Re: That newfangled IMAP thing...

[Dan Christensen <jdc@uwo.ca>]

Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen <larsi@gnus.org> writes:

> At this point I feel I would have gotten further if I had just started
> from scratch and written a new set of primitives.
>
> This may not be totally compatible with the old version, but does
> anybody mind?

I would guess that for new users, IMAP is the most common protocol they
will use, since it is offered by most large organizations, is
well-documented, has good features for distributed access, etc.  So
excellent IMAP support would be extremely good for Gnus.

If you really intend to tackle this, I have a few comments:

- Be sure to test with multiple IMAP servers.  Gmail has an IMAP
  interface grafted on as an afterthought, and it has various oddities.  
  I would use dovecot or another common server as the main platform
  for testing.

- The backend should know that things can change behind it's back.

- It'd be great to get accurate unread counts.

- Article editing isn't directly possible, but it should be possible
  to replace an article with a new one (e.g. to strip attachments or
  do other edits).  I've posted patches that do this, but they don't
  correctly update the summary buffer or transfer the marks over to
  the new article.  Here is the thread:

    http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.gnus.general/69094

- I haven't updated my Gnus in a few months, but I believe there is a 
  bug in nnimap when moving an article to a group on the same server:
  if the marks on the article have changed, but haven't been saved,
  then the moved article still gets the old marks.

- I wonder if nnimap should have a variable which makes changes to
  marks, etc be saved as you read the group, rather than when you exit
  it?  Since other devices/programs may monitor the group (e.g. a new
  mail notification daemon, a cell phone, etc) having this information
  updated continuously could be useful.

Dan