[plug] mta differences

[Craig Ringer]

On Tue, 2004-04-20 at 15:42, Michael Hunt wrote:

> 1. Ask the developers nicely to make your changes. (FOSS allows [1] for
> better communication between users and developers).

I'm afraid they're already aware of the problem, it's just they don't
have the resources to work on it right now.

> 2. Modify the source. (Either yourself or through a 3rd party). [2]

Just not practical right now, alas. I don't have the programming skills
in C etc to work on Evolution, and we don't have the resources to pay
someone to do it. Especially since it's quite a large job.

> 3. Use an alternative product. [3]

I haven't seen one that is as good and fits our needs as well yet.

4. Live with it for now

... which is my choice at present.

> There are two commands that I have found to be useful with running Evo. They are :-
> 
> evolution --force-shutdown
> gconftool-2 --shutdown
> 
> I suspect that gconfd is still holding onto config changes. Trying
> exiting out of your gnome session and see what happens. (I know, I know
> why do I have to do this in a _Linux_ environment !!!)  

I already shut down evo and gconf completely, with no success. A
combination of things that add up to "misc fiddling" got it working
again. Oddly, SELECTing and EXPUNGEing the mailboxes manually seemed to
help.

> [3] And while there are not many alternatives to Evo @ the moment (that
> is _all_ of Evo's functionality) the underlying transport mechanism
> (i.e. IMAP) is open and documented unlike M$ Exchange.

Yup; I quite like IMAP as well. I find it odd that it seems to be
implemented to shakily on so many MUAs. It probably has something to do
with the number of different IMAPs one can pick from - namespaces, path
separators, whether folders can contain folders and messages, whether
concurrent mailbox access is possible - all these things vary from
server to server.

Craig Ringer