On Mon, 2003-06-23 at 19:11, Mark Crispin wrote: > > Anyway, I think the nicest way to do this would be > > to tell server to send standard untagged STATUS replies for specified > > folders. > > That would be very expensive with some mail stores. STATUS requires > values that *may* be in mailbox metadata but may also require a costly > calculation.
I know. But if client wants to know it anyway, it's better to let server check it when it wants to rather than ask it specifically once every 10 minutes. I don't think this would be problematic to implement even with unix mboxes. You just remember mtime of last check, if it changes you'll do the expensive STATUS and send it to client (but no often than once in 10 minutes or so). Even if mail store can't support any shortcuts, it's still no worse than letting the client do the polling. > Does it really matter to a client if there are 44 new messages or 51 new > messages? Does it really matter to an end user? No, but it matters that user knows that there actually are new mails. I wouldn't really mind if the STATUS checking stopped after it noticed the first new mail. The STATUS checks should start again when _any_ client selects the mailbox (which might be tricky).
