Re: POP3 support and 'multiple personalities'
On Fri, Sep 10, 1999 at 09:34:03PM +0200, Roberto Suarez Soto wrote: On 10/Sep/1999, Chris Green wrote: What I need is to be able to view my POP3 'folder' and delete individual messages. Most of the newer Unix/Linux MUAs do in fact work this way with POP3 folders, it makes them look just like ordinary local folders to the user. Using fetchmail with mutt can't do this at all. If that's your only need, it's easy to do a little perl program to let you see the Subject, From or any other header from the messages in your ISP's server and dump to a file (or even mail) the rest of the messages. It wouldn't be very fast, and maybe you couldn't do it at all (you need libnet available), but it's possible. I began a similar thing to download news, and having a little Perl experience it's not very difficult. You could even use dialog to make it fancier. Well, yes, I'm sure all sorts of things like that are possible but they're hardly well integrated into the MUA are they! :-) A POP3 'folder' is just another mail folder from the user's point of view and wants to be handled as closely as possible like other folders. That's of course if you decide to handle POP3 as folders, I think maybe many people here don't want that. -- Chris Green ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) Home: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Work: [EMAIL PROTECTED] WWW: http://www.isbd.co.uk/
Re: POP3 support and 'multiple personalities'
On Sat, Sep 11, 1999 at 03:35:05AM -0500, Jeremy Blosser wrote: What I need is to be able to view my POP3 'folder' and delete individual messages. Most of the newer Unix/Linux MUAs do in fact work this way with POP3 folders, it makes them look just like ordinary local folders to the user. Using fetchmail with mutt can't do this at all. Well, it sounds like what you really want is to use POP as a mailbox format instead of a transportation protocol. I agree it would be cool if Mutt could do this, and I think it's proper, as it's not doing MDA work in that case... provided it doesn't violate any POP specifications, but I've no idea on that. I doubt it would. Yes, that's *exactly* what I want and it's what quite a few of the more recent Linux/Unix MUAs are doing. You can't make POP3 mailbox/folders look exactly the same as local folders and IMAP folders but you can get things close enough so that it's reasonably easy for the user to treat it much the same. -- Chris Green ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) Home: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Work: [EMAIL PROTECTED] WWW: http://www.isbd.co.uk/
Re: POP3 support and 'multiple personalities'
Chris Green [[EMAIL PROTECTED]] wrote: On Thu, Sep 09, 1999 at 06:10:10PM -0500, Jeremy Blosser wrote: If you like Mutt so much, why not look instead at using another POP3 implementation (fetchmail) while still using Mutt? That's how it's /supposed/ to work. Fetchmail is equally useless. Another user has reported *exactly* the same problem that I have. If you read your POP3 mailbox from more than one location fetchmail simply doesn't work. What I need is to be able to view my POP3 'folder' and delete individual messages. Most of the newer Unix/Linux MUAs do in fact work this way with POP3 folders, it makes them look just like ordinary local folders to the user. Using fetchmail with mutt can't do this at all. Well, it sounds like what you really want is to use POP as a mailbox format instead of a transportation protocol. I agree it would be cool if Mutt could do this, and I think it's proper, as it's not doing MDA work in that case... provided it doesn't violate any POP specifications, but I've no idea on that. I doubt it would. -- Jeremy Blosser | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | http://jblosser.firinn.org/ -+-+-- "If Microsoft can change and compete on quality, I've won." -- L. Torvalds PGP signature
Re: POP3 support and 'multiple personalities'
On Thu, Sep 09, 1999 at 06:10:10PM -0500, Jeremy Blosser wrote: Chris Green [[EMAIL PROTECTED]] wrote: I have been using mutt on a number of different systems for quite a long while (since something like version 0.7x I think). It has served me well and has become steadily better. However I am now seriously looking at other MUAs and one of the main reasons is mutt's minimal POP3 support. If you like Mutt so much, why not look instead at using another POP3 implementation (fetchmail) while still using Mutt? That's how it's /supposed/ to work. Fetchmail is equally useless. Another user has reported *exactly* the same problem that I have. If you read your POP3 mailbox from more than one location fetchmail simply doesn't work. What I need is to be able to view my POP3 'folder' and delete individual messages. Most of the newer Unix/Linux MUAs do in fact work this way with POP3 folders, it makes them look just like ordinary