Re: [Dovecot] Evolution and Thunderbird do different things?
On 09/06/2010 18:12, Phil Howard wrote: But that would mean there is some mechanism in IMAP for these flags. Dovecot is attaching the flag 'T'. But what does 'T' mean? If IMAP allows setting flags with arbitrary letters, then 'T' could mean Trash for one client and Terrorist for another client, or no meaning at all for yet another.s. The T on the message filename is not an IMAP thing; it is a Maildir thing. Maildir defines a flag T meaning Trashed. Trashed is a Maildir term, not an IMAP term. For an IMAP server to use a Maildir mailstore, there needs to be a mapping between the IMAP semantics and the Maildir semantics. IMAP servers working to a Maildir mailstore will map the IMAP \Deleted flag on to the Maildir T (trashed) flag. If your mail client works to the IMAP two-stage message deletion model, then when you request to delete a message, your client makes an IMAP request to set the \Deleted flag. If you request an IMAP server to flag a message as \Deleted and that IMAP server is working to a Maildir mailstore, then it will effect that request by adding the 'T' flag to the message. Bill
[Dovecot] Evolution and Thunderbird do different things?
I'm trying both Evolution and Thunderbird on my IMAP server, and find that there are differences in how some things are done, between clients. Shouldn't there have been a standard way to do these things in the IMAP protocol? The first thing I noticed is that when deleting email from one client, it puts a T on the file name, leaving it where it is, and from the other client, it moves the mail to a .Trash directory on the server (and created a 2nd Trash folder ... so now I have 2 Trash folders, one with some deleted mail in it, and the other with some deleted mail in it). I'm not saying Dovecot has a problem here. But maybe IMAP the protocol does for not having a standard way to do things, and these clients, for not doing it the same way (if there is some standard somewhere). Any IMAP experts here know what the story is with this?
Re: [Dovecot] Evolution and Thunderbird do different things?
On 09/06/10 16:15, Phil Howard wrote: I'm trying both Evolution and Thunderbird on my IMAP server, and find that there are differences in how some things are done, between clients. Shouldn't there have been a standard way to do these things in the IMAP protocol? The first thing I noticed is that when deleting email from one client, it puts a T on the file name, leaving it where it is, and from the other client, it moves the mail to a .Trash directory on the server (and created a 2nd Trash folder ... so now I have 2 Trash folders, one with some deleted mail in it, and the other with some deleted mail in it). I'm not saying Dovecot has a problem here. But maybe IMAP the protocol does for not having a standard way to do things, and these clients, for not doing it the same way (if there is some standard somewhere). Any IMAP experts here know what the story is with this? Hi, The IMAP protocol does not define folder names and such. Servers and clients only know how to create/remove/rename/relocate folders and files, and some other basics. The names that are used by default, is a choice of the user (mostly the default settings in the users' client). 'Trash' is the default trashcan folder in thunderbird, but in MS Outlook it's 'Deleted Items' (not even mentioning differences related to locale settings). When interpreting your experience with Evolution (never used it myself), I guess that it doesn't use the trashcan folder concept at all, but in stead flags a message as 'Trash', in the same way that you would set 'Seen' or 'Important' flags, and treats these message different from a UI perpective. AFAIK only the INBOX is a well-known default (and maybe even part of some RFC). You could try to set up all clients' prefs to use the same naming scheme, and the same way of trash handling, when possible. -- Regards, Tom signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [Dovecot] Evolution and Thunderbird do different things?
On Wed, Jun 9, 2010 at 12:07, Tom Hendrikx t...@whyscream.net wrote: The IMAP protocol does not define folder names and such. Servers and clients only know how to create/remove/rename/relocate folders and files, and some other basics. The names that are used by default, is a choice of the user (mostly the default settings in the users' client). I was afraid of that. A standard for syntax but not as much for semantics at a higher level. 'Trash' is the default trashcan folder in thunderbird, but in MS Outlook it's 'Deleted Items' (not even mentioning differences related to locale settings). When interpreting your experience with Evolution (never used it myself), I guess that it doesn't use the trashcan folder concept at all, but in stead flags a message as 'Trash', in the same way that you would set 'Seen' or 'Important' flags, and treats these message different from a UI perpective. AFAIK only the INBOX is a well-known default (and maybe even part of some RFC). But that would mean there is some mechanism in IMAP for these flags. Dovecot is attaching the flag 'T'. But what does 'T' mean? If IMAP allows setting flags with arbitrary letters, then 'T' could mean Trash for one client and Terrorist for another client, or no meaning at all for yet another. You could try to set up all clients' prefs to use the same naming scheme, and the same way of trash handling, when possible. That'll be the hard part ... that I was was afraid of. It will require getting everyone to use their clients in the same way, disrupting what they already do. I guess it isn't much of a problem for most people because they rarely share a mailbox between different people with different clients.
Re: [Dovecot] Evolution and Thunderbird do different things?
On 09/06/10 19:12, Phil Howard wrote: But that would mean there is some mechanism in IMAP for these flags. Dovecot is attaching the flag 'T'. But what does 'T' mean? If IMAP allows setting flags with arbitrary letters, then 'T' could mean Trash for one client and Terrorist for another client, or no meaning at all for yet another. Flags was actually the wrong phrase, the correct term is IMAP keywords. The way that Dovecot handles this internally, is described in http://wiki.dovecot.org/MailboxFormat/Maildir . But it has no use to investigate the inner workings of dovecot when all clients see the data through the same interface. Dovecot will tell all clients which keywords your message has. Some clients just treat some keywords 'special'. In https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/evolution/+bug/13983 (google is a bad company but a great tool!) there is a nice thread about differences of trash implementations between Evolution and 'the others'. That'll be the hard part ... that I was was afraid of. It will require getting everyone to use their clients in the same way, disrupting what they already do. I guess it isn't much of a problem for most people because they rarely share a mailbox between different people with different clients. Recalling now, I think this issue triggered me to ditch Evolution after 2 days of testing some years ago, and into using the same client everywhere. But YMMV... -- Regards, Tom signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [Dovecot] Evolution and Thunderbird do different things?
On Wed, Jun 9, 2010 at 14:02, Tom Hendrikx t...@whyscream.net wrote: Flags was actually the wrong phrase, the correct term is IMAP keywords. The way that Dovecot handles this internally, is described in http://wiki.dovecot.org/MailboxFormat/Maildir . But it has no use to investigate the inner workings of dovecot when all clients see the data through the same interface. Dovecot will tell all clients which keywords your message has. Some clients just treat some keywords 'special'. In https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/evolution/+bug/13983 (google is a bad company but a great tool!) there is a nice thread about differences of trash implementations between Evolution and 'the others'. Thanks for that link. Good reading and perspective. Recalling now, I think this issue triggered me to ditch Evolution after 2 days of testing some years ago, and into using the same client everywhere. But YMMV... I haven't decided, yet. I've used both in different places off and on for the past few years, as well as text based mail agents in command line environments, plus some webmail systems. But at least it helps to understand better what is going on. And I may well move to Thunderbird at some point.
Re: [Dovecot] Evolution and Thunderbird do different things?
On 2010-06-09 2:02 PM, Tom Hendrikx wrote: Recalling now, I think this issue triggered me to ditch Evolution after 2 days of testing some years ago, and into using the same client everywhere. But YMMV... Everything I've read says Evolution is not nearly stable enough for serious, daily use, even on Linux...
