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It is very bothersome to convert an imap account to disc-imap just to have access to the mails offline (what is the advantage of the "plain" imap account, anyway?).
It would be nice to have folder-level control over the cache also, I have all archived emails in an imap account, but I don't want all of it cached locally. Lot of other clients do it that way.

Szo wrote:It is very bothersome to convert an imap account to disc-imap just to have access to the mails offline (what is the advantage of the "plain" imap account, anyway?).

It is not bothersome. You simply set up the account again and sync. It has to download all the emails anyway. If I understand you correctly, you want to get rid of a very basic functionality of Kmail because you don't need it personally?

Szo wrote:It would be nice to have folder-level control over the cache also, I have all archived emails in an imap account, but I don't want all of it cached locally. Lot of other clients do it that way.

I don't quite understand your setup. Where are the emails archived? Where did they come from?

mutlu wrote:I don't quite understand your setup. Where are the emails archived? Where did they come from?

I would interpret that as meaning that some IMAP server is serving as the canonical copy of a set of emails (perhaps from several accounts over the course of several years), a subset of which are accessed frequently enough to merit caching them locally. This seems to be a relatively common scenario to me - the simplest example I can think of would be the presence of a junk folder, which would likely be worthless to keep offline.
I have also experienced a similar issue when I connected to an Exchange server via IMAP which was configured to make its Global Address List accessible via an IMAP folder (in the form of messages from each of the other users). Before I could use the account I had to wait for that entire folder to download.
I would look to Thunderbird as an example of what this post seems to be suggesting - folders can be individually marked for offline availability and they seem to avoid the large delay upon account creation. I'm not sure exactly how they accomplish the latter, but perhaps the most recent messages in the currently selected folder could be prioritized during the initial download, with the contents of partially-downloaded folders displayed while the remainder downloads in the background.

mutlu wrote:

Szo wrote:It is very bothersome to convert an imap account to disc-imap just to have access to the mails offline (what is the advantage of the "plain" imap account, anyway?).

It is not bothersome. You simply set up the account again and sync.

That's what I call bothersome. I have sever hundred folders and I have configured them to suit my needs. Converting them to and from disconnected imap _is_ a pain.
Of course one could use always disconnected-imap, but then what is the point of the plain imap?

mutlu wrote:If I understand you correctly, you want to get rid of a very basic functionality of Kmail because you don't need it personally?

I don't think that tone is either warranted or productive here.
I want to help make kmail better. Having two different imap driver is confusing for the enduser. I consider myself quite experienced, poweruser of the kmail and I did my homework, still I'm not sure why kmail has imap: it's the same as disconnected-imap, but it can't be used offline. Is that all?

mutlu wrote:

Szo wrote:It would be nice to have folder-level control over the cache also, I have all archived emails in an imap account, but I don't want all of it cached locally. Lot of other clients do it that way.

I don't quite understand your setup. Where are the emails archived? Where did they come from?

They came from my 1x years of on-line life, my personal and job-related correspondence. It has some stuff I may want to access offline and some that I most probably don't. I can do it other ways, but I think kmail should offer this functionality as well.

Szo wrote:

mutlu wrote:

Szo wrote:It is very bothersome to convert an imap account to disc-imap just to have access to the mails offline (what is the advantage of the "plain" imap account, anyway?).

It is not bothersome. You simply set up the account again and sync.

That's what I call bothersome. I have sever hundred folders and I have configured them to suit my needs. Converting them to and from disconnected imap _is_ a pain.
Of course one could use always disconnected-imap, but then what is the point of the plain imap?

The point of IMAP is that you can read messages on a server without downloading them to your local drive (other than caching). Disconnected IMAP is rather like POP, but offers a whole variety of additional features, most notably synchronization (i.e. deleting a message in one place deletes it in the other on synchronization).

Szo wrote:

mutlu wrote:If I understand you correctly, you want to get rid of a very basic functionality of Kmail because you don't need it personally?

I don't think that tone is either warranted or productive here.
I want to help make kmail better. Having two different imap driver is confusing for the enduser. I consider myself quite experienced, poweruser of the kmail and I did my homework, still I'm not sure why kmail has imap: it's the same as disconnected-imap, but it can't be used offline. Is that all?

I am sorry if I offended you, that was not my intention. We all want Kmail to get better. But "connected" IMAP is a quite basic feature and does not need to go away. If the existence of two kinds of IMAP is confusing, they should maybe be explained better rather than reduced to one.

Szo wrote:It would be nice to have folder-level control over the cache also, I have all archived emails in an imap account, but I don't want all of it cached locally. Lot of other clients do it that way.

You can subscribe and unsubscribe IMAP folders. You don't have to synchronize (which is how I understand what you mean by "cache" when using disconnected IMAP) everything.

mutlu wrote:I don't quite understand your setup. Where are the emails archived? Where did they come from?

Szo wrote:They came from my 1x years of on-line life, my personal and job-related correspondence. It has some stuff I may want to access offline and some that I most probably don't. I can do it other ways, but I think kmail should offer this functionality as well.

This should all be possible with disconnected IMAP.

OK, let me rephrase my idea then: I'd like to use imap and disconnected imap in parallel on the same account and choose on folder-by-folder basis. As far as I understand, this should be possible, since the difference between "plain" and disconnected imap is purely on client side.

Szo wrote:(what is the advantage of the "plain" imap account, anyway?).

For example needing less local disk space.

Szo wrote:It would be nice to have folder-level control over the cache also, I have all archived emails in an imap account, but I don't want all of it cached locally.

Which is exactly one of the core features of Akonadi: collection/folder specific caching policies (for all kinds of PIM data, not just mails).

Cheers,
_

anda_skoa wrote:

Szo wrote:It would be nice to have folder-level control over the cache also, I have all archived emails in an imap account, but I don't want all of it cached locally.

Which is exactly one of the core features of Akonadi: collection/folder specific caching policies (for all kinds of PIM data, not just mails).

Cheers,
_

Do you know when will this be exposed in kmail?

When KMail is ported to Akonadi, it will be able to leverage the features of the Akonadi framework.

Szo wrote:Do you know when will this be exposed in kmail?

The IMAP resource for Akonadi is currently being worked on and could be available for KDE 4.3, which means that an Akonadi based e-mail client like Mailody can already use this.

KMail is expected to be ported to Akonadi for KDE 4.4

Cheers,
_

Szo wrote:OK, let me rephrase my idea then: I'd like to use imap and disconnected imap in parallel on the same account and choose on folder-by-folder basis. As far as I understand, this should be possible, since the difference between "plain" and disconnected imap is purely on client side.

I am looking for the same exact feature.. This is already available in Thunderbird, where you can select which folders you want to use for offline use.

This could be refined further. It would be awesome if the user could choose to cache only the last month (user defined) worth of mails and for which folders.

A specific use case:
A user has a small laptop (EEE say), or even a smart phone, and thus has limited storage capacity. But because she is not online all the time she would like to keep a copy of the mails she most probably needs, i.e. the last month worth -- including even older parents if it is a threaded conversation.

In general this could be filtered much more. E.g. keep all the mails from the boss.. Do not keep mails with attachments larger than 1 mb..

Akonadi cache policies are per folder and can have a timeout.

Cheers,
_