Re: [Evolution] options on download

[rrogers WizardsTower net]

No offense meant, but some people don't seem to understand that this
should be an _option_ and not the default. Unless you go and explicitly
turn on the message size limit feature Evolution should download the
messages in the normal order. 

> POP3 is very limited in what it can do...here's my limited understanding..
> --it can't read status flags...such as new, deleted, flagged, etc.
> --it can only pull messages from the INBOX and can't read from any other folders

I'm not extremely familiar with POP3 either, but I do know it has some
idea of the difference between a new and non-new message, and also
deleted. I only know this because fetchmail can be set to only download
new messages, and I've seen it skip messages that it had never seen
before, but I had looked at through my ISP's web-based interface when I
didn't have my laptop with me.

[snip]

> Now once you retrieve that information perhaps it could scan for
> attachments....or simply the LIST command would provide the bytes of each
> message.  Then anything over 9999 bytes would not be retrieved RETR until an
> option in Evolution said allow downloading of whatever size messages.  And the
> messages that weren't downloaded (too big) would be issued a RSET command so
> they wouldn't be deleted.
>
> Below #6 is around 270KB and #8 is around 44KB...so it would go like so
>
>
> (as you can see LIST shows message # with bytes in each message)
> LIST
> +OK 15 messages
> 1 2418
> 2 1338
> 3 2762
> 4 6952
> 5 1102
> 6 274522
> 7 1943
> 8 45456
> 9 3714
> 10 3269
> 11 4106
> 12 2495
> 13 2818
> 14 6815
> 15 1947
>  .
> parse the LIST info and retrieve all except #6 and #8
>
> RETR 1 RETR 2 RETR 3 RETR 4 RETR 5 RETR 7 RETR 9 RETR 10 RETR 11 RETR 12 RETR 13
> RETR 14 RETR 15
>
> RSET 6
> RSET 8
>
> I have no idea if this works...let's say after 13 messages are retrieved is #6
> and #8 renamed to #1 and #2 and if so then perhaps that's where the UDIL command
> might come in handy.

That's all pretty close. After the RETR 1 RETR 2 etc. you'd want to do
DELE 1 DELE 2 DELE 3... Actually it's probably more like RETR 1 DELE 1 
RETR 2 DELE 2... This sets the delete flagon the message after it's
retrieved, and when you issue a QUIT the messages that are flaged as
deleted are expunged. All RSET does is remove a DELE flag, so it is
unnecessary to RSET messages 6 and 8.

> Are they're any clients that can do this now?  I use IMAP so wouldn't have a
> clue.

Fetchmail will do almost exactly that if you set the message size limit.
It then gives you one last email that says something like "Skipped 2
messages. Message #6 was 274522 octets. Message #8 was 45456 octets."

Now if this feature gets implemented in Evolution (and I really think it
should) I think there should be a few other available options if it is
turned on. First the user should be able to set the message size limit.
Second would be an option to either a) Show a message in the inbox similar
to how fetchmail does it, with somewhere to click telling evolution to go
ahead and download the remanining messages. Option B would be to have 
Evolution automatically download the large messages once it has finished
with all of the others.

Option B is something I have been looking for for quite a while in a mail
client. I've had times where I have 50 or so messages and #4 is 3MB. If my
client would wait until all the others are downloaded to grab that one I
could be half way finished reading my email by the time that 4th message
downloads, but as most clients do it now I'd be waiting half an hour on my
slow dial up line just to be able to read the fifth message.

Finally a reason to start digging into the Evolution code myself...

Rob