Similarities between expiration and scoring

[Lluís <xscript@gmx.net>]

Hi there.

I've been a happy user of automatic message expiration for some
time. My current workflow is:
   * maintain new/unread messages on their folder undefinately
   * maintain read (but non-disposed messages) on their folder
     undefinately (as I've considered they contain some information
     that could be useful somewhere in the future)
   * move disposed messages to trash (account-specific)
   * move sent messages to sent folder (account-specific)
   * when entering a trash or sent folder, expire messages older than
     an account-specific age.

Now, after some time following this scheme, I've found some weaknesses
to it:
   * I've ended up accumulating a relatively big bunch of messages of
     the second type
   * sometimes I'd like to do a quick search on a specific mailing
     list, or just view past messages of current thread, but my
     messages are split between the list's folder and a huge trash
     folder
   * disposing messages into trash requires too much time, as the trash folder
     is overcrowded

So my wonders where if I could be able to jump into this setup:
   * maintain new/unread messages on their folder undefinately and
     visible on summary
   * let me mark/flag read messages with a "keep" flag that is not
     visible in the summary.
     The "important" flag is visually aggressive to me, and I do mark
     some really important messages as "important" from time to time,
     which I keep readily accessible through a virtual folder.
   * hide read messages in summary if they're older than a given age
   * expire/delete messages that are older than a given age, but only
     if they're neither new/unread nor flagged as "keep"
   * toggle visibility of hidden messages
   * search messages in current folder, both visible and invisible

Expiring already provides a hide action, which I can base on age, but:
   * I don't know how to toggle visibility of hidden messages (either
     all, or something like "unhide current thread").
   * searching through 'wl-summary-pick' only applies to visible
     messages.
   * I don't know how can I attach a mark that is not visible in
     summary, but that will prevent expiration.

Can I do this with the current codebase? I'm using Debian's 'wl-beta'
package (version 2.15.9+0.20100303-1).


Besides, scoring is already able to "expire" and hide messages (and
more), but lacks some of the options available to the expiring
infrastucture.

So my other question is whether if it would be much cleaner to have a
single infrastucture to merge all functionalities from both scoring
and expiring, which I hope would provide a much cleaner and
comprehensive interface.


Thanks!
        Lluis

-- 
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 Tollbooth