Re: Cannot write to write-only IMAP mailbox

[Ted Zlatanov <tzz@lifelogs.com>]

On Wed, 10 Sep 2008 18:56:16 -0400 Nikolaus Rath <Nikolaus@rath.org> wrote: 

NR> On my IMAP server I have a group called "unrecognized-ham" that cannot
NR> be read by anyone, but can be looked up and inserted to by anyone. As
NR> the name suggests, mail in this folder is automatically analyzed to
NR> correct mistakes made by a bayesian spam classifier.

NR> Unfortunately it is not possible to access this group with gnus. When
NR> I am in a different IMAP mailbox and try to copy a message with B c,
NR> gnus complains that the group does not exist. Any attempt to create it
NR> fails of course. Also I cannot see the group when using group apropos
NR> and I cannot subscribe to it with U.

NR> In Thunderbird, there is no problem at all. The group is visible and I
NR> can copy messages into it.

It seems that Gnus currently requires read access to a group in order to
use it, even just to copy messages into it.  That's probably a
limitation of the backend, since Gnus expects every backend to be able
to list its articles.  

The best solution I can suggest is a "read-only" group/topic variable
that can be auto-detected, and when it's set for a group the backend
will return empty article lists instead of trying to actually list the
articles.  This may break copying articles and other functions, though,
so it's not an easy fix.

I don't know if anyone is interested in doing this work.  It's a bit of
an edge case, though of course it's useful to those who need it.

Ted