The Trash is a place, not an action

Deleting should not make your words vanish. In Spleen, Trash is somewhere writing goes until you decide what happens next.

Delete should not be a trapdoor

I do not put much faith in an “Are you sure?” box. Sometimes you are sure and still wrong. Sometimes you click too quickly. Sometimes a scene that looks useless today turns out to hold the one line you need next month.

That is why choosing Delete in Spleen does not immediately erase your writing. It moves the section or document to the project’s Trash. You can still open it, read it, and restore it later.

Trash is a place inside the project, with its own tree. The writing is out of the book, so it no longer counts towards the project or appears in normal exports and reader links. But it has not vanished.

That difference matters. A button can be pressed in a second. Regret usually arrives later.

Archive and Trash remember why

Archive works in much the same way, but it means something different. Archive says “not in the book”. Trash says “this was a mistake”.

Both take writing out of the active work. Both let you change your mind. The separate names are there for the person who comes back weeks later and has forgotten why something was moved.

I wanted that choice to stay simple. You do not have to decide forever. You only have to decide where the writing belongs right now.

Why that matters for a section

A section is more than a title. It may hold chapters, scenes, or smaller sections of its own. Moving only the section name would leave all of that behind and quietly break the shape of the project.

So a section carries its contents into Archive or Trash with it. Restore the section and everything still inside it comes back too. Spleen returns it to the place it came from when that place still exists, or to the top level when it does not.

The structure travels with the words.

When delete really means delete

Permanent deletion still exists, but it is a separate step. Once something is already in Archive or Trash, you can choose Delete for good. Spleen asks again because this time the words really will be removed.

There is one other action that needs its own name. Remove, keep contents gets rid of a section but moves everything inside it up one level. No writing is lost, but the old structure cannot be brought back with one Restore button. That is why it is not called Delete.

The names are part of the safety. Delete moves writing to Trash. Restore brings it back. Delete for good means what it says.

Your words should survive a quick decision. Trash gives you time to make the final one later.