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List:       kde-devel
Subject:    Re: kmail usability with IMAP
From:       Henry Miller <hank () black-hole ! com>
Date:       2002-08-01 15:29:09
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On Thu, 1 Aug 2002, Michael [iso-8859-1] H=E4ckel wrote:

> On Thursday 01 August 2002 14:29, Unai Garro wrote:
> >
> > An average home user doesn't even know what message caching is. They ju=
st
> > notice e-mails are not there when they disconnect the modem. And what t=
hey
> > think is "this doesn't work". How can they run an imap server to do so?=
 I
> > don't think the idea of kmail is being only designed for the "average
> > programmer".
>
> For many users POP3 with all it's features (leave mail on server, delete =
mails
> from server, interval mail checking, etc.) is already way to complicated.
>
> Therefore I doubt, that ever all users can really understand how IMAP wor=
ks or
> is supposed to work. If caching of message bodies gets implemented and th=
is
> is an option it just makes things again more complicated instead of more
> easy.
>
> Besides that, don't you actually want to download your mails store them
> locally and delete them from the server when you have them on your local
> computer? This is not what caching is about but again something completel=
y
> different. With caching you never have any messages locally that are not =
also
> on the server.

I disagree.   I want me email from anywhere.  That means my laptop while
I'm at the beach (no net access), my work comptuer, all my home comptuers.
All those comptuers synchronize with the net from time to time, but only
the work one has a always on connection.

I can think of several different types of users, any many people fall into
more than one catagory.

The laptop user who doesn't always have net access where he want to
respond to email (think airplanes, net access is expensive if you can
get it).

The person with several computers, who wants to read email from any of
them.

The person with a slow network connection, perhaps paying per byte or
minute. (modem)

The person at work with a fast network connection, who never knows which
computer he will be using that day.

The person with no comptuers, who reads email from any comptuer he can
borrow.   (I know several people like this, between cyber cafe's, and
friends with computers they can get good net access, but almost never do
they use the same computer twice)

IMAP is best set up to handle the last two types of people.  Both actively
do not want their mail catched.   They need the ability to sort mail, but
do not want caching.

Most of us however fall into the other catagories at some time.   We need
some local catching to get around problems in our connection.  Someone
with a modem long distance would like to start downloading articals as
soon as headers are loaded,  (but I would load the long articals last,
perhaps they will be deleted unread first) in hopes that bny the time they
want to read something it is loaded.

Multiple computers presents a problem, if a email is deleted on one
computer and catched on others, should the catch be deleted or not?   I'm
not sure, it might be worth a full useability study to find out.

Whatever the case is, don't make the mistake of thinking how you use a
program is the best or most common way.   In the case of email there are
good reasons why someone cannot or should not use IMAP the same way you
do.    This is not bad, it is just different.  IMAP does its part to
support all of the above.   Just because IMAP supports something does not
mean that we have to use it that way all the time.

Unfortunatly it is easy to type up ideas like this, but hard to impliment,
in that regaurd we are left with whatever those willing to work do.

 
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