On Sat, May 23, 2015 at 9:34 AM, Niels Dettenbach (Syndicat.com) <n...@syndicat.com> wrote: > >> Am 23.05.2015 um 15:07 schrieb Rich Freeman <ri...@gentoo.org>: >> >> Well, besides not being browser-based as far as I can tell, without >> integration with the IMAP server those emails in multiple directories >> won't show up in multiple directories when accessed from any other >> client. > This is a behavior of your email client and typically not part of the service > (except if you see webmail clients as part of it).
I almost exclusively access my email via the web, but also desire to access it via clients, such as on mobile. With Gmail I can have an email with 14 tags. Via IMAP it shows up as if it were in 14 folders at the same time. It is a bit kludgy, but it at least works. If I just used squirrelmail and sylpheed as clients, and courier as my IMAP server, then as far as I can tell if I did tag an email with 14 tags in sylpheed then I wouldn't see that in squirrelmail. > >> What I like about Gmail is that I can operate from the >> browser, but still have access to my mail via IMAP if I need it, and >> of course it has a really nice Android offline client (and an offline >> html5 client as well). > WOW, > this is what our customers still had around 20 years ago and far before any > "google" exist... Not with tagging, as far as I'm aware. I also doubt that you had an offline html5 client 20 years ago. > > My experience is that more then 99% of all email users did not > know/recognized the power of real IMAP - resultet from crippled > IMAP services of their providers or still being in POP3 in their > mind. Services like server side searching, access rules to folders or > even the SIEVE filter standards are very new to them, but available > since around 20 years on the email service market. Gmail was one of > the first „fee free“ mail services internationally offering at > least a halfway usable IMAP - 20 years after that was standard for > pro users and many of the features that customer audience is calling > „gmail feature“ are still parts of standards, available decades > before... Sure, and that was how I was doing it before I switched to Gmail. Before I had a smartphone/chromebook/etc I'd just check email from thunderbird, and have squirrelmail available for rare web-only use. Then my usage patterns changed and I don't even have an X11-based email client anymore. All those rich client features don't work when they're chained to your home directory and don't sync their settings with all the other clients you use. Gmail draws the boundaries different between client/server on mail, and I find it works much better for me that way. And to be useful I also need reasonable integration across mail/contacts/calendar/docs. Really to switch back to FOSS I need something with near-feature-parity with Google-everything, because that is already fairly minimalist. There are plenty of things that annoy me with Gmail, and I'd be glad to ditch it in a heartbeat. I've just not found anything I can host myself which is comparable. -- Rich