local folders to the user. Using fetchmail with mutt can't do this at all. Mutt as it stands simply can't handle this [POP3] situation well. But why do you expect that it should? Do you expect sendmail to have a nice interface for reading your mail, when that isn't its job? Why should Mutt, which is meant to read/compose mails, have functionality to transfer them as well? POP3 is a mail /transport/ protocol. Mutt doesn't do mail transport (except for the existing, old, basic POP3 code which shouldn't be there either). The problem isn't with Mutt, it's with your monolithic ideas of how this should be set up. Get fetchmail, configure it, macro index G "!fetchmailenter", and be done with it. It *can't* do the same thing as MUAs that handle POP3 sensibly can as I have explained above. I would love to move over to IMAP4 as this would do exactly what I want but in the real world ISPs are not providing IMAP4 servers so I have to work with POP3. It's also more difficult (though quite possible) in mutt to set up different 'personalities'. My ideal would be a mailer which allows customisation of most settings on a per folder basis, some of the better MUAs are now moving towards this sort of approach (Eudora 4 Pro in Windows, Mahogany in X and Windows). Mutt can do this but it's not so 'personality' oriented. Some of the "better" MUAs? -boggle- Eudora is crap from a perspective of standards implementation and sensible MIME handling. I didn't say I *liked* Eudora, in fact I don't think I've found any Windows mail program that I can really get on with. Eudora is one of the better windows mailers, that doesn't necessarily make it good. Anyway... this is trivial in Mutt, and rather complete. Use folder-hooks and you can do literally anything you want when you enter any given folder. If you want it 'personality' oriented, try using comments and grouped commands in your .muttrc. Or sourcing different files, etc. The only real point of 'personalities' is organization, and IMO you can do this just as easily with the above. This is why I said it *can* be done in mutt but it's not handled in such a user friendly way. Don't get me wrong, I'm a Unix hacker at heart, I use procmail and mutt on this system here. I'm just looking for a better way of handling my multi-homed mail access, I may end up staying with mutt but it's not perfect for me by any means. -- Chris Green ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) Home: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Work: [EMAIL PROTECTED] WWW: http://www.isbd.co.uk/
Re: POP3 support and 'multiple personalities'
Chris Green: What I need is to be able to view my POP3 'folder' and delete individual messages. Most of the newer Unix/Linux MUAs do in fact work this way with POP3 folders, it makes them look just like ordinary local folders to the user. Using fetchmail with mutt can't do this at all. Do these MUAs keep a list of UIDs between sessions? Do they keep a local copy of messages between sessions? Is there a way of telling the MUA to delete a message locally (and not download it again) but leave it on the server to be picked up by a different machine later? Perhaps we should make an explicit proposal for what might be implemented in mutt ... Edmund
Re: POP3 support and 'multiple personalities'
On Fri, Sep 10, 1999 at 01:23:00PM +0100, Edmund GRIMLEY EVANS wrote: Chris Green: What I need is to be able to view my POP3 'folder' and delete individual messages. Most of the newer Unix/Linux MUAs do in fact work this way with POP3 folders, it makes them look just like ordinary local folders to the user. Using fetchmail with mutt can't do this at all. Do these MUAs keep a list of UIDs between sessions? Do they keep a local copy of messages between sessions? No, it doesn't need to keep local copies I don't think, all it needs to know is how to identify messages which are new since the last time it connected to the server. While the (local) folder is open all messages in the folder are available for viewing, i.e. there is a local copy. When the folder is closed or synchronised with the POP3 server messages marked for deletion are actually deleted from the POP3 server, presumably this can simply be done by message number. The next time you connect *all* messages are downloaded again and any new messages are marked as such. I presume (again I don't actually know, not having delved into the code) that this could be done on a simple count basis and doesn't need UIDs. Is there a way of telling the MUA to delete a message locally (and not download it again) but leave it on the server to be picked up by a different machine later? No, I don't think you could do this. Effectively what you have in tkrat is what looks exactly like a local folder with new messages, old messages and deleteed messages. If you 'synchronise' the folder (i.e. tell the MUA to make its view of the folder and the server/file view of the messages the same) then the deleted messages are deleted from the POP3 server. Perhaps we should make an explicit proposal for what might be implemented in mutt ... I don't think we'll get it. -- Chris Green ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) Home: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Work: [EMAIL PROTECTED] WWW: http://www.isbd.co.uk/
