Re: [Evolution] Deleting attachments

["Patrick O'Callaghan" <poc usb ve>]

On Mon, 2006-10-16 at 16:15 -0400, Patrick O'Callaghan wrote:
> 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.

Actually it seems the Cyrus 2.3 series does support this (and I'll now
stop replying to my own posts on the subject :-)

poc