IMAP and Mutt: How to Save Headers?

[John Verel]

Just begun using mutt with IMAP after many yrs with POP. Mutt IMAP does
not save headers but rather reloads them each time. Takes MUCH time to
do this. The mutt manual and mailing list are silent on this. Short of
hacking the mutt code, is there a way to fix this?

TIA

John

[Nancy McGough]

Pine doesn't save headers and neither does Mulberry (if you use
it in online-only mode). But, both of these IMAP clients open a
mailbox -- even a jumbo mailbox -- pretty quickly. Pine does it
by only downloading the headers that it needs to display the
current page of the Pine Message Index and Mulberry does it by
only downloading as many message headers as you've configured in
your Mulberry Preferences. Maybe mutt needs to add a
configuration option about how many headers to download. Also,
mutt might be more efficient with a different flavour IMAP
server. For example, I think Cyrus IMAP keeps some header
information in index files and then mutt (or any IMAP client) can
get the needed header information more quickly. If you want to
experiment with different IMAP servers and see if some work
better with mutt, check out my IMAP URL below -- I list lots of
free IMAP providers using all kinds of different IMAP servers.

--Nancy

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PROCMAIL <http://www.ii.com/internet/robots/procmail/qs/>
IMAP <http://www.ii.com/internet/messaging/imap/isps/>
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[John Verel]

In article <Pine.OSX.4.50L.0212020544300.806-100000@localhost>, Nancy McGough wrote:

> Pine doesn't save headers and neither does Mulberry (if you use
> it in online-only mode). But, both of these IMAP clients open a
> mailbox -- even a jumbo mailbox -- pretty quickly. Pine does it
> by only downloading the headers that it needs to display the
> current page of the Pine Message Index and Mulberry does it by
> only downloading as many message headers as you've configured in
> your Mulberry Preferences. Maybe mutt needs to add a
> configuration option about how many headers to download. Also,
> mutt might be more efficient with a different flavour IMAP
> server. For example, I think Cyrus IMAP keeps some header
> information in index files and then mutt (or any IMAP client) can
> get the needed header information more quickly. If you want to
> experiment with different IMAP servers and see if some work
> better with mutt, check out my IMAP URL below -- I list lots of
> free IMAP providers using all kinds of different IMAP servers.

Thanks, Nancy. I suspect that the IMAP client may be the culprit. I'll
have my sysadmin chase that route. I'll report back my results.

John

[DINH Viêt Hoà]

> Thanks, Nancy. I suspect that the IMAP client may be the culprit. I'll
> have my sysadmin chase that route. I'll report back my results.

You may compare with pine in order to know if the speed issues are
due to the network or to the IMAP client.
(saving the headers may be useful in the case the IMAP server we are
accessing is *really* remote (through a modem line for example).

--
DINH V. Hoa,
libEtPan! - a mail library - http://libetpan.sourceforge.net

"ça marche chez moi" -- GTM

[Michael Elkins]

John Verel <jve...@optonline.net> wrote:
> Thanks, Nancy. I suspect that the IMAP client may be the culprit. I'll
> have my sysadmin chase that route. I'll report back my results.

Mutt's IMAP support is not as full-featured as PINE's. It doesn't
support server-side sorting, so it can't do partial downloads of the
headers as Nancy described (sounds nifty!).

me