[Pkg-xfce-devel] Bug#495423: Bug#495423: Bug#495423: xfce4-mailwatch-plugin: Please add an option so that mailwatch does not change status of mails

[Tino Keitel]

On Sun, Aug 17, 2008 at 12:37:17 +0200, Stephan Windmüller wrote:
> On Sun, 17. Aug 2008, Yves-Alexis Perez wrote:
> 
> > I don't get it. You're saying that, with an IMAP configured in mailwatch
> > plugin, each time the plugin check the mails it only sees the new ones
> > since the last time it checked? Because I sure cant reproduce.
> 
> No, this would be a bug, not a feature. ;)
> 
> Let me explain: As I understand IMAP, a mail can have one of three
> states: "New", "unread" and "read".
> 
> 1. When it arrives in my mailbox it is "new".
> 2. After I look into the folder with a mail client it is "unread".
> 3. When I read the mail, it is "read".
> 
> When the mailwatch plugin looks for new mail, it changes the state from
> "new" to "unread". From my point of view it should not do this because I
> want my "real" mail client to show me the mails still as "new" until I
> open the folder to look at the subjects.

I observed the same, but not with the xfce mailwatch plugin. And in my
case, the IMAP client (isync/mbsync) changes the status in the maildirs
on the _server_ (dropbear, but courier behaved the same way IIRC). If
the client fetches the mails from the server, new mails in the maildirs
on the server are moved from new/ to cur/. If I open that maildir on
the server using mutt, those mails are shown as "old" (which
corresponds to "unread" in the above list I think). But all clients
still see those mails as "new", as it should be.

So maybe the bug reporter refers to the mail status in a maildir on the
server, or the server really reports those mails as "unread" instead of
"new" after the xfce mailwatch plugin checks the mails. This would be a
server issue IMHO. In my case, multiple clients fetch the mails from
the server, and if the mails are marked as "unread" in the maildir on
the server after the first client has fetched, they are still fetched
as "new" by the other client.

Regards,
Tino