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Some thinking aloud:
Although I've complained about the location of the developed folder, I have to say, I do love how fast 3.0 is now that it always generates these previews and keeps them around "forever". The old cache system rarely worked very well - in fact, I suspect it was hopelessly broken; it seemed my previews were *constantly* being regenerated when I asked for full screen views).
Anyhow, it's the classic time/space tradeoff. Images generally stay in my "working folders" for a few days, during which time, I *love* having *all* the previews there for my developed images (and am fine with the embedded previews for the undeveloped images). It's basically the point at which I'm ready to archive the working images that I'd be prepared to delete the previews. So come to think of it, I might be OK with just an explicit command to do exactly that. As opposed to temporarily enabling display of hidden files, deleting the Developed folder, then turn off the hidden files again because I normally don't want them. Although I suppose that in the folders I actually viww, it's normally just this and Originals, so I suppose I could leave hidden files visible without bothering me *too* much.
Of course, right now there are issues with simply deleting the Develop folder - ACDSee doesn't like it when I do something that breaks the association between images and their previews, as I reported elsewhere (and Mark acknowledged as a known issue). So for that reason too, I'd prefer a dedicated "clean up previews" command that made sure ACDSee behaved sensibly if its too much trouble to guarantee sensible behavior when I actually delete the files.
Now, here's another thought:
Instead of simply deleting the previews, I'll tell you what I *really* want in addition. I want a reduced resolution version (full screen only, say) generated and moved off to a centralized cache that ACDSee can then manage however it sees fit. It could be generated directly from the existing previews, or from the camera-embedded previews in the case of undeveloped images. That would be a very fast operation (although still idelly done in the background like regular preview generation).
Now, how cool would that be? 100% previews that are available instantly for as long as you want to dedicate the space for them, then at the press of a button, have that space cleared up but have screen-sized previews available for "most" of your"recently" accessed files as determined by the cache system. Shoot, give me an option to choose the size & quality of the preview, and an option keep them around "forever" (eg, an cache that potentially grows without bounds) and you've got what I do right now as an explicit separate step: generating lower resolution JPEG "proofs" of my images. Except as it is now, I have to manage these and their connection to the originals myself (eg, when looking at a proof, if I want to access the original, I need to perform handstands to find it, plus metadata changes to one don't affect the other, etc). I'd trade that for what I've just described above in an instant.
