Re: [Nmh-workers] Future directions for nmh

[Lyndon Nerenberg]

> On Mar 11, 2016, at 9:09 PM, Ken Hornstein <address@hidden> wrote:
> 
> I was under the impression that your view
> of an IMAP mailbox at least in terms of message numbers is fixed during
> a single IMAP session.  I know messages can be added or removed from
> a mailbox and you're get notified in the middle of a session, but I
> can't see why we can't just ignore those messages

IMAP has a somewhat bizarre idea of the transactional state of a mailbox, 
primarily in reference to deleted messages and preserving message reference 
views across multiple client connections to the same mailbox (aka tombstones).  
Think of 'SELECT' as 'BEGIN TRANSACTION' and 'EXPUNGE' as 'COMMIT + BEGIN 
TRANSACTION'.  Sort of.  This is the stuff that drives IMAP server writers to 
absinthe.