POP and IMAP mail counting does not update when messages are read

[GoogleCodeExporter]

I really don't know if you though about it this way, but consider this
simple scenario:

1. Mail arrives
2. Specto notifies me
3. I don't click on Specto's "jump" button, but open my mail client by my self
4. I download/read my mail
5. Specto refreshes periodically
6. Specto won't even update its status, and still notify me for a
non-existent new mail, because I already downloaded and read it.

I used to use "mail-notification" to get notified about my mail accounts,
but that program has cpu consuming problems to me, so I decided to use
Specto to achieve the same thing, plus some other notifying beauty (like
webpages etc.), but the scenario above looks weird to me.

What you think on this one, am i misgetting Specto's point of view here?

Original issue reported on code.google.com by pittle....@gmail.com on 17 Aug 2007 at 4:33

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Actually this is a bug. The email "gmail" watch does this already, when you 
have no
more unread messages the watch clears itself (otherwise it updates its message 
count).

The only reason I think this is not implemented in the POP/IMAP watches (not 
sure if
IMAP has it or not actually) is that nobody did it :)

So, the logic code for this was done already in the gmail watch, but it needs 
to be
ported over to other email watches (which should not be very hard I think).

Also, if you or someone else can code a patch, that will make things go a lot 
faster
than waiting for me to get up my lazy butt and do it :)

Original comment by nekoh...@gmail.com on 17 Aug 2007 at 6:34

• Changed title: POP and IMAP mail counting does not update when messages are read
• Changed state: Accepted
• Added labels: Component-Logic, Easy, WatchType-Mail

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Actually, this is a duplicate of issue #39

Original comment by nekoh...@gmail.com on 17 Aug 2007 at 6:37

• Changed state: Duplicate

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[deleted comment]

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I have programming skills, but none with Python; thus I won't be able to patch 
it
even though that seems to be really trivial (at least for POP, I didn't 
checkout IMAP
code). Some contribution to this issue would be really appreciated!

Thanks in advance.

Original comment by pittle....@gmail.com on 22 Aug 2007 at 9:04

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I wrote these watches and i am aware of this problem.
I already wanted to implement this some time ago but the problem is that the 
python
class for pop or imap is not aware when a mail is read or not.

The gmail class has a funcion getUnreadMails() but i was not able to find an
equivalent for this in the pop or imap class.

It would be nice if someone could write these functions for these classes but i 
don't
think this is possible...

Original comment by woutclym...@gmail.com on 22 Aug 2007 at 9:16

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Guys at the http://www.nongnu.org/mailnotify/ already done that, really long 
time
ago. Maybe someone (you?) could check their code to see how this is done?

Original comment by pittle....@gmail.com on 22 Aug 2007 at 9:22

[GoogleCodeExporter]

You can get the source here 
http://download.savannah.gnu.org/releases/mailnotify/ or
better
http://download.savannah.gnu.org/releases/mailnotify/mail-notification-4.1.tar.b
z2
with signature
http://download.savannah.gnu.org/releases/mailnotify/mail-notification-4.1.tar.b
z2.sig
and related code seems to be in mail-notification-4.1/src/mn-pop3-mailbox.c

Original comment by pittle....@gmail.com on 22 Aug 2007 at 9:34

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yes but their code is written in "C" so i don't know if it will be usable. If i 
have
some free time i will check out the code, but i am not familiar with c.

Original comment by woutclym...@gmail.com on 22 Aug 2007 at 11:40

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I took a look at the code and i can't figure out what code checks if a pop3 
mail is
unread or not.
So i searched on the internet and this is one of the explanations i found:

The POP3 protocol does not provide the ability to ask the server which emails 
are
"unread". Furthermore, a pure POP3 server does not even keep this information. 
Some
servers, such as Exchange Server, expose both POP3 and IMAP interfaces. In these
cases, information about read/unread status exists on the server, but it is only
available via the IMAP protocol. Email clients such as Outlook and Thunderbird 
keep
read/unread information on the client computer.

so i could definitely use some help with this issue!

Original comment by woutclym...@gmail.com on 28 Aug 2007 at 12:36

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My suggestion is to contact mail-notification people and ask'em personally how 
they
did this...

Original comment by pittle....@gmail.com on 28 Aug 2007 at 7:47

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Original comment by nekoh...@gmail.com on 18 Mar 2008 at 2:25

• Added labels: Milestone-Release0.3