[Evolution] IMAP problems/comments

[Troy Carter <tcarter Princeton EDU>]

> As for bug #2...
> Evolution currently updates IMAP mail in 2 ways - first, whenever you do an
> operation to an IMAP folder (reading a message for example), it will update
> the message list if any new mail has arrived. The other way is a timer
> event. Every ~10 minutes or so, the IMAP code sends a NOOP command to the
> server and if there is new mail, the server will reply that it's gotten new
> mail and Evolution will grab those headers.
> A *lot* of people have gotten confused and report that it isn't updating
> mail because they hit the "Get Mail" button and nothing happens. I just
> want to make sure that's not the case here...

I am one of those *lot*s of people who was confused when "get mail" did
nothing. I eventually took a look at the code and found that it was
supposed to do nothing when "get mail" was pressed for an IMAP
server.  Why is this the case? Can't we send a NOOP when "get mail" is
pressed?  I am ignorant, so sorry if I am missing an obvious difficulty.

I am unable to get new mail in either of the methods you describe above
using 0.5.1.  I send myself a test message and tried selecting other
folders -- I get a "synchronizing INBOX" message, but the new message is
not seen or the header downloaded.  Similarly, I tried waiting for the
10 minute NOOP command, but the new mail was never seen or
downloaded.  I can get the message if I quit evolution and restart.

Oh, once again, I am using a Netscape Messenging Server (and stunnel).


> Currently filters can not be applied to IMAP - filters are only meant to be
> applied to messages that you are downloading to the local message store,
> this is not what IMAP is used for. Dan Winship and I were talking about
> this a while ago and we *may* make it possible to filter on IMAP as well.

I don't understand what you mean by "this is not what IMAP is used
for".  We still want the ability to have messages sorted and stored in
IMAP folders by mail filters.  I do this with my IMAP account and
Netscape (the evolution-digest gets stuck in an evolution folder on the
IMAP server for me by Netscape, as soon as the header is downloaded, for
example).  Is there some inherent difficulty in adding this feature
(hence it only *may* be added), or do you feel that IMAP users wouldn't
want the feature?  I would hope that a mail client would offer the same
feature set for all mail server protocols (Why would the end user have
to care about whether or not it is POP or IMAP?). This is something that
I should offer my help with if I want it to get done, but I have limited
time (and C coding ability) to offer at the moment.  Sorry to only be
able to offer complaints :)  (I will continue to test evolution, of
course, I am writing this message using it now.)

-Troy

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Troy Carter
tcarter princeton edu