Searching local IMAP mailbox?

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Re: Searching local IMAP mailbox?

In article <0001HW.BE5F13A3004ECB1BF04075B0@news.individual.net>,
DaveC wrote:

> I'm using Eudora Pro to manage my IMAP mail account. I keep all copies of
> received messages in the Inbox mailbox, which means I have all the message
> bodies on my hard drive.
>
> When I do a search (Opt-Cmd-F) and specify Inbox, Eudora goes to the IMAP
> server to do what could be done locally (and faster) right on my hard drive.
>
> Is there a way to force Eudora to search the Inbox locally rather than on the
> server?

Yes, it's ridiculous. What is worse is that the IMAP server I am forced to use
at work (Novell Groupwise) does not comply with the standards. Amongst the many
things that do not work properly is IMAP search. It complains about something in
the request that is allowed in the standard. So I cannot even search the mail at
all!

What's worse is that the standard only specifies that IMAP search looks at
specific headers and the body of the message. Most headers don't get looked at.
Bit of a problem if something has placed extra headers in the message to
indicate it is spam and you want to filter them.....

David

Re: Searching local IMAP mailbox?

On Fri, 18 Mar 2005, David Morrison wrote:
> What's worse is that the standard only specifies that IMAP search looks at
> specific headers and the body of the message. Most headers don't get looked at.

Huh?

IMAP allows you to search the entire message (including headers), as well
as specific headers.

> Bit of a problem if something has placed extra headers in the message to
> indicate it is spam and you want to filter them....

In fact, my configuration in Pine does exactly this.

-- Mark --

http://staff.washington.edu/mrc
Science does not emerge from voting, party politics, or public debate.
Si vis pacem, para bellum.

Re: Searching local IMAP mailbox?

In article ,
Mark Crispin wrote:

> On Fri, 18 Mar 2005, David Morrison wrote:
> > What's worse is that the standard only specifies that IMAP search looks at
> > specific headers and the body of the message. Most headers don't get looked
> > at.
>
> Huh?
>
> IMAP allows you to search the entire message (including headers), as well
> as specific headers.

I'm sorry, I misremembered a discussion with Matt Dudziak who maintains Eudora
at Qualcomm.

When you do an "anywhere" search in Eudora, it does not actually search
everywhere. It only sends a request to the server to look at the body of the
message, and a small set of headers.

This is a trace of an IMAP search of a Groupwise IMAP server:

30761472 32:0.1.19 Sent: A00005 UID SEARCH UID 21:521 OR (BODY banana) (OR
(HEADER From banana) (OR (HEADER Subject banana) (OR (HEADER X-At
30761472 32:0.1.19 Sent: tachments banana) (OR (HEADER Reply-To banana) (OR
(HEADER In-Reply-To banana) (OR (HEADER Date banana) (OR (HEADER
30761472 32:0.1.19 Sent: To banana) (HEADER Cc banana))))))))\r\n

As you can see, the headers it searches are:

From
Subject
X-Attachments
Reply-To
In-Reply-To
Date
To
Cc

So stuff that appears in other headers will not be found.

In the case of Groupwise, it reports an error for the X-Attachments header,
since it is not a standard header. Matt tells me that this is incorrect
behaviour, and that it should just ignore that header while searching.

Cheers

David

Re: Searching local IMAP mailbox?

Unfortunately, you are dealing with a fight between Eudora and Groupwise,
and I can't speak for either software.

> In the case of Groupwise, it reports an error for the X-Attachments header,
> since it is not a standard header. Matt tells me that this is incorrect
> behaviour, and that it should just ignore that header while searching.

No. Groupwise should search that header as the client requested. The
IMAP specification requires that an IMAP server search any header that the
client names; it is not within the server's discretion to decide to reject
or ignore it.

-- Mark --

http://staff.washington.edu/mrc
Science does not emerge from voting, party politics, or public debate.
Si vis pacem, para bellum.

Re: Searching local IMAP mailbox?

In article ,
Mark Crispin wrote:

> > In the case of Groupwise, it reports an error for the X-Attachments header,
> > since it is not a standard header. Matt tells me that this is incorrect
> > behaviour, and that it should just ignore that header while searching.
>
> No. Groupwise should search that header as the client requested. The
> IMAP specification requires that an IMAP server search any header that the
> client names; it is not within the server's discretion to decide to reject
> or ignore it.

By "ignore" I mean that if there is no such header in a message, and the search
string does not occur in any of the other headers or the body of that message,
then the message is not returned as containing the search string.

This would be what I would expect. I would not expect it to give an error
because I asked for a non-standard header. This header may actually exist in the
messages on the server. After all, non-standard headers (X-...) are actually a
part of the standard.

Cheers

David

Re: Searching local IMAP mailbox?

On Tue, 29 Mar 2005, David Morrison wrote:
> By "ignore" I mean that if there is no such header in a message, and the search
> string does not occur in any of the other headers or the body of that message,
> then the message is not returned as containing the search string.

That's fine. I just wanted to make sure that you understood that a server
couldn't just "ignore" or give an "error" based upon some notion of a
header field name being "non-standard".

The whole point for the textual header search, e.g.
HEADER From joe
as opposed to
FROM Joe
is that HEADER is intended to allow arbitrary header strings.

Also, HEADER does not do special processing. "HEADER From" searches the
actual From header line text, whereas "FROM" searches through a
canonicalized form of the From header.

-- Mark --

http://staff.washington.edu/mrc
Science does not emerge from voting, party politics, or public debate.
Si vis pacem, para bellum.