Re: [Evolution] multiple pop accounts and legacy archive

[Pete Biggs <pete biggs org uk>]

On Mon, 2021-11-22 at 09:43 +0000, Peter Wurmsdobler wrote:
> Hello Pete,

Please don't do "reply-all" to mailing list mails - it means that the
copy I get doesn't go via the mailing list and doesn't have any of the
mailing list headers. There's a "Reply-to-list".

> many thanks for the comprehensive reply.
>
> > > Whenever I set up POP accounts now, all received/sent emails are
> > > swallowed by the "On This Computer" which I do _not_ want to see at
> > > all. 
> > Well, POP is a mail retrieval protocol. It retrieves your mail from a
> > remote server and puts it into the local mail account.  That is how
> > POP
> > is supposed to work, and that is what Evolution does. Sorry if you
> > don't want to see that.
>
> Yes, I am aware that POP is a retrieval protocol and I am happy about
> that; what I am not happy is that evolution funnels _all_ POP mails
> into a single Folder named "On this computer", which contains the
> logical folders "Inbox", "Sent" and others. 

But that is what POP is supposed to do. It retrieves your mail from
remote mailboxes and puts it in your local Inbox. POP means "Post
OFfice Protocol" - it was designed around how the Post Office works -
all your mail from all over the place is put into a single mailbox, it
is up to you to sort it. Once it has been retrieved, the "account" it
comes from is supposedly of no importance.

POP is an incredibly old protocol and was never designed to be used in
a modern multi-account email system. I'm sorry your experience of it
has been tainted by other MUAs twisting into something it was never
designed to be.

> Looking into $HOME/.local/share/evolution/mail/local I see that there
> are folders `cur`, `new` and `tmp` corresponding to the maildir for
> `Inbox`; and there is a maildir folder for every logical folder such as
> `.Sent` for "Sent". I would have expected that there would be a
> dedicated `.Inbox`, too, to make things consistent.

No, that *IS* the Maildir format.  The Inbox is the top level with
cur/new/tmp all other mailfolders are subdirectories with subfolders
separated by a '.' in the directory name. The presentation in the
listing is determined by the MUA, Evolution happens to present it as an
Inbox folder at the very top; others don't. Sub folders of the Inbox
are represented in Maildir by starting their directory with '..'

> > Help -> Contents -> Common Mail Questions and Problems
> >                     -> Separating POP mail for more than one account
> Thanks, I'll look into that.
>
> > If you want to keep $HOME/Archive then you need to create a separate
> > account that points to that directory.
> >
> > Edit -> Preferences -> Mail Accounts -> Add
> >     Identity -> fill in information it's not important what.
> >              -> untick  "Lookup mail server" at bottom
> >
> >     Receiving Email -> Server Type: Maildir format mail directories
> >                     -> Mail Directory: select correct folder
> >
> >     Receiving Options -> uncheck all if your aren't receiving into it
> >
> >     Sending Email -> Server type: None
> >
> >     Account summary -> Name: fill in suitable name
> I have tried that, i.e. create a folder $HOME/Mail/Archive, then add a
> maildir account pointing to that; unfortunately, it does not create a
> `Sent` folder in that logical maildir folder. And if I create a
> subfolder "Sent", I get a `.Sent` on the file system which is not what
> I want either.

Yes, but that is what Maildir is. 

Creating an account like this in Evolution does not automatically
create any other mail folders - it is merely a method of pointing
Evolution to a store of mail. 

> > But in all honesty it looks like what you actually need is IMAP, not
> > Really, the easiest way of achieving that is using IMAP - everything
> > will be kept on the server and they are absolutely independent of
> > Evolution. 
> Not quite. I do like all my emails, past present and future to be
> stored on my local file system. Ideally, I do not want any meta data of
> the client contaminating that either. I will try the following
>
> - create a maildir on $HOME/Mail/Received
> - create a maildir on $HOME/Mail/Sent

These are not consistent statements.  If you create a Maildir format
directories like this and point Evolution to each one individually,
then they will presented as "Inbox" in each of those "accounts". If you
want them to be in the same "account" in Evolution, then they will have
the names '.Received' and '.Sent' (each with subfolders cur/new/tmp).
That is Maildir format.

> - add a "Received" logical folder to my local

If you mean a Search Folder (there's no "logical folder" in Evolution)
then they will be under Search Folders

> rm -r $HOME/.local/share/evolution/mail/local/.Received
> rm -r $HOME/.local/share/evolution/mail/local/.Sent
> ln -s $HOME/.local/share/evolution/mail/local/.Received
> $HOME/Mail/Received
> ln -s $HOME/.local/share/evolution/mail/local/.Sent $HOME/Mail/Received

I would strongly advise that you don't mess around with what Evolution
would consider its private working files. It will have undefined
consequences and it is not unknown for file layouts to change in future
versions.

> This way, I hope, the maildir points to a more visible location in my
> home folder which I can backup _without_ evolution metadata.

Why do you have such an objection to the Evolution metadata? If you are
backing things up in order to protect against failure, then surely you
would *want* to have the metadata to make your backup complete.


P.