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Re: saved messages appear as "new"



2004-11-17T22:24:29 Mads Laursen:
> [ disclaimers, but ] I am hard pressed to see how mutt, as
> the MUA, is _not_ the right place to have IMAP support? I
> know an external tool could pull the IMAP-store to local
> (mbox/maildir/...), but wouldn't that be an ugly solution in the
> general case (connected to the server, workstation, nfs-shared
> filesystems, etc.)?

Mutt has some imap support, enough to help folks limp along using it
as a direct imap client. I build that into my own mutt builds as an
emergency tool.

But mutt capitalizes on the Unix tool-using approach.

To make it really completely full-function as a direct imap client,
it'd not only need to have whatever warts remain in its imap support
all fixed up, it'd also have to absorb the functionality of a
filtering LDA like maildrop or procmail, complete with the external
component integration capabilities that they offer. The resulting
monolith would be ... well, monstrous. When you abandon the Unix
tool-using approach, you also would want to incorporate a flexible,
configurable, spooling SMTP client as well. At some point it'd make
since to add another few percent, bung in a kernel, and call it a
distro:-).

Unix folks, or at least the ones mutt is targetted at, take
advantage of the exponential power of concatenated tools. Fetchmail
is a very pleasing basis for interacting with imap servers.

-Bennett

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