[22] in IMAP Delivery
Netscape Messenger 4.61 on Athena
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Mark Van Dyke)
Fri Jun 30 15:00:27 2000
Message-Id: <395CEE47.8A2178A1@mit.edu>
Date: Fri, 30 Jun 2000 15:00:23 -0400
From: Mark Van Dyke <mvan@MIT.EDU>
Mime-Version: 1.0
To: imapdel@MIT.EDU
Cc: boojum@MIT.EDU
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Hi,
I've done quite a bit of testing with messenger on Athena this week and
have some comments. Some of this is confirmation to what other's have
found but there's some new stuff here too.
Mark
Working with folders.
- Creating subfolders on the server can be confusing. Users
must create subfolders of Inbox. Attempts to create a
subfolder of your po server will result in a "Permission
Denied" error.
- deleting a subfolder can be tricky if you are viewing the
contents. I found it necessary to select another folder and
then right click on the desired folder to delete and select
delete folder.
- to move contents of a folder to another folder requires
selecting all and dragging into another folder.
- summary files for mail in folders on imap servers are stored
in ~/ns_imap/poxx.mit.edu/Inbox.sbd in the form of
.foldername.summary
these appear to be updated each time the folder is modified.
I am unable to repeat the duplication problem Laura had while
refiling local messages to imap folders.
- Copying a message multiple times to a folder will result in
multiple copies of the same message. A bit annoying when
consolidating folders, but otherwise shouldn't be a real
problem. This type of duplication is *not* fixed by deleting
the corresponding .summary file.
Converting mh mailboxes to netscape
- converting mh mailboxes to netscape mailboxes, *copies* the
mhmail folder contents and packs it into a new file. Thus,
the mhmail folder remains in addition to the new Netscape
folder. This may cause quota problems with users (especially
those who keep lots of mail in their account). Users without
much free quota and wishing to do this will need to convert
the folders to /tmp space:
packf -mbox +foldername -file /tmp/mailboxname
and then move to imap servers. This of course creates
additional steps.
The only way I can figure out how to point netscape
to the mailfolders is through the prefences --> Mail &
Newsgroups --> Mail Servers under Local mail directory. The
user will need to:
1. change the local mail directory to /tmp
2. quit netscape
3. restart netscape
4. move the contents of the converted folder to the imap
server
5. change the local mail directory back to
/afs/athena.mit.edu/user/x/y/xyuser/nsmail
6. quit and restart netscape
I suppose this could be done using symbolic links instead but
would be equally not straight-forward. I suspect instead of
going through these steps, the user will simply ask accounts for
additional quota.
Filters
- Filters creation and usage is relatively straight-forward.
- They apply in the order they appear in Edit --> Message
Filters
- One annoying "feature" is you need to create the folder
before creating the filter to move messages to that folder,
which Netscape leads you to believe is not necessary. Click
on new in the message filters window. This opens a window
that allows you to create a filter. There is a button in
this window "new folder" which allows you to create a new
sub-folder. However, you can't set the filter to move
messages to that window until you cancel out of the new
filter window and recreate the filter.
Address Book
- Coming from having to edit Mail/aliases/ to create an
address shortcut, the Netscape address book usage is
refreshingly easy. ;-)
- I did find that mvan would expand to my father's address
which begins with mvandyke, until I added an entry for
myself. Not real important by might cause confusion to a
user not paying close attention.
--
Mark Van Dyke <mvan@mit.edu>
MIT Information Systems
