[tpop3d-discuss] Re: STATUS: header

[Chris Lightfoot]

On Tue, Oct 08, 2002 at 10:39:55AM -0500, Dom Gallagher wrote:
> At 12:00 PM 10/8/2002 +0100, ZUKERAN, shin / shin@opus.or.jp wrote:
> >In message <3D99DE87.6070008@blahr.com>, Ben Schumacher writes:
> >>As tpop3d uses MMAP to transfer data from a mail message
> >>from the file system to the socket, it is probably not easy to modify
> >>the content of the message during this transition.
> >
> >I agree strongly.
> >It is the reason I asked by mail, without my making a patch.
> >
> >>While POP3 clients are having problems as a result of the lack of a
> >>status header? What are they relying on the status header for?
> >
> >A certain user is using two mailers.
> >He uses a mailer in a separate place, different PCs.
> >Noone wants to read the same mail twice.
> >And he wants to save all mails into one PC.
> 
> Sounds like what you're looking for is IMAP or webmail, not POP3.
> IMAP is designed to do exactly what you specify.

Yeah. I've never heard of a client using this header in
the way you describe. It's certainly a... courageous...
way to achieve the intended effect.

> With regard to Status headers, tpop3d already handles them, just does not 
> change them.  I check my mail on my server with a command-line client, and 
> download messages at home, and those I've read are already marked read.

Yeah. The proper way to do this with POP3 is via the UIDL
mechanism.

It would be technically very easy to make tpop3d add a
Status: header unconditionally; taking account of an
existing one is harder, since tpop3d does not parse
headers beyond separating them from the body of the
message. I don't think I'd be willing to add complicated
logic to tpop3d for this application, since it looks to me
quite a long way from what a POP3 server ought to be
doing.

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