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Groups > alt.comp.software.thunderbird > #815

Re: IMAP Subscriptions

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On 10/07/2021 10:00, VanguardLH wrote:
> MikeS <MikeS@fred.com> wrote:
> 
>> Use of labels by Gmail is reflected in the way TB stores messages.
>> Looking in my profile, other IMAP accounts have a separate file for each
>> TB folder. With Gmail there is just one large INBOX file which holds
>> everything including sent emails. Hence the All Mail "folder" in Gmail
>> does not waste any space.
> 
> Really?  Messages in your Gmail account can have multiple labels.  So,
> how does an IMAP client know in which fake "folder" a message should
> reside?  If the IMAP client sees the message as being in 2 folders,
> deleting a message in one folder should not delete it from the other
> folder, yet it's just one message on the server (with 2 labels) that
> gets deleted.
> 
> When the IMAP client requests a list of folders, Gmail reports the
> labels as folders.  IMAP doesn't support labels, just folders.  Look at
> the IMAP commands.  None request labels nor does the returned data
> associate labels with messages.  Gmail doesn't support folders hence why
> it has to report labels as folders to IMAP clients.  Yet the webmail
> Gmail client lets you assign multiple labels to a message.
> 
> Gmail started as a webmail-only client.  When Google decided to grant
> POP and IMAP access, they had to adapt their service by having it lie,
> er, convert its structure to that of what an IMAP client expects.
> 
> https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/thunderbird-and-gmail
> 
> There is a Gmail-specific IMAP extension described at:
> 
> https://developers.google.com/gmail/imap/imap-extensions
> See "Access to Gmail labels: X-GM-LABELS" section.
> 
> I have never heard that Thunderbird supports the Gmail API; else, you'd
> pick that protocol instead of IMAP.  So, possibly Thunderbird supports
> GMail's IMAP extensions (which obviously is unique hence proprietary to
> what is supposed to be a vendor indendent e-mail protocol of IMAP).
> 
> Instructions for Thunderbird say to use IMAP to access Gmail.  The first
> article above from Mozilla mentions Gmail having to pretend labels are
> folders, but doesn't mention Thunderbird supports Gmail-specific
> extensions to IMAP.  I haven't found anywhere saying Thunderbird
> supports the Gmail-specific IMAP extensions.  Thunderbird just does IMAP
> to Gmail.  Messages are retrieved via the RETR[ieve] command, and there
> are no extra attributes that tag along to identify labels, like which
> ones (since there could be more than one) are assigned to a message up
> in the Gmail service.  Thunderbird sees the labels as folders.  It does
> not get label assignments per message.
> 
> IMAP's Fetch command retrieves the message (headers + body), not
> anything else associated to the message that exists only up on the
> server outside of IMAP context.  The labels have already been associated
> by conversion to mailbox (folder) names.  Yes, there are flags that are
> attributes of a message, like \SEEN \ANSWERED, \FLAG (urgent), \DELETED
> (for later expunge), \DRAFT, and \RECENT.  Flag attributes of a message
> do not carry extra data, like the label assigned to a message up on the
> server.
> 
> I doubt Thunderbird supports the Gmail-specific IMAP extensions, and it
> doesn't support the Gmail [REST] API.  It just does IMAP.  Perhaps
> Thunderbird does some special handling of Gmail accounts, like using the
> All Mail server-side folder for sync, but dumping all messages from
> there into one local message store is Mozilla's choice rather than using
> separate mailboxes (folders) as reported by Gmail to the client when it
> pretends the labels are mailboxes (folders).
> 
> Go into your Gmail account using their webmail client.  Define another
> temporary label, say, Keep in your Gmail account.  Their webmail client
> should create the new label, and also enable "Show in IMAP".  You may
> have to subscribe to the Keep folder in the client since it is not one
> of the mailboxes in the standard set.  Select a message in your Sent
> "folder" (mailbox).  That message obviously already has the Sent label
> assigned to it.  With the message display (because you selected it),
> click on Labels in the action bar above.  Add the Keep label to the
> message, and click Apply.  Now it has 2 labels: Sent and Keep.  In which
> folder should an IMAP client show that 1 message with 2 labels?  The
> IMAP client will show that 1 message in both folders: Sent and Keep.
> You would expect they are separate messages, because, well, you're using
> IMAP which should show messages within each folder.  However, if you
> delete the message in the Keep folder in your IMAP client, it also
> disappears from the Sent folder in your IMAP client.  Despite being
> shows in 2 folders, it was just 1 message, not 2 messages as shown.
> 
> These screwups, er, anomalies in Gmail's IMAP implementation is why I
> call it gIMAP.  The same for gPOP because I discovered they equate a TOP
> command with a RETR command: if you use both an e-mail monitor to tell
> you when new e-mails arrive and an e-mail client to read those new
> e-mails, the monitor might use the TOP n command to show the first n
> lines of a new message, but Gmail treats it as a RETR, so when you go to
> look at it in the e-mail client then it isn't listed because it is no
> longer a new message (Gmail treated the TOP as a RETR).  The message is
> still up on the server, but your POP client won't retrieve it since
> Gmail treated TOP as RETR which changed status on the message.
> 
> Gmail's implementation of both POP and IMAP are *not* fully POP3 and
> IMAP4 compliant.  Gmail's IMAP is close enough, but not truly IMAP.  You
> have IMAP on your end, and they have gIMAP on their end.  Close enough
> only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades.  You can hit anomalies in
> Google's POP3 and IMAP4 implementations that you won't when using e-mail
> providers that employ the standard e-mail protocols.
> 
> How Thunderbird decides to manage a message store for an e-mail service
> is their choice, and not mandated by an oddball implementation on the
> server.  Perhaps someone more intimate with the internals of Tbird could
> explain why the message store for Gmail accounts accessed via IMAP is
> structured differently than message stores for other IMAP accounts.
> Standard IMAP accounts do not have an Archive folder, by default.  The
> user would have to create one, and have their local IMAP client
> subscribed to that folder.  With Gmail accounts there is always an
> Archive folder.  It's called All Mail, but it contains all messages,
> even deleted ones (after all, deleted messages still exist but have
> their label changed to Deleted), rather than e-mails the user decided to
> move to just that folder (and not shared or shown in other folders).
> 
> With Gmail, you can get close, and probably close enough if you go with
> a single e-mail client on your host, but you will not get true IMAP with
> Gmail.
> 
No idea how TB works, I merely report what I see:

