Re: Gmail

On Fri, 12 Feb 2010 16:37:38 -0500, Paul Lesniewski  
<[email protected]> wrote:

> On Fri, Feb 12, 2010 at 12:00 PM, Michael A. Puls II
> <[email protected]> wrote:
>> On Fri, 12 Feb 2010 12:20:23 -0500, Paul Lesniewski
>> <[email protected]> wrote:
>>
>>> It has come to my attention that we could add a list of required
>>> configuration settings for using Gmail as the IMAP/SMTP server behind
>>> SquirrelMail.
>>
>> That would be cool. However, there are a few things *in general* that  
>> come
>> to mind:
>>
>> 1. Gmail IMAP is funky on how you do things. It's best for users to read
>> through <http://operawiki.info/GmailImap> to understand how Gmail IMAP
>> works. If you try to use it with SM in a traditional IMAP way, you'll  
>> have
>> problems (unless you install the Gmail labs imap extension, but even  
>> then,
>> it's kind of buggy).
>
> What problems specifically?  I have tested it, and aside from the
> names of the special folders, I don't see any big issues.  They seem
> to be mostly RFC-compliant.  I skimmed the page link you sent, but
> don't see any real "problems" per se, at least for SM being used by
> someone familiar with how Gmail's labels system works.

To have actions sync with the webmail interface properly, you have to:

1. Move to [Gmail]/Trash when you want to delete a message.

2. Mark a message as \Deleted and Expunge it if you want to remove a label  
(Inbox is a label too and so is [Gmail]/Starred). As an alternative, you  
can move the message to [Gmail]/All Mail and Gmail will do the right  
thing. (Will have to double-check this works for unstarring though)

3. To add another label to a message, you have to copy it to another label  
folder.

4. To change a label you have to move the message to another label folder.

5. To star a message, you have to copy it to [Gmail]/Starred or add  
\Flagged to the message.

6. To mark a message as spam, you have to move it to [Gmail]/Spam.

7. To clear [Gmail]/Spam and [Gmail]/Trash, you have to mark all messages  
in them as \Deleted and expunge them.

8. To undelete a message from [Gmail]/Trash, you have to move it back to  
the where it was at. If you don't know/remember where it was at, you have  
to move it to the Inbox label. Then, all labels for the message will be  
restored. And, if you remember that it didn't have an Inbox label when you  
deleted it, you'll need to move it to [Gmail]/All Mail to get rid of the  
Inbox label.

#1 and #7 won't be a problem if [Gmail]/Trash is set as your trash folder.

With #2, you can't do the former by default (or at all exactly without UID  
Expunge or a fallback), but you can do the latter. However, the user has  
to know that they need to move to [Gmail]/All Mail. And, I'd have to  
double-check that moving from [Gmail]/Starred to [Gmail/All Mail *just*  
removes the starred copy. Otherwise, you'd want to just mark the starred  
copy as \Deleted and expunge it. But, doing that by moving the starred  
copy to [Gmail]/Trash and emptying [Gmail]/Trash might be interpreted as  
you wanting to remove the message completely everywhere.

For #3, not sure how SM can do that right now.

For #5, not sure how SM can do that. But, I think if you move a message to  
[Gmail]/Starred instead of just copying to it, Gmail might fallback and  
undestand what you mean. If not though, it's going to remove all your  
labels from the message.

Also, since there's an extra copy of the message for each label (including  
Inbox) that you have applied to the message, if you do a search in all  
folders for a message, you could get 0-N duplicates. Users might not  
understand why this happens and will think it's an SM bug.

So, yes, you're right. If the user understands everything, they'll pretty  
much be fine. However, if they don't, they're going to think that SM is  
being weird and buggy when it's not.

The reason I mention this is that on the Opera forums, users come in  
complaining left and right about duplicates with Gmail IMAP and things not  
working like regular IMAP. There were so many that didn't understand it  
(and thought it was a bug in Opera) that a page was put up on the Opera  
Wiki. Now, SM doesn't have a global All Messages filter, so some of these  
problems are less of an issue with SM. But, just wanted to give you a  
heads up.

-- 
Michael

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