4 ms·

Gmail supports IMAP.

Mailtemi 2y ago
It does behind CASA!
mort96 2y ago
It does, but IMAP is clearly not a priority, and they certainly aren't interested in JMAP. They support IMAP (with caveats) because you can't really offer e-mail without IMAP, but they want you to use their GMail app.
- retrochameleon 2y ago
  Normally, email providers let you organize into folders. And IMAP (if I understand correctly) DOES NOT allow clients to see those folders and replicate the folder structure. But Gmail doesn't have "folders". They have "labels". I wont go into all the details about how Gmail labels work that frustrate and annoy me, but the point is that IMAP clients cannot see labels, they can't replicate it on the client end, etc. This caused a legitimate problem at work when the finance dept. wants to use this service that reads emails to automatically scan invoices into their system and whatnot. They wanted to be able to only have a subfolder automatically imported into the program, because too many of the emails were not relevant to get imported, creating more work to clear them out. We were not able to achieve a solution with a simple folder for the users to move emails into to get them imported. Instead, we had to set up a second email account specifically for this importing service, and whenever finance wants something imported, they forward the email to that second account.
  - MaKey 2y ago
    > Normally, email providers let you organize into folders. And IMAP (if I understand correctly) DOES NOT allow clients to see those folders and replicate the folder structure. I think the "NOT" slipped in there by accident.
    - retrochameleon 2y ago
      Yes it did. Rereading and reediting snafu.
  - amaccuish 2y ago
    The problem is that in IMAP the concept of labels doesn't exist. Thus they are implemented using folders, which is a concept in IMAP. But that issue is, a message is then in multiple folders (to reflect that it has multiple labels), but in the way this happens in IMAP, they are different messages, even if the content is the same. And thus I can imagine, automated programs, not aware of this, may for example see 2 invoices (because the email has 2 labels) rather than 1.
    - k_g_b_ 2y ago
      IMAP has a concept of flags/keywords (https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc9051 https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc9051 2.3.2) and there's a whole bunch of servers and clients that support using it in a similar way as labels - Thunderbird, Zimbra, dovecot, etc. It's not a feature originally built for labelling like Gmail, so it has a few complexities ("Servers MAY permit the client to define new keywords") and enough clients (especially mobile) that don't support it - but they could just like Thunderbird or some webmail clients. I've used it basically exactly like Gmail labels for years on TB on desktop.

It does behind CASA!

It does, but IMAP is clearly not a priority, and they certainly aren't interested in JMAP. They support IMAP (with caveats) because you can't really offer e-mail without IMAP, but they want you to use their GMail app.

retrochameleon 2y ago
Normally, email providers let you organize into folders. And IMAP (if I understand correctly) DOES NOT allow clients to see those folders and replicate the folder structure. But Gmail doesn't have "folders". They have "labels". I wont go into all the details about how Gmail labels work that frustrate and annoy me, but the point is that IMAP clients cannot see labels, they can't replicate it on the client end, etc. This caused a legitimate problem at work when the finance dept. wants to use this service that reads emails to automatically scan invoices into their system and whatnot. They wanted to be able to only have a subfolder automatically imported into the program, because too many of the emails were not relevant to get imported, creating more work to clear them out. We were not able to achieve a solution with a simple folder for the users to move emails into to get them imported. Instead, we had to set up a second email account specifically for this importing service, and whenever finance wants something imported, they forward the email to that second account.
- MaKey 2y ago
  > Normally, email providers let you organize into folders. And IMAP (if I understand correctly) DOES NOT allow clients to see those folders and replicate the folder structure. I think the "NOT" slipped in there by accident.
  - retrochameleon 2y ago
    Yes it did. Rereading and reediting snafu.
- amaccuish 2y ago
  The problem is that in IMAP the concept of labels doesn't exist. Thus they are implemented using folders, which is a concept in IMAP. But that issue is, a message is then in multiple folders (to reflect that it has multiple labels), but in the way this happens in IMAP, they are different messages, even if the content is the same. And thus I can imagine, automated programs, not aware of this, may for example see 2 invoices (because the email has 2 labels) rather than 1.
  - k_g_b_ 2y ago
    IMAP has a concept of flags/keywords (https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc9051 https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc9051 2.3.2) and there's a whole bunch of servers and clients that support using it in a similar way as labels - Thunderbird, Zimbra, dovecot, etc. It's not a feature originally built for labelling like Gmail, so it has a few complexities ("Servers MAY permit the client to define new keywords") and enough clients (especially mobile) that don't support it - but they could just like Thunderbird or some webmail clients. I've used it basically exactly like Gmail labels for years on TB on desktop.