Re: gmail and gnus

[Joel Reicher]

Bill White <billw@mchsi.com> writes:

> On Sun Apr 29 2007 at 17:24, Hadron <hadronquark@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> > Why use IMAP? You can access using pop3. Works for me. 
> 
> I'm sure no expert but unless I'm missing something, POP3 won't modify my
> gmail repository to reflect changes I would make locally to my downloaded
> email in gnus.

More or less correct. A better description might be that POP3 doesn't
even have a concept of the downloaded email, nor does it have a
concept of remote modification. POP3 really just supports
"authenticate", "give me my mail", and "delete what you have".

> I read email from 2 computers on ordinary days, more when we travel or
> when I'm in the office.  It's necessary for my sanity that my main
> universally-accessible email repository be up-to-date wrt
> read/archived/ticked marks, etc.

FYI what you're describing is just one mode of IMAP operation; what's
called "disconnected mode". IMAP also supports "online mode" whereby
there is no client copy at all, and no synchronisation to be done. In
online mode changes are made immediately to the server-side data.

> AIUI, this is what would happen with pop3:
> 
> - 200 messages arrive in my gmail account
> - I download them to gnus on my linux box
> - I happily read, delete, tick, archive, move, reply to various messages
>   from my linux box
> - later I access gmail from my windows box - all 200 messages are still
>   marked unread or all are archived by the pop3 process I ran via gnus
> - I snap.

It depends on whether your POP3 client issues a delete command after
the retrieve command.

Anyway, you're right to avoid POP3. It doesn't suit your needs at all.

Nevertheless if there's no particular need to use the gmail servers as
the repository, you could always POP your mail across to another
server that does support IMAP.

It depends why you're using gmail. For the delivery/address, or for
the storage?

You might be better off finding alternative storage. Note that an IMAP
server does not need to be a mail server.

Cheers,

        - Joel