Re: POP3 support and 'multiple personalities'
Chris Green: Is there a way of telling the MUA to delete a message locally (and not download it again) but leave it on the server to be picked up by a different machine later? No, I don't think you could do this. Effectively what you have in tkrat is what looks exactly like a local folder with new messages, old messages and deleteed messages. If you 'synchronise' the folder (i.e. tell the MUA to make its view of the folder and the server/file view of the messages the same) then the deleted messages are deleted from the POP3 server. It makes sense to me. When you close the POP3 server you should be offered the choice of synchronising the folder, or not. Presumably the MUA opens a new POP3 connection when it synchronises the folder. Note that you can't use message numbers between POP3 sessions: - Another client may have connected and deleted mail from the server while the MUA had the folder "open". - The server may have automatically deleted old mail from the server. - The server may have removed mail from the server after having delivered it some other way (Demon does this). - The server may decide to arbitrarily renumber the mail and add new mail somwhere in the middle of the sequence (Demon does this too). According to RFC 1939 both UIDL and TOP are optional POP3 commands, and at least one major ISP in this country offers POP3 without UIDL. However, even with that slight complication it doesn't seem like a huge amount of work to add this to mutt ... I'm not totally keen on writing the code myself, though, because it's too similar to my day-time job. (We're developing a speech-driven MUA for people to read and reply to e-mail over the phone; I'm a little familiar with the internals of fetchmail and c-client. In my spare time, if I had any, I prefer to work on operating system or compiler stuff ...) Edmund
Re: POP3 support and 'multiple personalities'
On Fri, 10 Sep 1999, Chris Green wrote: What I need is to be able to view my POP3 'folder' and delete individual messages. Most of the newer Unix/Linux MUAs do in fact work this way with POP3 folders, it makes them look just like ordinary local folders to the user. Using fetchmail with mutt can't do this at all. Perhaps not an ideal solution, but you can use the Perl script poppy to prune your POP3 folders in this way.
POP3 support and 'multiple personalities'
I have been using mutt on a number of different systems for quite a long while (since something like version 0.7x I think). It has served me well and has become steadily better. However I am now seriously looking at other MUAs and one of the main reasons is mutt's minimal POP3 support. Let me explain my situation, I have a home (Linux mostly) system, I work every day at a Sun workstation and I have this shell account which I can telnet into from both home and work. I have a number of different ISP accounts and other places from which I collect mail via POP3. In an ideal world I would have a single ISP account which provided IMAP4 and I could get all the other accounts to send my mail there and do everything using IMAP4. However this is the real world and ISPs are not all that keen on providing IMAP4. So - what I am beginning to do is move over to a mail program which has a good POP3 implementation (I'm pretty well settled on tkrat at the moment though Mahogany shows promise). This allows me to set up folders in my mail program which correspond to the POP3 mailboxes, I can read my POP3 mail from anywhere and delete the unwanted messages but *leave* the ones that I want to see still when I'm somewhere else. Mutt as it stands simply can't handle this situation well. It's also more difficult (though quite possible) in mutt to set up different 'personalities'. My ideal would be a mailer which allows customisation of most settings on a per folder basis, some of the better MUAs are now moving towards this sort of approach (Eudora 4 Pro in Windows, Mahogany in X and Windows). Mutt can do this but it's not so 'personality' oriented. I'm not necessarily saying that mutt should change direction but I think better POP3 support should be considered. -- Chris Green ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) Home: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Work: [EMAIL PROTECTED] WWW: http://www.isbd.co.uk/
Re: POP3 support and 'multiple personalities'
