-851-1785