2010/12/21 Karsten Bräckelmann guenther@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!