Re: Org mode and emacs email

[Uday S Reddy <u.s.reddy@cs.bham.ac.uk>]

Robert Goldman wrote:
 
> Is this really true?  In my days of using VM --- I eventually gave it up for
> Thunderbird --- VM never had true IMAP support that could interact with folders
> on the server.  All it did was use the IMAP protocol to populate its local mail
> directory.  This isn't really full IMAP support, and it's not really adequate if
> you want to get at your email from multiple different devices (hence my move to
> Thunderbird).
> 
> Has this changed?  I used VM for a long time, and wouldn't mind going back to
> it, if it could really talk to an IMAP server properly.  I don't see how the
> architecture could be fixed to make that possible, though.

Dear Robert, the VM's vm-imap.el file lists a certain "Robert P. Goldman" as a contributor in 2006.  Is that you?

I am not sure what problems you think there are in the architecture of VM, but I started working on the IMAP support in 2008 and have been adding to it off and on since then.  The current public release (VM 8.1.0) caches an IMAP folder locally and sync's it with the server whenever you do 'save'.  I have been using this functionality since 2008 without any problems.

Some people say that they have very large IMAP folder and can't download them all into local caches.  The current development version (future VM 8.2.0) has an experimental implementation of a headers-only mode, whereby you can download just the headers.  Message bodies are retrieved as and when you view the messages.  This is essentially how Thunderbird works, or Gnus for that matter.

I would welcome you to give it a try and let me know if you face any problems.

Cheers,
Uday