Re: [exim] Mark messages as read

> Is this really an IMAP-implementation specific thing? I thought that
> marking messages as read was just a property of the storage format --
> ie: mbox, maildir, etc. For example, in maildir, if the info section at
> the end of the filename (after ":2,") contains the S flag, the message
> is marked read. Similarly for mbox, the "Status: RO" header is added to
> read messages.
>
> Since Exim implements the various storage formats, it could conceivably
> allow a way to mark a message as read in the transport as the message is
> delivered.

You are talking about message flags. In an ideal world, they would have
been there since the beginning, message storage formats would define
how to store them, Exim's transports could deal with them and filters
could use the mechanism employed by Exim. Unfortunately, there just
wasn't anything besides the "Status:" header hack, that was originally
just a hack introduced by UCB mail. Although some POP clients look at
the "Status:" header, perhaps assuming the server works on mbox files,
they only use R and O in combination. The source of UCB mail tells that
there is more, I just never saw it being used by anything else.

Only IMAP deals with flags in a well defined manner, so whatever deals
with flags uses the IMAP model. Indeed IMAP servers do use different
ways to store flags. If you want generic flags support in Exim,
I guess first you need to find out how each server implements flags.

I wouldn't like to see code in Exim for half-baken attempts like "deliver
to cur instead of new", because that is just a fraction of a real solution
to this problem.

Michael