[Dovecot] OT: best linux imap client for dovecot

[Timo Sirainen]

On Wed, 2010-02-24 at 13:18 -0500, Charles Marcus wrote:
> I was wondering if you might take just a few minutes - no need to go
> into great detail or anything unless you can do so off the top of your
> head and don't mind - and outline what you see as the biggest problems
> with all of these sucky IMAP clients, and what things might/could be
> done to make them 'suck less'...

Well, I haven't thought about it all that much in detail. Or, actually,
I did write a how-to: http://imapwiki.org/ClientImplementation

Basically:

1) Online mode: Don't download all message headers at once at startup.
If I open a mailbox, I'm seeing only about 20 messages on screen. That's
all it needs to download. When I scroll the message list, download more
as needed.

2) Just implement IMAP protocol correctly and efficiently and without
pointless settings, such as TB's "server supports folders that have
subfolders". The HOWTO is mainly about this.

3) Don't download message attachments when I open the mail.

4) When I actually am downloading a larger attachment or doing some
other long running operation, don't block the UI or anything. Create a
new IMAP connection if needed.

5) And in general the UI shouldn't hang and it shouldn't waste my
bandwidth.

There are probably a lot of other things I can't think of right now.
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