[Dovecot] Question about the pop3 feature "leave messages on server for a certain period of time"

[Axel Luttgens]

Le 11 sept. 2009 à 22:59, Leonardo Rodrigues a écrit :

> Δημήτριος Καραπιπέρης escreveu:
>>
>> Hi
>> I can clearly understand this, but what if we have two MUAs with  
>> different time period settings
>> on the same account , 10 days the first and 20 days the second.
>> The first when it will be connected on the 10th day it will delete  
>> on server all messages, so the second will not get anything at all
>> Correct?
>
>   IMHO, the 'leave messages on server' is a completly fucked up and  
> stupid way of trying to do something that IMAP4 does very well,  
> intelligently and RFC-based.

Well, POP is rather well RFC-based too... ;-)
In fact, POP and IMAP are both well-defined protocols; they just are  
optimized for each extreme of possible behaviors: remove everything  
from the server as soon as a local copy has been taken, or leave  
everything on the server without taking any local copy.
Saying that one behavior is fucked up and the other a very clever one  
perhaps tends to be a matter of faith.


>   If you need to use different MUAs to check the same account, you  
> really should consider using IMAP4. You'll have message flagging  
> stored on server (read messages, new messages, replied ones) ... you  
> can even configure your MUA to store sent messages on a IMAP4 folder  
> and see those sent messages from MUA1 when you access the mailbox on  
> MUA2 !!!

Faith again...
What if user 1 at MUA1 decides to delete some message today? Will user  
2 on MUA2 still see that message when connecting 10 days later? Of  
course, if user 1 and user 2 happen to be the same user, then that  
user won't be surprised. But then neither would he have been surprised  
if using two distinct POP clients.

But I'm sure digressing here... ;-)
Axel