> Hi,
>
> This is not courier specific, but I have come to respect the opinions
> of several contributors to this list, so I would like to pose a
> question.
>
> I have several requirements for an e-mail system. The most horrible are
> as follows:
>
> 1) Realtime count of read & unread messages, etc.

If you're on the system, depending on your trigger and privledges, you
might be able to execute a simple find command against a user's mail
files/folders (If you're asking on the courier list, I'll assume you're
using maildirs, which makes this easy).  If you can log in to the imap
server as the user, you could call a script to log in to imap and get the
status of everything.

>
> 2) Realtime notification by http of read/deleted/marked unread,
> irrespective of the protocol used to read them. In this instance IMAP
> will be the protocol to begin with.

I'm not sure what you mean by 'realtime notification'.  http is a pull, as
opposed to push, protocol.  I.e., you can have a user autorefreshing a
document that lists his waiting mail, and the document gets updated at
every new mail.  You can't have the browser autoreload the document on a
signal from the server, however.  Of course, something with java or
javascript might help too.


>
> 3) Update notifications, when new mail arrives, of the complete mail
> box status (including folders, etc).

Do you want to rely on the mail daemon to do this or do you want to search
the maildirs yourself?  This would be a simple command/series of commands
to the imap server, or a find function.

>
> Now it seems to me that what I really need is a trigger from the imap
> daemon with a range of functionality parameters. Such that when any
> message status is changed, the IMAP daemon will trigger an external app
> to provide the notification of this event to a remote host. The trigger
> for new mail already exists, as a call from maildrop :-), but not the
> full status, just new arrivals.

If you are only concerned with providing notification when new mail
arrives, then all you need is that trigger.  You should be able to write a
script that will run whenever new mail arrives and collect all the relevant
counts for that user.  If you want to provide notification on any action
(mark read/store/etc...) then you'll need something more custom.

>
> This is going to be very complicated, and I fully appreciate how
> horrible this is. I have explained that to the companies involved, but
> now the subject has ariosen again & I would like some feedback from the
> objective people I have been reading on this list. I cannot provide
> much more in terms of details since I am bound by a non-disclosure
> agreement.

Well, there are a few more details you would need to provide to be helpful.

1) Will this project always be with maildirs?
2) When you say 'realtime notification', what are you going for?  Are you
trying to update a user's webpage with all his current mail stats?  Are you
trying to pop a box up on the user's screen?  Is the user expected to probe
for the new mail periodically, or is the user expected to run a listening
client that responds to messages from a server?
3) Do you want 'realtime notification' of incoming mail, or of all mailbox
changes?

I'm not sure what else to ask, but without being a little more specific,
I'm afraid its kind of hard to give you a direction.

>
> I would appreciate your thoughts on this matter, but please, do not
> flame. I just want some other points of view, so I can be objective in
> my
> discussions.
>
> Regards,
>
>> Jon




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