Zitat von "E. John Messersmith III" <[email protected]>:
Well, I don't know what Gmail is doing either but the iPhone gets it
right
in all cases and all clients get it right when using Gmail. I'm
not being angry here just very frustrated. I don't know how I can
be any
clearer. It is either a configuration parameter of IMAP or Horde
or both.
Webmail - which I think is also part of the Horde project - gets
it right
too! So what is it doing? I go to Mail Options->Deleting and Moving
Messages and I simply check the option "When deleting messages, move
them to your Trash folder instead of marking them as deleted?" I
select
a message and click the Delete link. No marking for deletion; no
counting; no nothing - just a simple move from one folder to
another -
everything is still in one Mailbox. So the "delete" command
simply gets
translated (or is made equivalent to) a "move" to the trash folder
command. The client doesn't have to do anything. As long as the
server
moves the message to the trash folder the new state is simply
reflected
(updated) in the client. Why is this so difficult to understand? Is
there something obvious I'm missing?
So my question remains: given that I have selected the correct
Webmail
option (and set the corresponding option in all my clients), why
is it
when a remote IMAP client (Outlook, Outlook Express, Windows Mail)
executes a "delete" command and that command is received by the
IMAP
server is it not translated into a "move" to the trash folder
command?
Sorry to say that, but you actually are missing quite a lot. ;-)
Your cited words seem to indicate that you totally misunderstand
how the
IMAP functions work.
There is no such such thing as a simple "delete command", nothing
gets
translated on the server site, in fact the concept of a "trash
folder" is
totally unknown to the IMAP protocol and on IMAP servers.
All that "trash folder magic" is a thing that the various clients
handle
on their own, be it native Windows Clients or Webmail-Clients like
IMP.
And when you want several clients to behave the same way, you have
to
configure all of them individually. And if they don't support your
preferred options, you're out of luck.
Some more technical details:
Admittedly, the deletion of mail messages on an IMAP server is
somewhat
unusual. It is a two-step process, first you "mark messages as
deleted"
and then you "expunge" them.
About step 1: Each mail message on the server has a few flags or
marks
which can be read and written by the clients. One of these flags
is the
"delete flag". And the process of setting this delete flag is what
commonly is described by the phrase "marking as deleted". Such marked
messages are still on the server and can be used in every other
way. How
they are presented to the human reader depends on the used client.
About step 2: The "expunge" command is given for a whole mail
folder and
"really" deletes all messages which were previously "marked as
deleted".
This "IMAP native" mail deletion technique should normally be
available
as one option in all IMAP mail clients.
Now to the "trash folders", this is something completely
different. Such
a folder has no special meaning on the server side, it is just an
IMAP
folder like you can have others. It is only used by the client for a
special purpose. When you have set appropriate client options,
then the
clients moves "deleted mails" to this folder and does not use the
above
described IMAP deletion.
Actually this mail-move is also not a totally simple process, as
there is
no native "move command" in the IMAP protocol, only a "copy
command". So
with every move (including the moves to the trash) the client has
to copy
the mail to the destination folders and delete it in the source
afterwards (e.g. with the IMAP delete functions again).
Hope these explanations helped a little to clear up the
confusions. ;-)
Best regards,
Jochen Roderburg
RRZK
University of Cologne
Robert-Koch-Str. 10 Tel.: +49-221/478-7024
D-50931 Koeln E-Mail: [email protected]
Germany