Chris Green: So - what I am beginning to do is move over to a mail program which has a good POP3 implementation (I'm pretty well settled on tkrat at the moment though Mahogany shows promise). This allows me to set up folders in my mail program which correspond to the POP3 mailboxes, I can read my POP3 mail from anywhere and delete the unwanted messages but *leave* the ones that I want to see still when I'm somewhere else. I, too, have the problem of wanting to receive mail from the same POP3 mailbox in two places. What I do is run fetchmail with "keep" at both places. If I receive an uninteresting message at one place and delete it, it still gets downloaded at the other place and I have to delete it again, which isn't ideal. Also, I found I had problems when I never deleted anything on the server. With about 2000 messages in my mailbox, Demon's POP3 server started failing for me occasionally. (I think it timed out internally.) So, when I download e-mail in one place and I know that the last time I downloaded e-mail was in the other place, then I try to remember to run fetchmail with "--flush". This isn't ideal, either. I'd really like a way for mail to be deleted automatically from the server as soon as it has been downloaded to both places. But I asked about this on fetchmail-friends without getting a response, I think. (By the way, have you been bitten by the way Demon's POP3 server occasionally finds it can only contact one of Demon's two mailstores but carries on anyway? Half the messages seem to disappear, then reappear again later. If fetchmail has thrown away the UIDs, you get them all downloaded a second time, junking up your local mailbox. I suppose you'd have to modify fetchmail to store UIDs with a timestamp of when the message with that UID was last seen ... One reason for trying not to forget "--flush" is to make the consequences of this problem less severe. Fifty I can cope with, but getting 1000 old messages redelivered is not fun ...) Edmund
Re: POP3 support and 'multiple personalities'
On Thu, Sep 09, 1999 at 01:35:15PM +0100, Edmund GRIMLEY EVANS wrote: If I receive an uninteresting message at one place and delete it, it still gets downloaded at the other place and I have to delete it again, which isn't ideal. Quite, my method overcomes that problem. I never leave much mail on the POP3 server, basically I most mail and just leave the odd message either to remond myself about something or because I want to save it in a folder on the other system where I read mail. Thus I haven't run into your problems with lots of mail remaining on the Demon POP3 server. -- Chris Green ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) Home: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Work: [EMAIL PROTECTED] WWW: http://www.isbd.co.uk/
Re: POP3 support and 'multiple personalities'
Chris Green [[EMAIL PROTECTED]] wrote: I have been using mutt on a number of different systems for quite a long while (since something like version 0.7x I think). It has served me well and has become steadily better. However I am now seriously looking at other MUAs and one of the main reasons is mutt's minimal POP3 support. If you like Mutt so much, why not look instead at using another POP3 implementation (fetchmail) while still using Mutt? That's how it's /supposed/ to work. Mutt as it stands simply can't handle this [POP3] situation well. But why do you expect that it should? Do you expect sendmail to have a nice interface for reading your mail, when that isn't its job? Why should Mutt, which is meant to read/compose mails, have functionality to transfer them as well? POP3 is a mail /transport/ protocol. Mutt doesn't do mail transport (except for the existing, old, basic POP3 code which shouldn't be there either). The problem isn't with Mutt, it's with your monolithic ideas of how this should be set up. Get fetchmail, configure it, macro index G "!fetchmailenter", and be done with it. It's also more difficult (though quite possible) in mutt to set up different 'personalities'. My ideal would be a mailer which allows customisation of most settings on a per folder basis, some of the better MUAs are now moving towards this sort of approach (Eudora 4 Pro in Windows, Mahogany in X and Windows). Mutt can do this but it's not so 'personality' oriented. Some of the "better" MUAs? -boggle- Eudora is crap from a perspective of standards implementation and sensible MIME handling. Anyway... this is trivial in Mutt, and rather complete. Use folder-hooks and you can do literally anything you want when you enter any given folder. If you want it 'personality' oriented, try using comments and grouped commands in your .muttrc. Or sourcing different files, etc. The only real point of 'personalities' is organization, and IMO you can do this just as easily with the above. -- Jeremy Blosser | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | http://jblosser.firinn.org/ -+-+-- "If Microsoft can change and compete on quality, I've won." -- L. Torvalds PGP signature
