On Mon, 10 Feb 2003 10:12:45 -0800, John Doty wrote: > (Just so that I can believe I understand the RFC, PERMANENTFLAGS is optional > when it does not differ from the set of flags you returned with the FLAGS > status, right? It would gall me to have to include it just because uw-imap > does...)
PERMANENTFLAGS means that when you change the flag, the flag will stay changed in the next session, as distinguished from flags which are only valid in a particular session and are discarded when the session terminates. I think that what you are seeing is Outlook's standard behavior when the server does not support IDLE. Rather than periodically poll the server for new mail by issuing a command every few minutes (which is what it should do), it just sits there unless the user does a mouse click. FWIW, rumors to the contrary notwithstanding, NOOP is not a "poll command". All commands check for new mail on the selected stream as a side-effect. NOOP does nothing else, so if you want to poll for new mail but not do anything else, then you use NOOP. Anyway, the galling thing is that to work well with Outlook, you have to implement IDLE. But you're not done yet. Outlook won't terminate the idle state before the 30 minute inactivity autologout timer, even though the specification says that it should. So, at about 29 minutes into the IDLE, the server needs to send a hokey EXISTS announcing fake new mail, then when the client sends a DONE the server should send a hokey EXPUNGE to make the fake new mail go away. That will cause the client to issue a new idle and prevent the autologout.