Directory of U:\Thunderbird_Home\Data\profile\ImapMail\imap.gmail.com
16/09/2020  10:29    <DIR>          .
16/09/2020  10:29    <DIR>          ..
22/07/2020  21:25               198 filterlog.html
11/07/2021  14:44       354,273,236 INBOX
10/07/2021  08:15         3,809,628 INBOX.msf
31/10/2015  17:46                27 msgFilterRules.dat
23/07/2020  17:10                 0 Templates.msf
17/07/2017  11:10    <DIR>          [Google Mail]-1.sbd
09/05/2020  00:07             2,943 [Google Mail].msf
04/03/2021  14:54    <DIR>          [Google Mail].sbd

TB correctly displays my All Mail, Inbox, Sent Mail. Drafts, Spam and 
Bin "folders" as well as the correct total number of items in All Mail 
based on the items in the others. Possibly the difference is that I have 
never created any sub folders (labels) in GMail so they are all default 
settings. Or perhaps it depends on TB version - I am using 68.12.1 (64-bit).

As I said, with outlook and yahoo IMAP accounts in the same TB 
installation each folder is kept in a corresponding file, as expected.

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Thread

IMAP Subscriptions Marc Auslander <marcausl@gmail.com> - 2021-07-09 16:28 -0400
  Re: IMAP Subscriptions Nobody <jock@soccer.com> - 2021-07-09 16:44 -0700
  Re: IMAP Subscriptions VanguardLH <V@nguard.LH> - 2021-07-09 22:32 -0500
    Re: IMAP Subscriptions MikeS <MikeS@fred.com> - 2021-07-10 08:18 +0100
      Re: IMAP Subscriptions VanguardLH <V@nguard.LH> - 2021-07-10 04:00 -0500
        Re: IMAP Subscriptions MikeS <MikeS@fred.com> - 2021-07-11 14:59 +0100
          Re: IMAP Subscriptions MikeS <MikeS@fred.com> - 2021-07-11 15:24 +0100
          Re: IMAP Subscriptions Marc Auslander <marcausl@gmail.com> - 2021-07-11 15:31 -0400
            Re: IMAP Subscriptions "Andrei Z." <no-email@invalid.invalid> - 2021-07-12 07:19 +0300
            Re: IMAP Subscriptions MikeS <MikeS@fred.com> - 2021-07-12 14:42 +0100
      Re: IMAP Subscriptions Wilf <wilf@postingx.uk> - 2021-07-10 10:55 +0100

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