[Dovecot] message status changed from new to old on read

[Andrew Pimlott]

Hi.  I'm new to IMAP, but just tried uw-imapd and then dovecot in
conjuction with offlineimap.  I'm using Debian package version 0.99.14-1
and have my mail in mbox format.

One of the first things that annoys me about both programs is that as
soon as you read a mailbox over imap, the imapd changes all "new"
messages to "old".  It seems to have the assumption that the IMAP client
is "reading" the messages, but particularly in the case of offlineimap,
this assumption is not justified:  I might not read the message on the
client on which I've just synced, I might read it on the server or
another client.  So I would like dovecot to leave the mailbox alone, and
leave it up to the client to write any changes to message status.  Is
there any option to dovecot that would accomplish this?

While experimenting, I noticed that dovecot sometimes doesn't notice
changes to the status made directly on the server.  For example, if I
create new mbox mailbox with one message (initially "new"), and access
it with imap (using mutt in this example), it shows up "new" in the
client.  When I next access it with imap, it shows up "old", because
dovecot modified the status as described above.  If I then run mutt
directly on the mailbox and change the status back to "new", then access
it with imap, it still shows up "old".  If I then remove the .imap
directory containing the caches, it is back to "new".  I assume that
dovecot is supposed to pick up changes made directly on the server,
right?

Thanks for your help,
Andrew