Re: Does Gnus read and sync the read with IMAP?

[Eric Abrahamsen <eric@ericabrahamsen.net>]

Björn Bidar <bjorn.bidar@thaodan.de> writes:

> Dan Christensen <jdc@uwo.ca> writes:
>
>> On Oct 20, 2023, Eric Abrahamsen <eric@ericabrahamsen.net> wrote:
>>
>>> Dan Christensen <jdc@uwo.ca> writes:
>>>
>>>> Here's a followup question: how can I make Gnus update the marks
>>>> for
>>>> *all* IMAP groups.
>>>
>>> I once asked Lars about this -- since the IMAP server should be the
>>> source of truth for all information about the messages, why does
>>> Gnus
>>> store its own marks data for IMAP groups at all? Why not just
>
> How many imap server support imap metadata? Clients such as Thunderbird
> already safe their metadata in imap.
>
>>> refresh
>>> from the server at each startup? I think he said that for many large
>>> groups that would end up being prohibitively slow.
>>
>> I agree that it would be too slow for many people, especially with
>> remote IMAP servers.  So I'd like an optional setting.  But I don't
>> think it should have anything to do with Gnus shutdown and startup.
>
> Why would it be to slow? Other mail clients fetch the read
> status for each mail when they update the state of each
> imap mailbox.

I have never tried it, so I don't know if it would be slow or not. But
this wouldn't just update the read status, this would remove all
existing marks and refresh them from the server: ticks, replied,
forwarded, everything. I could imagine that being pretty slow.