[Dovecot] Is this really a user agent issue?

[Phil Howard]

2010/12/21 Karsten Bräckelmann <guenther at rudersport.de>:

> Creating the new mail folder is entirely on the IMAP server side. The
> MUA (Evolution in your stated case) is irrelevant. If the creation of
> the new folder fails, it is a server side problem.
>
> However, once a new folder has been created (server side, mind you),
> Evolution won't know about that folder until it is restarted. Probably
> the same with other MUAs, too. In the worst case, restarting Evo twice
> should show the new folder.
>
> (That is assuming you are not limiting your MUA to subscribed folders
> only, or, as IIRC is the default, deliver auto-subscribes the user to
> the just created folder.)

Then I would call this a user agent issue.  If IMAP provides a way for
the user agent to discover the folder already exists, then the user
agent should do this, at least if an error is encountered when trying
to create it.  Evolution clearly does not (or doesn't act on knowing
if it does).  Other user agents, I don't know.  But it is simple
logic:

if (create folder $name succeeds) OR (folder $name can be accessed) then
        set up local reference to folder $name
else
        report error about creating folder $name
endif

That, of course, depends on IMAP having a means to detect if the
folder exists (even though the folder was not given in a previous list
of existing folders).  Trying to open it should be a way to do that
test.

But if the IMAPD process itself can't or won't even try to access that
folder because it wasn't in the list when it started, then I see that
as a server side issue, or if the protocol doesn't provide any such
means to ask for a folder not previously seen, then I see that as a
protocol design issue.

-- 
sHiFt HaPpEnS!