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Re: what is the benefit of imap?



On Thu, Mar 19, 2009 at 09:06:16AM -0500, Kyle Wheeler wrote:
> On Thursday, March 19 at 09:21 AM, quoth Marc Vaillant:
> >> Sorry, but I think, here you are wrong. Good IMAP-Clients don’t 
> >> download the attachments without your interaction (at least you can 
> >> configure them in such a way). So the reading of the mails should 
> >> be fast in both ways. But if you wish to open an attachment, IMAP 
> >> is better than using SSH and local spool.
> >
> > Is there a way to view the body of an imap message without mutt actually 
> > fetching (not saving) all attachments?
> 
> Not with mutt. Since mutt was originally designed for viewing a local 
> mail spool, it has no concept of "partial" messages. Mutt's IMAP 
> features are really there to simulate a local mail spool, which means 
> certain features like that would be tough to add (not impossible, but 
> tough).

Ok, understood.  

> 
> Depending on your definitions, that may mean that mutt isn't a "good" 
> IMAP client. It's *reliable*, and it *works*, but it certainly doesn't 
> take advantage of all the features of IMAP that it theoretically 
> could.

I agree.  Support for IMAP in mutt certainly has improved over the
years though.  Before header-cache, IMAP was basically unusable without
something like offlineimap. 

> 
> > Fetching a 5-10mb attachment just to view the body text is a 
> > significant annoyance when I'm away from my local work LAN. I'd like 
> > to be able to view the body text and have mutt fetch the attachments 
> > only when I hit "v" -> "return" to view the attachment.
> 
> Suggest the feature to the developers. Better yet, implement it 
> yourself and submit a patch! Be warned, though: that patch would take 
> a *lot* of work.

I've been a user for over a decade now.  I'd love to contribute, I just
don't have time right now :(

Marc