Re: [Evolution-hackers] Introduction and Questions

[Ross Boylan <ross biostat ucsf edu>]

On Thu, 2007-06-07 at 09:25 -0400, Jeffrey Stedfast wrote:
> it's not possible to do better w/o dropping features like message
> threading.
> 
> In fact, the above minimalizing of header fetching already breaks the
> quick context-menu "vfolder on mailing-list" and "filter on
> mailing-list" features as well as making vfoldering on mailing-list
> oodles slower (if it even still works after disabling the headers) 
What about letting the server do the threading, if it can?  I realize
not all can, and probably all will seem not as smart as they could be
(or just different from how threading would be done in evolution).  But
otherwise, there's no way around getting lots of headers, and that is a
huge hit with big folders.

That's the theory; the practice seems uglier.  I tried mulberry, which
is supposed to make very good use of IMAP.  In many ways it does, but
its use of server-side threading doesn't work too well.  It seemed to
get the response back quickly from the server, but then take minutes
processing and parsing this response.  Furthermore, every time one
scrolls the window, it does it all over again.

The other problem with server-side threading is that it threads
everything.  In principle it might make more sense to retrieve a window
of headers and thread them.

The window might not include all items in the thread, but that seems a
reasonable trade-off to me in return for decent performance.  One could
do a more thorough job in the background and update when it finished.
-- 
Ross Boylan                                      wk:  (415) 514-8146
185 Berry St #5700                               ross biostat ucsf edu
Dept of Epidemiology and Biostatistics           fax: (415) 514-8150
University of California, San Francisco
San Francisco, CA 94107-1739                     hm:  (415) 550-1062