Re: nnml/nnfolder marks faster

[Simon Josefsson <jas@extundo.com>]

On Mon, 24 Sep 2001, Paul Jarc wrote:

> > Making Seen handled by the backend would make it equivalent to Recent,
> > which seems sort of useless.
>
> You're saying that Gnus is capable of storing Seen in a way that
> preserves the semantic difference from Recent, but backends are not?

Well, sort of.  I don't doubt that back ends are _capable_ of storing the
mark, but I think back ends should not store marks that don't have any
semantic meaning in the back end. Or maybe rather, back ends should not
store marks that have a semantic meaning somewhere ELSE. Just like the
Gnus Cache or Gnus Agent marks. This is because it prevents backup and
stuff like that..

> Maybe that's true for the current version of nnimap (either all marks
> are shared or all are private, right?)

It depends on the server, I think.  Some servers allows sharing marks,
and some allows even fine-grained control over what marks are shared using
IMAP ACLs, per group.  Some doesn't allow non-standard marks at all.  And
some servers just forgets marks randomly..

> I wouldn't object to hiding Seen from nnimap if nnimap can't handle it
> properly, but such hiding should not be forced on all backends.  The
> list of hidden marks should be configured at least per-backend, if not
> per-server or maybe even per-group.  The backend interface should not
> assume limitations in backends' capabilities, and semantic issues
> should be kept orthogonal to storage issues as much as possible.

I think I agree -- but I view the Seen mark similar to the Cache or Agent
marks, so I don't want the mark in the back end.  (Hmm, this new "back
end" feels a bit funny..)

Ok, so are you suggesting that the Seen mark should be stored in the
backend as well?  In this case, what makes Seen different from Recent?
I.e., why should we have both then?  Maybe I'm just missing something.