Re: [SLUG] Solicitation of opinions

From: Derek Glidden (dglidden@illusionary.com)
Date: Tue Jun 05 2001 - 11:41:13 EDT


Paul M Foster wrote:
>
> On Mon, Jun 04, 2001 at 12:37:34PM -0400, Derek Glidden wrote:
>
> <snip>
>
> > The biggest problem is that NOBODY FREAKIN' SUPPORTS IMAP. I swear, I
> > can only believe that email client developers only own ONE machine from
> > which they do all their work, which must be some fancy-schmancy laptop
> > they can take with them everywhere they go, so only supporting POP isn't
> > a big deal. In a given week, I might use one of any of half a dozen
> > different machines, so if my email can't be kept on my server and _any_
> > client I'm using at the moment be able to read it from there (i.e. IMAP)
> > the client, AFAIC, is utterly broken.
> >
>
> I don't really understand IMAP, but can't you use POP to drop your mail
> onto a central server and then view it from your machine? And can't you
> also save the mail to that server?

Yes but No - POP is a very onomotopaeic protocol. It "pops" the mail
right off the server and onto the workstation that is running your email
client. You can use the "leave mail on server" option that most POP
clients have, which will leave the mail message in your INBOX on the
server as well as make a local copy, but that only helps in that you
still have the email in your INBOX.

The big problem that IMAP solves is that POP only deals with local mail
folders - not mail folders stored on the server. (A "Mail Folder" is
usually an mbox file in most cases.) IMAP is almost a remote file
management protocol that's tailored to working with mbox files, as much
as it is any kind of EMail protocol. You can move messages from one
remote folder to another, move messages between local and remote
folders, you can delete folders, create new folders, make subfolders
(subdirectories) with "nested" mail folders in them, and so on. POP is
only really good for retrieving mail from your INBOX to your local
machine.

I have almost 700MB of mail on my server - I never delete _anything_
except SPAM - in almost 500 folders, spanning a good 4 or 5 years. That
stuff ABSOLUTELY HAS to stay on my email server. I can't POP it to a
local box and manage it from there, because a) then I couldn't get to it
from a different machine since it wouldn't be on the server anymore, b)
I wouldn't be able to manage the 500 folders of email with POP so I'd
have about eighteen billion messages in my INBOX, and c) I'd then have
700MB of mail sitting on my local machine instead of on my server where
I've made room for it and where I can manage it.

Which is why I'm baffled as to why so few mail clients support IMAP, and
not incidentally, why so few people are familiar with IMAP. I
understand why a lot of people use POP, because ISPs don't want to get
stuck with managing gigabytes of their users' mail on their mail servers
if everyone used IMAP, but for people who have their own servers, or use
company servers, IMAP makes so much more sense than POP. Or maybe I'm
just weird in that I don't delete everything as soon as I've read it and
nobody else needs anything but POP because they immediately delete
everything and just don't need to manage remote folders. Or maybe I'm
weird because I actually read my email from three or four different
machines depending on where I am and what machine I have available at
the time. Or maybe I'm just weird...

-- 
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
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