Re: [Evolution] Deleting attachments

[Patrick O'Callaghan <poc usb ve>]

On Tue, 2006-09-19 at 12:40 -0400, Patrick O'Callaghan wrote:
> On Fri, 2006-09-15 at 15:53 -0400, Jeffrey Stedfast wrote: 
> > On Fri, 2006-09-15 at 15:33 -0400, Patrick O'Callaghan wrote:
> > > On Fri, 2006-09-15 at 14:29 -0400, Jeffrey Stedfast wrote:
> > > > On Fri, 2006-09-15 at 12:42 -0400, Patrick O'Callaghan wrote:
> > > > > On Thu, 2006-09-14 at 10:56 -0400, Jeffrey Stedfast wrote:
> > > > > > On Tue, 2006-09-12 at 16:18 -0400, Patrick O'Callaghan wrote:
> > > > > > > AFAIK, no there isn't, but it would be nice.
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > No doubt purists will object that this constitutes modifying the
> > > > message
> > > > > > > (and invalidating any digital signatures it might have). I still
> > > > think
> > > > > > > it would be a Good Thing (TM) though.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > it's also not possible to do for all mail store types.
> > > > >
> > > > > It's possible with mbox and IMAP.
> > > >
> > > > oh really? please elaborate :)
> > >
> > > Existence proof: IMP (widely used IMAP webmail client) does it.
> >
> > The IMAP protocol does not provide any way of doing this. IMP must go
> > behind the IMAP server's back, which is something a client cannot do.
>
> I've done some testing with IMP to see exactly what it does. It's fairly
> simple: IMP gets the message MIME structure from the server (the IMAP
> protocol provides for this) and then creates a new message with a short
> comment substituted for the deleted attachment. It then creates a new
> message on the server (using IMAP APPEND I think, just as Evo does with
> Post New Message to Folder and presumably Save Draft) and deletes the
> old one. The new message is identical to the old one (same headers,
> Message-ID etc.) except for a new UUID.
>
> It does not "go behind the IMAP server's back".

As a followup to this topic, I just noticed the following draft RFC of a
proposed IMAP extension to allow the construction a new message on the
IMAP server using parts of an old message:

http://www3.ietf.org/proceedings/06mar/IDs/draft-ietf-lemonade-catenate-05.txt

AFAIK no current IMAP server supports this extension directly, but I
guess it's evidence that there's some demand for it.

poc