Subject: Re: [sup-talk] IMAP, labels, editors

From: Lurkos <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 28 Nov 2010 00:34:55 +0100

On Sat, Nov 27, 2010 at 9:57 PM, Moritz Wilhelmy <[email-masked]> wrote:
>>> I've read in the latest History file that IMAP support is deprecated.
>>> Are you going to drop it? I mainly use IMAP to read my e-mail boxes,
>>> because I need to deal with them from different workstations (say:
>>> home, office, laptop, etc.).
>>> For this reason the local Maildir approach won't work for me.
>>
>> You can use offlineimap to fetch e-mails from your IMAP server and
>> save them as Maildir that are then added in sup. By setting your hooks
>> properly you can automatically call offlineimap before polling (see
>> the wiki).
>
> Alternatives to offlineimap to store mail in mbox/maildir include getmail
> (which is what I use) and fetchmail.

The main drawback of this approach is that you have to copy all your
mailbox in every location.
This mean several GiB for me.
That's why I would prefer to keep everything on the IMAP server (and
periodically backup it in a single computer).

>>> About message composition, do you have any recommended editor, given
>>> the fact that I never used a lot Vi nor Emacs?
>>
>> I use emacs with post-mode.
>
> sup's keybindings are modeled largely after mutt's, and not really modeled
> after neither vim nor emacs, so you don't have any benefits in learning
> how to use sup if you already know how to use vim/emacs (or vice versa).
> sup has a setting where you can change your preferred editor. As far as I
> remember, the tool that initially writes the configuration (`sup-config')
> defaults to vim.
> Personally, I use vim with mail-syntax-hilighting.

That's true: *sup* initially selects vim as default mail editor.
I never had before special requirements for text editor and therefore
gedit was enough.
Do you think is worth spending time to learn a text-based editor even
for writing e-mails?

Cheers,

-- 
Lurkos
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---

From: Damien Leone <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 28 Nov 2010 15:50:15 +0100

Excerpts from Lurkos's message of dim. nov. 28 15:05:32 +0100 2010:
> Thanks for explaining.
> Yesterday I spent a couple of hours to search for more details about
> *sup*, *notmuch* and *offlineimap*.
> What I still have not completely understood is how *sup* is going to
> store label information inside Maildir sources.
> According to this message
> (http://lists.madduck.net/pipermail/mailtags/2007-August/msg00016.html),
> IMAP tags would not be perfect (even if probably the best solution in
> my opinion).
> Another problem is that is not completely clear if *offlineimap* would
> sync also these "special" tags.

Currently everything is stored in the xapian database that stays local
to sup. On the maildir-sync branch, only the following flags are
exported [0].

That means that you have two sets of labels, the ones on the IMAP
server and the others in sup. Usually offlineimap will create a
Maildir source per IMAP label (at least with gmail) so it is easy to
add them separately in sup and auto-apply rules for each (such as
apply a label, archive messages from this source, etc.) so it is not
too painful.

> Therefore the only possible solution seems to have a personal server
> running 24/7 and using *sup* via *ssh*.

Yep, that's my case.

[0] : http://cr.yp.to/proto/maildir.html

-- 
Damien Leone <[email-masked]>

Web: http://dleone.fensalir.fr/
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From: Lurkos <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 27 Nov 2010 19:17:46 +0100

Hello all!

It's quite a long time ago since I started to look for an e-mail
client with features like Gmail, and it seems that *sup* fulfill these
requirements.
First of all I would like to great all the contributors for their work.
However I have a couple of questions to better understand how *sup* works.

Are the labels stored in a local database or also stored as flags via IMAP?
Of course the second choice would be much more beneficial for people
using e-mail from different locations.
What happens if a new message is added to the mail spool from another
source? Does *sup-sync* preserve labels already associated?

Is it possible to _delete_ a message via IMAP (say: mark as \Deleted
and then Expunge, using IMAP terminology)? According to your FAQ, it
seems that only mbox spools support a real delete process.

Thank for your help!

---

From: Lurkos <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 30 Nov 2010 02:36:24 +0000 (UTC)

*Damien Leone* wrote:

>> I have not completely understood what can be stored inside this special
>> user-defined flag.
>
> I have always seen this one used as the "starred" / "favourite" flag.

OK.

>> Unfornately it doesn't apply to me, also because I have a standard ADSL
>> home connection.
>
> Same for me but since I'm the only user on the machine and that's
> perfectly fine. ^^ Just a matter of taste. I use a pogo-plug running
> Debian, very low energy consumption (ARM CPU) and enough performances
> for my tasks (reading mails, ssh, accessing my stuff, etc.).

Like SheevaPlug? Seems really interesting!

-- 
Lurkos

---

From: Lurkos <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 28 Nov 2010 02:27:14 +0100

On Sat, Nov 27, 2010 at 9:26 PM, Damien Leone <[email-masked]> wrote:
> Everything is stored locally, sup does not modify the Maildir sources
> but there is a maildir-sync branch that allows you to keep
> synchronized in both directions between your IMAP server and your sup
> database. This is still under development though.

This seems really interesting... and possibly a indication that the
IMAP support would not be dropped.

Thanks for your answers.

Cheers,

---

From: Moritz Wilhelmy <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 27 Nov 2010 21:57:27 +0100

Best regards,

Moritz

---

From: Lurkos <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 28 Nov 2010 15:05:32 +0100

On Sun, Nov 28, 2010 at 10:21 AM, Damien Leone <[email-masked]> wrote:
> What I meant exactly is that with this branch sup modifies your
> Maildir sources, and by using offlineimap you can reflect them to the
> remote IMAP server.

Thanks for explaining.

> AFAIK sup will not reintegrate IMAP support, I
> think the main reason is because of the poor and slow IMAP support in
> the ruby libraries.

If ruby libraries don't support some feature that you need, it would
be reasonable to drop IMAP support.
However if the only problem is the speed, I would keep it, at least for now.

> Indeed you have to download all your e-mails but since I use sup only
> on one machine this is not very annoying plus it allows me to backup
> my e-mails and access them *offline*.

Cheers,

---

From: Damien Leone <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 29 Nov 2010 21:08:33 +0100

Hi,

Cheers,

---

From: Lurkos <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 29 Nov 2010 18:59:28 +0000 (UTC)

> to sup. On the maildir-sync branch, only the following flags are

| Flag "F" (flagged): user-defined flag; toggled at user discretion.
I have not completely understood what can be stored inside this special
user-defined flag.

Here (http://wiki.dovecot.org/MailboxFormat/Maildir#IMAP_keywords) I
found a non-standard way to implement some flags, but I don't how if
offlineimap would support it.

-- 
Lurkos

---

From: Damien Leone <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 27 Nov 2010 21:26:43 +0100

Hi,

> seems that only mbox spools support a real delete process.

Same as above.

Cheers,

---

From: Damien Leone <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 28 Nov 2010 10:21:12 +0100

What I meant exactly is that with this branch sup modifies your
Maildir sources, and by using offlineimap you can reflect them to the
remote IMAP server. AFAIK sup will not reintegrate IMAP support, I
think the main reason is because of the poor and slow IMAP support in
the ruby libraries.