[Evolution] IMAP comments

[Jules Bean <jules jellybean co uk>]

Hi all,

Just trying evolution for the first time seriously.

It's still not ready to become my default mailer, but it has some
definite excellent points.

Currently, I store all my mail on a permanently connected machine,
which I ssh into from both home and work, and use mutt to read my
mail.  Except for work mail which I leave on the work server, but read 
using mutt's IMAP support.

So, what is really cool about evolution?  Well, it's really cool that
I can directly view attachments inline (which is tricky in mutt!).
It's really cool that I can use my GPG key to decrypt things (which is 
hard in mutt because I don't trust my gpg key to the permanently
connected machine, it's only here at home).  vFolders are pretty cool
too.

Why won't I switch over to it for permanent use?

1) It doesn't support my personal mail-reading style, which relies on
the difference between \Recent and 'not \Seen' in IMAP-speak.  mutt
calls these 'New' and 'Old'.  Basically I distinguish between Unread
messages I already know about, and unread messages I've never even
seen (I don't know how mutt handles this, since it isn't using IMAP,
but evolution could do it using IMAP). I often mark a message unread
to remind myself to go back to it.

And mutt gives me the super-handy ability to move between folders
containing unseen (new) messages using the space bar. I have around 25 
folders for my various mailing lists.

Having watched evo's IMAP-trace, I see that it doesn't even ask for
the 'Recent' flag.  It would be easy enough to change it's STATUS
command from 

sending : A00198 STATUS "mail/debian-devel" (UNSEEN)

to STATUS "mail/debian-devel" (UNSEEN RECENT)


2) It's too slow.  My IMAP server is a slow old machine, and my
mailboxes are big. The STATUS command takes a non-trivial time for any 
mailbox, and a really long time for the big ones; and evolution won't
even let me see my folder list until it's run all the STATUSes.

Evolution could improve this solution in two ways.  One is by issuing
STATUS commands before the last one has come back; IMAP is an
asynchronous protocol.  You can send of a bunch of status commands and 
watch them all come shooting back.  (I'm sure this works, I've tested
it by hand).

Secondly (more importantly), as soon as evolution has downloaded the
folder list, it should allow me to browse, while it waits for the
STATUS commands to complete in the background.  Evolution does already 
do this when you click Send/Receive mail (i.e. run the STATUS commands 
in the background) but it won't do it in the background on initial
log-in. This is really annoying: it takes around 90 seconds or more to 
log on initially.


3) This isn't a recent I wouldn't use evo, but it's a definite
wishlist: Don't download non-text-plain parts of a multipart message
until I ask for it.  Possibly an option to set a size threshold above
which no message part would be download, whatever the mime-type..
Look at this conversation:

sending : A00307 UID FETCH 4554 BODY
received: * 1559 FETCH (UID 4554 BODY (("TEXT" "PLAIN" ("CHARSET"
"iso-8859-1") NIL NIL "QUOTED-PRINTABLE" 5285 135)("IMAGE" "JPEG"
("NAME" "=?iso-8859-1?Q?arrivo_troncone_prua_a_genova.jpg?=") NIL
"JPEG File Interchange" "BASE64" 2690230) "MIXED"))
received: A00307 OK UID FETCH completed
sending : A00308 UID FETCH 4554 BODY.PEEK[1.MIME]
received: * 1559 FETCH (UID 4554 BODY[1.MIME] {93}
received: )
received: A00308 OK UID FETCH completed
sending : A00309 UID FETCH 4554 BODY.PEEK[2.MIME]
received: * 1559 FETCH (UID 4554 BODY[2.MIME] {265}
received: )
received: A00309 OK UID FETCH completed
sending : A00310 UID FETCH 4554 BODY.PEEK[1]
received: * 1559 FETCH (UID 4554 BODY[1] {5285}
received: )
received: A00310 OK UID FETCH completed
sending : A00311 UID FETCH 4554 BODY.PEEK[2]
received: * 1559 FETCH (UID 4554 BODY[2] {2690230}

Aaagh!  No, pleasse don't download a 2.6M JPEG down my poor 112K line
;-)  Not until I've really decided I want to see it, anyhow.


I don't see any of those three on the wishlist bit of bugzilla, but
I'm not very confident at using bugzillas. Shall I submit them? Are
any of them already 'in-hand' for 1.2?

Congratulations on an excellent product,

Best wishes,

Jules