Re: [Evolution-hackers] Is it worth customizing the IMAP headers to fetch?



On Sat, 2012-12-15 at 13:32 -0500, Matthew Barnes wrote:
> Currently IMAPX just fetches all headers using RFC822.HEADER.
> 
> Supporting the plugin would change this to use:
> 
>    BODY.PEEK ([HEADERS | predefined-header-list [custom-header-list])
> 
> depending on the plugin options selected (see attached screenshot).
> 
> I'm skeptical about the real benefit of this, but I lack expertise in
> IMAP and particularly the IMAPX backend to make an informed judgment.

It's basically about download time/bandwidth. If you fetch *all* the
headers, that causes a fair amount of network traffic that isn't
strictly necessary.

> My intuition tells me the vast majority of users won't care or even
> understand what these options do, and those that do tinker with them
> probably won't notice any significant difference in download times.

My intuition is the same... although we could probably run a quick check
on our own mail stores and see the full size of *all* headers vs. the
size of the "interesting" headers that Evolution actually uses for
filtering, etc.

The interesting use case, perhaps, is the first run of Evolution on a
new mail store. That's when the full vs. targeted header fetch is going
to be most noticeable. 

But even if we conclude that the more specific fetch is worthwhile, I'm
still not convinced that a separate UI for *choosing* those headers is
at all sane. If the user sets up filters which *look* at a given header,
then we damn well ought to fetch that header automatically. The user
shouldn't be forced to go and find a separate plugin to make their
filter actually work. Or do I misunderstand how this works?

-- 
dwmw2

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