No you are not understanding what I am saying - it is NOT treating it
as a local box, its treating it like POP. If I load Pine on the server
and select "INBOX", I see both new AND old messages. When I load up
The Bat, I only see new messages (plus old messages downloaded
specifically by that client) Messages downloaded by other clients are
not shown, even though they ARE still in INBOX on the server. So
essentially it is actually ignoring read messages rather than
displaying them in my INBOX marked as read. The only way I have found
to get around it is to use the Mail Dispatcher, but it is a major pain
to have to click each and every email to have it download them again.
Both Pine and Eudora both show all messages, with the proper flags
indicating read and unread mail - which is what The Bat ought to do.
From RFC 1730:
"The Internet Message Access Protocol, Version 4 (IMAP4) allows a
client to access and manipulate electronic mail messages on a server.
IMAP4 permits manipulation of remote message folders, called
"mailboxes", in a way that is functionally equivalent to local
mailboxes. IMAP4 also provides the capability for an offline client
to resynchronize with the server (see also [IMAP-DISC])."
And from RFC 1733 describing the three modes, The Bat is strictly
doing an offline mode, which makes IMAP no better than POP. Where
IMAP shines is the online model, which allows multiple clients to sync
together to show the same mailbox. The Bat should do a
hybrid offline/online model - whereas it gets the list of messages,
downloads them, then when it reconnects later it syncs up, making the
local box reflect any changes on the server.
"The offline model is the most familiar form of client/server email
today, and is used by protocols such as POP-3 (RFC 1225) and UUCP.
In this model, a client application periodically connects to a
server. It downloads all the pending messages to the client machine
and deletes these from the server. Thereafter, all mail processing
is local to the client. This model is store-and-forward; it moves
mail on demand from an intermediate server (maildrop) to a single
destination machine.
The online model is most commonly used with remote filesystem
protocols such as NFS. In this model, a client application
manipulates mailbox data on a server machine. A connection to the
server is maintained throughout the session. No mailbox data are
kept on the client; the client retrieves data from the server as is
needed. IMAP4 introduces a form of the online model that requires
considerably less network bandwidth than a remote filesystem
protocol, and provides the opportunity for using the server for CPU
or I/O intensive functions such as parsing and searching.
The disconnected use model is a hybrid of the offline and online
models, and is used by protocols such as PCMAIL (RFC 1056). In this
model, a client user downloads some set of messages from the server,
manipulates them offline, then at some later time uploads the
changes. The server remains the authoritative repository of the
messages. The problems of synchronization (particularly when
multiple clients are involved) are handled through the means of
unique identifiers for each message.
"
See as from RFC 1733:
" Feature Offline Online Disc
--- --- --
Can use multiple clients NO YES YES
"
Meaning with a strict Offline implementation, you'll never be able to
have multiple clients effectively using that mailbox.
The Bat is not resynchronizing - it is simply getting new email and
ignoring the rest, thereby NOT doing a very elegant IMAP
implementation.
Michael Long
Systems Analyst,
Info Avenue Internet Services, LLC
. Tuesday 9/28/1999 11:42 AM .
Tuesday, September 28, 1999, 11:30:23 AM, you wrote:
The problem here is The Bat seems to ignore any message in an IMAP box which
is marked "read". So I get an email at home, I won't see it when I get to
work.
SL However, this is not how it works. TB! does, indeed, do IMAP incorrectly.
SL It uses it as a glorified POP. OTOH, how you are describing it is also
SL incorrect. IMAP is supposed to be remote access and administration of
SL mailboxes as if they were local. This means that the mail would show up, but
SL would show up as read. Any chances you made from one client would show up in
SL the other client.
It's possible I have a setting set wrong somewhere, but I can't find
it. Eudora seems to behave as I would expect IMAP to be, except
Eudora is extremely slow and prone to crashing.
SL If Eudora is ignoring mail that is "read" then it, too, is failing to
SL implement IMAP correctly. Oddly enough, the only correct implementation of
SL IMAP I've seen are in Pine (from UWASH, creators of IMAP) and Outlook, from
SL Microsoft.
--
