3 ms·

How does it handle Gmail (labels, conversations..) ?

by moondowner 14y ago

masklinn 14y ago
How does GMail do IMAP?
- qznc 14y ago
  http://support.google.com/mail/answer/78892?hl=en http://support.google.com/mail/answer/78892?hl=en
adlpz 14y ago
About labels, I believe they are sort of in the IMAP spec as keywords or something like that, so if Gmail is being nice, they should work. About conversations, I read that Gmail does some client-side sorcery with In-Reply-To headers for that, so if this client does the same, it should work.
- durin42 14y ago
  Gmail exports labels as IMAP folders, so it should be fine?
  - jeltz 14y ago
    Actually this is what creates the mess. If gmail had exported labels as flags an IMAP client should be able to re-implement the gmail folders. EDIT: The mess I refer to is that your emails will be duplicated if they have multiple labels. EDIT2: Hmm, actually I am not sure how good the support for custom IMAP flags is.
    - ygra 14y ago
      (Side note: It's been a few years since I looked through the specs and maybe I missed something) IMAP flags are sadly severely lacking in what they can represent. The character set isn't even enough for unmodified UTF-7 (Punycode could work, but only for one-word tags) which renders them useless for user-chosen labels so few mail clients actually bother supporting them in that way. Thunderbird uses \label1 through \label5 but the names that are displayed in the UI are stored on each computer separately so you'd have to set up the labels you use on each machine (which kinda defies the purpose of storing that on the server). And short of using a »label configuration mail« on the server I don't see an easy way of supporting them completely server-side. I'd love to completely forego folders and use tags/labels/flags/whatever they're called exclusively but last I looked IMAP wasn't able to support that.
  - pyre 14y ago
    You can determine labels, it's just more work. I wrote a script a while back that used IMAP to just generate a list of message-ids and the labels associated with each one. I iterated over all messages in all folders to build the associations. It might be possible to query for a single message-id in all folders, to get a list of labels to, but you would need to know the message-id ahead of time.
Tobu 14y ago
It's fast, but not conversations based; there's no threading at all that I can see, except a "replied" icon that isn't even an active link. It's a shame because conversations (unlike labels) don't require any protocol extension, thunderbird conversations work on any server.

How does it handle Gmail (labels, conversations..) ?

masklinn 14y ago

How does GMail do IMAP?

qznc 14y ago
http://support.google.com/mail/answer/78892?hl=en http://support.google.com/mail/answer/78892?hl=en

adlpz 14y ago

About labels, I believe they are sort of in the IMAP spec as keywords or something like that, so if Gmail is being nice, they should work. About conversations, I read that Gmail does some client-side sorcery with In-Reply-To headers for that, so if this client does the same, it should work.

durin42 14y ago
Gmail exports labels as IMAP folders, so it should be fine?
- jeltz 14y ago
  Actually this is what creates the mess. If gmail had exported labels as flags an IMAP client should be able to re-implement the gmail folders. EDIT: The mess I refer to is that your emails will be duplicated if they have multiple labels. EDIT2: Hmm, actually I am not sure how good the support for custom IMAP flags is.
  - ygra 14y ago
    (Side note: It's been a few years since I looked through the specs and maybe I missed something) IMAP flags are sadly severely lacking in what they can represent. The character set isn't even enough for unmodified UTF-7 (Punycode could work, but only for one-word tags) which renders them useless for user-chosen labels so few mail clients actually bother supporting them in that way. Thunderbird uses \label1 through \label5 but the names that are displayed in the UI are stored on each computer separately so you'd have to set up the labels you use on each machine (which kinda defies the purpose of storing that on the server). And short of using a »label configuration mail« on the server I don't see an easy way of supporting them completely server-side. I'd love to completely forego folders and use tags/labels/flags/whatever they're called exclusively but last I looked IMAP wasn't able to support that.
- pyre 14y ago
  You can determine labels, it's just more work. I wrote a script a while back that used IMAP to just generate a list of message-ids and the labels associated with each one. I iterated over all messages in all folders to build the associations. It might be possible to query for a single message-id in all folders, to get a list of labels to, but you would need to know the message-id ahead of time.

Tobu 14y ago

It's fast, but not conversations based; there's no threading at all that I can see, except a "replied" icon that isn't even an active link. It's a shame because conversations (unlike labels) don't require any protocol extension, thunderbird conversations work on any server.