[X-Unix] local IMAP server?

[Stroller]

On Mar 19, 2005, at 6:05 pm, Michael Gmail wrote:
>
> I'm more concerned that I'll go through the whole setup process only 
> to find out that Entourage, or whatever other mail client I end up 
> using, doesn't give me the capabilities with IMAP mail that it has 
> with internally stored mail downloaded via POP.

That is a possibility. I seem to recall that Entourage does some quite 
cute stuff like allowing you to find related messages with a single 
click. I seem to recall this working with my IMAP server, but as you 
infer the extra info is stored locally, and is lost when you rebuild 
the local copies of the mailboxes, and unavailable to a second 
Entourage client.

> I finally did get some responses on the other list yesterday that 
> seemed to indicate that I wouldn't have the same flexibility because 
> of lack of metadata in IMAP unless I cached the mail in Entourage, 
> which would defeat the whole purpose of setting up IMAP.

Well, no - caching the data in Entourage just allows faster accesses to 
it. Your mail is still on the server & accessible from multiple 
computers & platforms.

>  Sorry for the ignorance, but I've never had an IMAP account so I have 
> no clear idea of what its limitations may be.

Really, I think you've hit upon the only one of them - Entourage can't 
store any extra metadata on the server.

But you will have solved the fundamental problem of having all your 
email in a proprietary format - I have messages here going back to 
about 2000, and I just wish I'd switched earlier. Some of my messages 
were once extracted from Windows' Outlook Express binary files to mbox, 
for instance, and information (to & from dtaes) was lost upon the way - 
if I'd had IMAP at that time I could have just dragged & dropped from 
one machine to the other & all the standard email data would have been 
preserved.

Another refreshing factor is the ability to access the same mail corpus 
from anywhere - my desktop & Powerbook both see the same message view. 
If I reply to a message on my laptop & drag it into my "Read Stuff" 
folder then it is already filed & marked as read when I power up my 
desktop. My installing a web-based IMAP client like Squirrelmail on my 
webserver I can access my email from any machine in the world.

I can imagine anyone who has tried IMAP to go back to their old way of 
doing things - try it for a week or two & see the difference, you'll 
still have your old mailboxes if you decide you prefer that.

Stroller.