[imp] Display of folders from Cyrus IMAPD

[Michael M Slusarz]

Quoting Aleksandar Milivojevic <alex at milivojevic.org>:

> Quoting Michael M Slusarz <slusarz at horde.org>:
>
>> Quoting Aleksandar Milivojevic <alex at milivojevic.org>:
>>
>>> In the old versions of IMP (4.0.x and older), IMP was displaying the
>>> folders from my Cyrus servers like:
>>>
>>> INBOX
>>>   Subfolder1
>>>   Subfolder2
>>> Shared folder
>>>
>>> Which is the way folders exist on IMAP server, the way they are
>>> reported by IMAP server, and the way every mail client in known
>>> universe (that I've been using so far) displays them.
>>>
>>> IMP 4.1 attempts to be "smart" and autodetect things.  And as soon as
>>> it smells Cyrus on the other side it starts displaying my folders as:
>>>
>>> INBOX
>>> Subfolder1
>>> Subfolder2
>>> Shared folder
>>>
>>> Basically same braindamaged thing as when setting "namespace" option
>>> to 'INBOX.' in older versions of IMP.
>>>
>>> This is extremely confusing.  My folders appear at the same level as
>>> the shared folders...  If one of my folders has same name as one of
>>> the shared folders, there's no way to tell which is which in IMP 4.1.
>>> Any way to get old behaviour back?  I do want to see my folders as
>>> subfolders of INBOX (the way they exist on my IMAP server).
>>
>> See http://bugs.horde.org/ticket/?id=2422.  This is expected, and
>> preferred, behavior.
>
> OK, but how to get the old behaviour back?

Hack the code.  I think there is a wiki entry on how to do this already.

> I've checked out the above ticket.  I guess that is a thing of user's
> personal preference.  For me, it is not expected, and definetely not
> preferred!  I would really like if I'm not forced to use it.  As I can
> see from the ticket, there was at least one more person complaining
> about same thing (seems he was completely ignored).

That's not true - there was about a month or two of discussions on the  
list about this.

But the conclusions were, simply put - users should *not* be expected  
to understand the concept of namespaces (and this is precisely what  
the RFCs say).  Creating a folder should *not* require the user to  
have to manually insert 'INBOX.' before the folder name.  Just because  
power users understand what namespaces are, doesn't mean the average  
user does.  I understand namespaces.  You understand namespaces.  But  
my mom doesn't understand namespaces.  My brother doesn't understand  
namespaces.  Etc.

This is not really an issue on a system (i.e. a windows mail client)  
where you can easily right-click on some area to create a folder, or  
when you want to create a folder a nice little tree view pops up to  
give you graphical guidance where you want to place the new folder, or  
gives you the opportunity to drag/drop to place the folder in the  
correct position.  But we are limited by what we can do in the web  
framework (short of implementing vast amounts of AJAX and JS) so we  
have to adjust our folder views accordingly.

Some quick examples.  When adding a folder on the folders screen  
without selecting a checkbox, where should that folderbe created?  If  
I am a "normal" user, I expect that folder to be created on the base  
level (i.e. the same level as INBOX).  It is counterintuitive to want  
to create the folder in the base level, only to have that folder  
appear under the INBOX.  That's certainly not what I expect to happen.

Also, picture what would happen if your personal namespace was neither  
'INBOX' or '' but something like 'foo'.  Then you will have a folder  
structure that looks like this:

+ INBOX
+ foo
   + bar1
   + bar2

A lot of users are going to say "what the heck is this foo mailbox?".   
And the answer is - THERE IS NO FOO MAILBOX.  You can't  
add/delete/move the foo mailbox.  Because foo isn't a mailbox, it's a  
namespace.  Talk about confusing (for a lay user).  The namespaces  
'INBOX' and '' just happen to work out in our folder displays that we  
don't run into this issue.  But just because this doesn't happen with  
any IMAP server (that I know of) doesn't mean it couldn't happen.  To  
ignore this fact would be bad coding.

Also, what happens when you change IMAP servers, or your IMAP server  
changes namespaces.  i.e. the server migrates from Cyrus -> Dovecot?   
All of a sudden, your folders are shifted from under INBOX to the base  
level for no reason at all.  THis will most certainly confuse users.   
The whole purpose of namespaces is to make this behind-the-scenes  
change seamless.  This is not seamless.

> Installations that want IMP 4.1 behaviour, usually have altnamespace
> option set in imapd.conf on Cyrus server (and than get consistent
> behaviour on all mail clients, plus altnamespace option does it in a
> way better and more usable way than IMP does it).  If my server is not
> using altnamespace option, I would expect to see my subfolders as
> subfolders of INBOX, not as top-level folders intermixed with shared
> folders.

This is exactly the problem with showing folders the old way.  Once  
again, you are looking at the display from a "Cyrus" perspective which  
is incorrect.  There is not necessarily comparable altnamespace  
options in other IMAP servers.  Just because cyrus (by default) puts  
its folders under 'INBOX.' doesn't mean that every IMAP server should  
(or does) do the same thing.

> I guess this is not a big issue for folks that don't use shared
> folders (which I guess are majority of the folks out there).  It's a
> real nightmare when shared folders are used.  I simpy can't see why
> would anybody (who uses shared folders) "prefer" to have it the way
> IMP 4.1 implements it...

Why not?  Now there is an open ticket - created through discussions  
like this - where we have decided it does make more sense to show all  
non-personal namespaces in separate folders rather than intermixed  
with the personal mailbox folders.  This probably better reflects the  
picture must users (and admins) have to shared folders.

michael

___________________________________
Michael Slusarz [slusarz at horde.org]