[Techtalk] imap server

[Kathryn Andersen]

On Wed, Mar 24, 2004 at 10:15:23PM +1100, Rasjid Wilcox wrote:
> On Wednesday 24 March 2004 20:57, Kathryn Andersen wrote:
> > On Wed, Mar 24, 2004 at 09:04:46AM +1100, Rasjid Wilcox wrote:
> > > Courier imap is easy to setup and by all accounts very good.
> >
> > I have a question, because I am very ignorant.  I know that IMAP is some
> > sort of mail server thingie, but I don't know why people want to install
> > it.  What is it good for?  What does it do?  Why do people like it?
> 
> This is one question.  :-)
> 
> With email via POP, your mail client goes out a picks it up from the 
> mail-server a retrieves it.  In most cases it is then deleted from the mail 
> server.  You can choose to leave it there, but that is usually because you 
> are going to grab it with some *other* POP mail client and then delete it.

Yes, I often use web-mail to check my not-yet-delivered mail from work,
and then download it "for real" onto my system when I get home (used to
use fetchmail, now trying getmail).
 
> With IMAP, the email stays on the server.

So that's why I've never come across an ISP that uses it -- they don't
want to give you the space for that.

> You can log in from anywhere, and 
> *all* your mail will be there, not just new mail.  All your mail will also be 
> shown with the same folder setup and structure, regardless of the email 
> client you use.
>
> You can also set up server-side delivery rules, so that your mail is 
> pre-sorted before you even log in to look at it.  The best bit about this is 
> that it is email client independant.  I can change email client, and all my 
> sorting rules continue to work.

But what's the difference between that and simply logging in to your
machine, where all your saved mail has "the same filder setup and
structure, regardles of the email client you use".  I mean, this account
here is my mailing list account, and I have maildrop (I used to use
procmail, but recently changed over to maildrop -- it's so much
simpler!) which pre-sorts all the different lists into different
mailboxes, which I then look at -- what's the difference?
 
> The ability to easily use multiple email clients is the main reason I set up 
> Courier IMAP with Maildrop on my desktop machine at home.  If someone sends 
> me a html formmated mail that I really need to reply to, but Kmail messes up 
> (Kmail 1.5.1 on SuSE 8.2 - perhaps newer versions are better with replying to 
> html mail) I can close Kmail, open Mozilla mail, and reply to it there.  And 
> if I at some point decide to use Evolution, or Sylpheed or whatever, I don't 
> have to re-create 30+ mail filtering rules in my new email client to cope 
> with all the lists in on, since my existing rules (done with maildrop) 
> continue to work.

But I don't use filtering rules in the email *client*, so that's no
advantage.  Wouldn't it be more of a disadvantage, since one would be
limited to mail clients that understand IMAP, and surely that is a
subset of the range of email clients around.
 
> And for a while I ran a server at home over my DSL connection.  So then I 
> could log in from work or from a friends place and check my mail - again with 
> all the mail filters already applied, so I didn't see the 50 new email 
> messges to the wxPython list unless I wanted to.  If I get around to buying a 
> quiet mini-itx system I may do this again, since then I get ready access to 
> *all* my mail (even stuff from months or years ago) regardless of where I am.

Again, I don't understand the advantage of using IMAP versus simply
logging in to one's system, if one had an always-on system at home
(which I don't, but I'd like to some day).
 
Kathryn Andersen
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