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Re: Threads and &



Kyle Wheeler <kyle-mutt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> 18-Jun-09 18:31:
> On Thursday, June 18 at 05:13 PM, quoth Marianne:
> > Are you doing this on a Gmail IMAP folder?
> >
> > I had issues using mutt to link threads in Gmail as well, as described 
> > here:
> >
> > http://does-not-exist.org/mail-archives/mutt-users/msg17790.html
> >
> 
> My guess here is that it's either related to the problem I mentioned 
> above OR it's related to the fact that Gmail doesn't implement IMAP 
> correctly.
> [...]
> Unfortunately, many of the more creative and powerful tricks mutt can 
> perform with messages (e.g. connecting threads) rely on being able to 
> modify messages on the IMAP server---which (because IMAP provides no 
> method for modifying a message directly (for very good reasons)) 
> involves copying messages and DELETING the old ones. 

Thanks! That's the explanation that must underlie this problem.  It
explains both that when I directly access Gmail via IMAP it removes
the label, and that offlineimap deletes the mail.  I didn't know that
mutt does delete + copy instead of modifying the message in place.

> I recommend that if you have a problem using mutt with Gmail, try 
> doing the same thing with some other IMAP client (ANY other IMAP 
> client). If it doesn't work there either, chances are it's a Gmail 
> problem, not a mutt problem!

Well, yes, if you look at my original post that's pretty much the
conclusion I came to. I still use Gmail for mailing lists that have
lots of messages that I want to keep (maybe not a sensible thing, but
I've to some degree fallen for the Gmail "I'll just have to use lots
of space now that I have it" trick), but I've stopped cleaning up
threads.

> When you run into trouble while using something like offlineimap, my
> first suggestion would be: try doing it without offlineimap. If it
> works, then you have isolated the problem: it's an offlineimap
> problem. If it still doesn't work, then you have eliminated a
> potential cause, and you've made progress toward figuring out what
> the real problem is.

Fully aggree, and again, if you look at my initial post from December
2008 you'll find that that's what I did.

Thanks again for your explanations about Gmail & IMAP and what mutt
does when it links threads, that really cleared things up for me.

Marianne