Re: [Evolution] Synchronising laptop and desktop evolutions

[John Locke <mail freelock com>]

On Sun, 2003-11-09 at 04:22, Adolfo Bello wrote:
> On Sun, 2003-11-09 at 07:53, Lars Weissflog wrote:
> > On Sat, 2003-11-08 at 19:26, S. Anthony Sequeira wrote:
> > > I have decided to drop multisync, and in casting about have run across
> > > references to imap.
> >
> > I'm not sure whether imap is an option at all. As far as I do
> > understand, the thing with imap is that all mail is permanently stored
> > on the server and nothing really gets to the client. Thus, if you are in
> > your LAN, you can access the mail on your stationary server. But as soon
> > as you pull the plug from the laptop, you wouldn't have a single message
> > to deal with. And if you fetch mail on the road onto your laptop, you
> > won't get that to your stationary.

> I am not using them but I thought that offline folders keep a local copy
> of your IMAP folders.

They're supposed to... but they only get new messages. And they don't
allow you to do anything like move messages between offline folders.
Offline IMAP access in Evolution is still a major PITA.

I think IMAP itself is great, though--it solves all of your mail issues,
and, better than leaving POP mail on a server, you never have to deal
with the same mail twice. Another big benefit is that you can use
multiple mail clients to view your mailbox without worrying about
it--like using different web browsers to see the same web site.

I have a mail server set up with Courier-IMAP and Postfix. I use Dspam
to filter out spam before it hits the mailbox, and Maildrop to sort list
mail out of my Inbox. It all works great.

When I hit the road, I switch to using Mozilla Thunderbird for now--with
the offline extension, it's about the only mail program I've found that
does a good job of offline IMAP mail. You can choose which folders to
take offline, and you get both old and new mail. You can move mail
between folders while offline, everything just like local folders and
POP--except when you go back online, your changes sync to the server and
your mailbox in Evolution reflects them...

That leaves the Calender/Contacts/Tasks to synchronize. For now, I'm
using a cumbersome evolution --force-shutdown, then synchronize
everything under ~/evolution/local (generally by just copying whichever
one I've made changes in).

The other tip is to make sure copies of your outgoing mail go to an IMAP
folder instead of a local one...

Cheers,
-- 
John Locke
Open Source solutions for small business problems
http://freelock.com