[Dovecot] STATUS command and total/read message count

[Florian Effenberger]

Hi Timo,

2010/1/24 Timo Sirainen <tss at iki.fi>:

> I don't understand. What's the difference between "new/unread" and
> "unread"? What does headers have to do with it?
>
>> In other words: Does the STATUS command only return new/unread
>> messages, or can this be configured on the server side?
>
> There's no configuration. STATUS can only return number of messages,
> messages without \Seen flag, number of messages with \Recent flag ("new
> messages arrived since last time mailbox was selected"), and some other
> less useful things.

the problem is the following: Thunderbird can show the number of
new/unread messages in a folder, as well as a total number of messages
in a folder. In Thunderbird 2.x, the latter worked with the infopane,
in Thunderbird 3.x, you have to use the Extra Folder Columns
extension.

When a new client is set up and launched for the first time,
Thunderbird queries all folders using the STATUS command, unless
mail.imap.use_status_for_biff is set to false.

Some folders have only read messages, others have only unread
messages, and some other have read and unread messages. Thunderbird
now only shows the number of unread messages in a folder when using
the STATUS command. In order to get the total number of messages in
one specific folder, I have to manually open it.

So, in short, Thunderbird doesn't seem to update the total number of
messages in a folder using the STATUS command.

>From your posting I take this is generally possible, so it is a
Thunderbird problem - right? ;-)

Thanks,
Florian