Re: nnimap-split-download-body feature request

[Simon Josefsson <jas@extundo.com>]

Ted Zlatanov <tzz@lifelogs.com> writes:

> On Fri, 14 Nov 2003, colman@ppllc.com wrote:
>
>> I sometimes receieve work email with very large attachments.  I
>> don't think that large atachments are typical of spam.  It would be
>> great if there could be some way to indicate that message bodies
>> should only be downloaded if they are smaller than some (default)
>> reasonable number.  Otherwise, the processing time for spam.el
>> becomes horrendous.
>
> The key function call in nnimap.el is:
>
> ;; in nnimap-split-articles
>
> (nnimap-request-article article) 
>
> which is invoked if nnimap-split-download-body is on.  I don't know if
> partial requests are possible, this would be a question for Simon
> Josefsson probably.

It is not difficult to find out if a message is "too large", but the
problem is: what should nnimap do if the message is too large?  Throw
an error?  Return no data?  Query the user?  Return dummy data (that
will stick around in the agent and cached forever)?  I fear a backend
interface change would be request to properly support this...