Comment 5 for bug 737206
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| Matthias Andree (matthias-andree) wrote | #5 |
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(Get the code!)
The original author has not presented a single technical argument - but the behaviour is unspecified, astonishing, thus a bug. Read on.
Charles Cazabon made emotional/personal arguments on the patch per se (fear it might break things when in fact I had tested successfully against all IMAP servers I have accounts on), and he stated reasons why he considers making it optional excess effort. The latter argument I'd support, the former is the author's lack of resources, but not a technical argument.
About technical arguments:
1. the original software getmail 4.20 is not documented to alter the IMAP \Seen flags,
2. the IMAP protocol offers retrieval commands that implicitly set the \Seen flag, and commands that don't. Refer to RFC-3501 for details, section 6.4.5 p. 57.
3. Section 2.3.2 p. 11 documents the meaning of the \Seen flag, "Message has been read". Transferring the message to a different computer does not imply that it has been read by the user.
Thus, the setting of the flags is a behaviour that isn't documented, IOW, a bug. Note that it doesn't suddenly turn into a non-bug because the author of the software refuses to change it. And also note that "INVALID" is a decision of the maintainer, https:/
My patch is evidence that solving the problem presented in this bug is technically possible without ill effect.
I'd seek you to provide technical arguments, too, if you drive that point.