tick marks cleared on server, but still seen as ticked by gnus

tick marks cleared on server, but still seen as ticked by gnus

[Par Kurlberg]

I have been suffering intermittent problems with tick marks not being
synced when reading mail via nnimap.  More precisely, the act of
clearing the tick mark (on the server, say using thunderbird) is for
some reason not seen by gnus.  Will Gardella suggested
trying setting gnus-agent-synchronize-flags to t, but the problem
remains.

Any help very much appreciated!  The problem is causing me quite some
grief - I'm using ticks to keep track of messaged that need actions, and
it's getting a bit confusing that stuff taken care of at work looks
undone from my laptop.  Any suggestions on how I can debug this?  I
suspect that cached values in .newsrc.eld overrides the imap server
flags, but it's just a guess.


In case it's pertinent, the emacs/gnus versions are: 

GNU Emacs 24.3.1 (x86_64-apple-darwin11.4.2, GTK+ Version 2.18.9) of
2013-03-29 on odin.lan

Gnus v5.13

Best,
Par 

PS: I (re)-posted a similar message to info-gnus-english about a week
ago - I apologize for the crossposting - a friend recommended that I use
ding instead since it's more active.

Re: tick marks cleared on server, but still seen as ticked by gnus

[Steinar Bang]

>>>>> Par Kurlberg <kurlberg@math.kth.se>:

> I have been suffering intermittent problems with tick marks not being
> synced when reading mail via nnimap.  More precisely, the act of
> clearing the tick mark (on the server, say using thunderbird) is for
> some reason not seen by gnus.  Will Gardella suggested trying setting
> gnus-agent-synchronize-flags to t, but the problem remains.

Maybe the IMAP marks don't mean the same thing to Thunderbird and gnus?

Re: tick marks cleared on server, but still seen as ticked by gnus

[Par Kurlberg]

> Maybe the IMAP marks don't mean the same thing to Thunderbird and
> gnus?

Could be, but the same problem occurs when I tick and later untick
messages purely using gnus (running on different computers).  Ticking
always seem to works, but unticking breaks *occasionally*.  (As far as I
can tell, ticks on the gnus side corresponds to the \Flagged flag on the
IMAP side.)

Re: tick marks cleared on server, but still seen as ticked by gnus

[Ted Zlatanov]

On Sat, 29 Jun 2013 23:58:01 +0200 Par Kurlberg <kurlberg@math.kth.se> wrote: 

PK> I have been suffering intermittent problems with tick marks not being
PK> synced when reading mail via nnimap.  More precisely, the act of
PK> clearing the tick mark (on the server, say using thunderbird) is for
PK> some reason not seen by gnus.  Will Gardella suggested
PK> trying setting gnus-agent-synchronize-flags to t, but the problem
PK> remains.

PK> Any help very much appreciated!  The problem is causing me quite some
PK> grief - I'm using ticks to keep track of messaged that need actions, and
PK> it's getting a bit confusing that stuff taken care of at work looks
PK> undone from my laptop.  Any suggestions on how I can debug this?  I
PK> suspect that cached values in .newsrc.eld overrides the imap server
PK> flags, but it's just a guess.

I would turn off the Gnus Agent as a first debugging step.

Does the problem only happen when you unmark?  Or when you set a mark as
well?  Does it happen only in one direction or in both?

Ted

Re: tick marks cleared on server, but still seen as ticked by gnus

[Par Kurlberg]

I've now put (setq gnus-agent nil) in my .gnus, please let me know if
there is something else I should do to disable the agent.

Anyway, I now see the following behaviour:


* Using gnus (and checking what is on the imap server by using
  thunderbird):

Setting tick: works (the message is starred according to thunderbird.)

Clearing tick: works (the star is cleared according to thunderbird.)

Clearing read flag: pressing M-c (gnus-summary-clear-mark-forward):
works.

Setting read flag by pressing "d" (gnus-summary-mark-as-read-forward):
works.

To be precise: the flags are only updated when I hit q to exit
summary buffer.



* Going the other direction: setting/clearing read/star on the
  thunderbird side, and noting what gnus "sees".  (Note: the changes
  done on the thunderbird side are noticed by our webmail frontend.)

Setting star: works once - message ticked according to gnus (after
hitting g in the group buffer).  When I tried it again it did not work.

Clearing star: does not work - still ticked according to gnus.  (After
hitting g in the group buffer.)

Clearing read flag: works sometimes. (The number of unread messages in
the group buffer changes.)

Setting read flag: works sometimes. (The number of unread messages in
the group buffer changes.)

Regarding the read flags working occasionally, can't spot a pattern.


This is a bit perplexing - before I set gnus-agent to nil, I'm pretty
sure read/unread was syncronized from thunderbird to gnus.

Best,
Par

Re: tick marks cleared on server, but still seen as ticked by gnus

[Steinar Bang]

>>>>> Par Kurlberg <kurlberg@math.kth.se>:

[snip!]
> To be precise: the flags are only updated when I hit q to exit
> summary buffer.

FWIW I've always assumed this was by design.

Re: tick marks cleared on server, but still seen as ticked by gnus

[Ted Zlatanov]

On Tue, 02 Jul 2013 09:14:17 +0200 Steinar Bang <sb@dod.no> wrote: 

>>>>>> Par Kurlberg <kurlberg@math.kth.se>:
SB> [snip!]
>> To be precise: the flags are only updated when I hit q to exit
>> summary buffer.

SB> FWIW I've always assumed this was by design.

Yup.  The source code I've seen assumes marks are set on group exit.

Ted