nnimap issues

[Bryan Ischo <bischo@plumbdesign.com>]

Hi all.  I have been using nnimap for a week or two now, and aside
from some major uidvalidity issues caused by a courier IMAP server
which was not built with "broken client" extensions (I guess nnimap
has some IMAP bugs?), things have been going well.

But I have some questions, problems, and suggestions to throw out
to everyone to see what people think.  Some of these might be more
relevent to gnus than nnimap, or to the mail composing elisp
module, whatever that is, but they all affect the ease of use
and functionality of nnimap, so here goes:

(by the way, some of these may be easy to answer from the
 gnus/nnimap/mail documentation, and for those, don't bother to answer
 unless you really want to, as I will probably find the answer myself
 eventually :)

Problems
--------

1. How do I get the *Group* buffer to always come up with all of my
   subscribed groups (which are all of my nnimap folders, since I only
   use gnus for reading mail) showing, whether or not they have new
   mail?

2. I have two mail servers that I read using nnimap.  The folders of my
   primary select method always show up as "INBOX.XXX".  The folders
   from the secondary method sometimes show up as
   "nnimap+mailserver:INBOX.XXX", and sometimes show up as
   "mailserver INBOX.XXX".  What I want is for both my primary and
   secondary select method folders to show up as "mailserver XXX",
   as in:

       work INBOX
       work Infrastructure
       work Condensity
       (etc)
       personal INBOX
       personal Friends
       personal Family
       (etc)

   given that I called the two select methods "work" and "personal"
   in my .emacs.  How do I do this?  Currently this is what I have
   in my .emacs, and it does not do that, even though it's the closest
   I can come to specifying what I want:

   (setq gnus-group-line-format "%S%-3N %4t: %s %G\n")

3. How can I set my Sender: mail header to be the same as my From:
   mail header?

4. How do I get my Summary buffer to always show ALL messages, read or
   unread, new or old, of the folder.  Right now it shows me only the
   new messages if there are new messages, otherwise it shows me all
   of the old messages.  I want it to always show me everything.  And
   I don't want it to ask me how many I want to see.  I want to see
   them all, always, end of story.  Any hints?

5. Can I change the name of the News directory that gnus/nnimap uses
   to save cache and stuff?  I want it to be called .news so that I
   don't have to look at it all the time.

6. Similarly for the #.newsrc.dribble# file.  The file name annoys me.

7. Can I make the summary buffer always come up with the cursor on the
   first new message, and with the buffer centered on the cursor?
   (This question assumes an answer to question 4)

8. What would be really great is if, when I sent mail, my return address
   (From, Return Address, Sender, etc) headers were dependent upon whom
   I was sending mail to.  I envision it working like this:  whenever
   I send an email, if I have never sent a mail to that address before,
   then a From: header line will come up in my composed message, say
   under the To: line.  I can fill it in, and optionally, say, change
   the header to be called "Save-From:" instead.  This will indicate that
   the mail sending code should change the Save-From: to a From: when
   sending the mail, but should also perform the additional function of
   recording that, when sending to that email address, I would like
   the From: header that I typed in to contain the address I just
   supplied.  Now next time I sent an email to that address, the
   From: field comes up again, but this time with the From: address
   that I associated with the To: address last time already filled in.

   In this way I could associate a From: address with every address I
   mail to, so that even when I am at work, and my From: address is
   set as bischo@plumbdesign.com, I can still mail my friends as
   bryan@ischo.com.

   Has someone done this already?

9. I would like to save a copy of all outgoing messages in a Sent folder.
   How can I do this?

10. I get reverse-video text for some received mail, probably dependent
    upon the mail client sending the mail.  Where should I look for
    instructions on turning this off?

11. When I M-g on a group, I would like the cursor to stay on that group,
    IF the group had new messages.  This way I can then just hit 'enter'
    to go in and see the new mail (which is what I want to do 100% of
    the time if there are new messages).  How can I accomplish this?

12. When new mail arrives, the number of new messages is often listed
    wrong - I have seen 12 new messages listed when I only have two or
    three actual new mails in my box.  What gives?


Well I feel a little guilty for dumping all this to the list, but
the traffic on this list doesn't seem that high anyway so ... and,
like I said, feel free to ignore anything that I can easily answer
myself by digging deeper into the gnus code than I have read thus
far.  I just thought I'd post these in case anyone wanted to save
me some time by handing me the answer :) ...

Although, I think that question number 8 may actually be genuinely
interesting :)

Thanks, and best wishes,
Bryan

-- 
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        p l u m b d e s i g n 
 
        Bryan Ischo | Software Developer 
        157 chambers st ny ny 10007
        p.212-285-8600 x233 f.212-285-8999