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Finished first draft of doc conversion
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jgoerzen 2003-01-08 23:12:49 +01:00
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@ -11,7 +11,7 @@
<refentryinfo>
<address><email>jgoerzen@complete.org</email></address>
<author><firstname>John</firstname><surname>Goerzen</surname></author>
<date> $Date: 2003-01-08 09:13:21 -0600 (Wed, 08 Jan 2003) $ </date>
<date> $Date: 2003-01-08 10:12:49 -0600 (Wed, 08 Jan 2003) $ </date>
</refentryinfo>
<refmeta>
@ -290,7 +290,7 @@ cd offlineimap-x.y.z</ProgramListing>
&OfflineIMAP;.
</para>
<variablelist><title>OfflineIMAP arguments</title>
<variablelist>
<varlistentry><term>-1</term>
<listitem><para>Disable most multithreading operations and use
solely a single-connection
@ -398,7 +398,7 @@ cd offlineimap-x.y.z</ProgramListing>
is performing right now. The colors indicate what task
the particular thread is performing, and are as follows:
</para>
<variablelist><title>Blinkenlights Colors</title>
<variablelist>
<varlistentry>
<term>Black</term>
<listitem><para>indicates that this light's thread has terminated; it will light up
@ -734,10 +734,289 @@ rm -r ~/.offlineimap/AccountName/INBOX</programlisting>
</para>
</refsect2>
</refsect1>
<refsect1>
<title>Other Frequently Asked Questions</title>
<para>There are some other FAQs that might not fit into another section
of the document, so they are discussed here.
</para>
<variablelist>
<varlistentry><term>What platforms does &OfflineIMAP; run on?</term>
<listitem><para>
It should run on most platforms supported by Python, which are quite a
few.
</para></listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry><term>I'm using Mutt. Other IMAP sync programs require me to use "set maildir_trash=yes". Do I need to do that with &OfflineIMAP;?</term>
<listitem><para>
No. &OfflineIMAP; is smart enough to figure out message deletion without this extra
crutch. You'll get the best results if you don't use this setting, in
fact.
</para></listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry><term>How do I specify the names of my folders?</term>
<listitem><para>
You do not need to. &OfflineIMAP; is smart
enough to automatically figure out what folders are present
on the IMAP server and synchronize them. You can use the
<property>folderfilter</property> and <property>foldertrans</property>
configuration file options to request certain folders and rename them
as they come in if you like.
</para></listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry><term>How can I prevent certain folders from being synced?</term>
<listitem><para>
Use the <property>folderfilter</property> option in the configuration file.
</para></listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry><term>How can I add or delete a folder?</term>
<listitem><para>
&OfflineIMAP; does not currently provide this feature, but if you create a new
folder on the IMAP server, it will be created locally automatically.
</para></listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry><term>Are there any other warnings that I should be aware of?</term>
<listitem><para>
Yes; see the Notes section below.
</para></listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry><term>What is the mailbox name recorder (mbnames) for?</term>
<listitem><para>Some mail readers, such as Mutt, are not capable
of automatically determining the names of your mailboxes.
&OfflineIMAP; can help these programs by writing the names
of the folders ni a format you specify. See the example
<filename>offlineimap.conf</filename> for details.
</para></listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry><term>Can I synchronize multiple accounts with &OfflineIMAP?</term>
<listitem><para>Sure. Just name them all in the
<property>accounts</property> line in the <property>general</property>
section of the configuration file, and add a per-account section
for each one.
</para></listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry><term>Does &OfflineIMAP; support POP?</term>
<listitem><para>No. POP is not robust enough to do a completely reliable
multi-machine synchronization like &OfflineIMAP; can do. &OfflineIMAP;
will not support it.
</para></listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry><term>Does &OfflineIMAP; support mailbox formats other than Maildir?</term>
<listitem><para>Not at present. There is no technical reason not to; just no
demand yet. Maildir is a superior format anyway.
</para></listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry><term>[technical] Why are your Maildir message filenames so huge?</term>
<listitem><para>&OfflineIMAP; has two relevant principles: 1) never modifying your
messages in any way and 2) ensuring 100% reliable synchronizations.
In order to do a reliable sync, &OfflineIMAP;
must have a way to
uniquely identify each e-mail. Three pieces of information are
required to do this: your account name, the folder name, and the
message UID. The account name can be calculated from the path in
which your messages are. The folder name can usually be as well, BUT
some mail clients move messages between folders by simply moving the
file, leaving the name intact.
</para>
<para>
So, &OfflineIMAP; must store both a UID folder ID. The folder ID is
necessary so &OfflineIMAP; can detect a message moved to a different
folder. &OfflineIMAP; stores the UID (U= number) and an md5sum of the
foldername (FMD5= number) to facilitate this.
</para></listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry><term>What is the speed of &OfflineIMAP;'s sync?</term>
<listitem><para>OfflineIMAP
versions 2.0 and above contain a multithreaded system. A good way to
experiment is by setting <property>maxsyncaccounts</property> to 3 and <property>maxconnections</property> to 3
in each account clause.
</para>
<para>This lets OfflineIMAP open up multiple connections simultaneously.
That will let it process multiple folders and messages at once. In
most cases, this will increase performance of the sync.
</para>
<para>Don't set the number too high. If you do that, things might actually
slow down as your link gets saturated. Also, too many connections can
cause mail servers to have excessive load. Administrators might take
unkindly to this, and the server might bog down. There are many
variables in the optimal setting; experimentation may help.
</para>
<para>An informal benchmark yields these results for my setup:
</para>
<itemizedlist>
<listitem><para>10 minutes with MacOS X Mail.app "manual cache"
</para></listitem>
<listitem><para>5 minutes with GNUS agent sync</para></listitem>
<listitem><para>20 seconds with OfflineIMAP 1.x</para></listitem>
<listitem><para>9 seconds with OfflineIMAP 2.x</para></listitem>
<listitem><para>3 seconds with OfflineIMAP 3.x "cold start"</para></listitem>
<listitem><para>2 seconds with OfflineIMAP 3.x "held connection"</para></listitem>
</itemizedlist>
</listitem></varlistentry>
</variablelist>
</refsect1>
<refsect1>
<title>Conforming To</title>
<itemizedlist>
<listitem><para>Internet Message Access Protocol version 4rev1 (IMAP 4rev1) as
specified in RFC2060</para></listitem>
<listitem><para>CRAM-MD5 as specified in RFC2195</para></listitem>
<listitem><para>Maildir as specified in
<ulink url="http://www.qmail.org/qmail-manual-html/man5/maildir.html">the Maildir manpage</ulink> and
<ulink url="http://cr.yp.to/proto/maildir.html">the qmail website</ulink>.</para></listitem>
<listitem><para>Standard Python 2.2.1 as implemented on POSIX-compliant systems.</para></listitem>
</itemizedlist>
</refsect1>
<refsect1>
<title>Notes</title>
<refsect2>
<title>Deleting Local Folders</title>
<para>&OfflineIMAP; does a two-way synchronization. That is, if you
make a change to the mail on the server, it will be propogated to your
local copy, and vise-versa. Some people might think that it would be
wise to just delete all their local mail folders periodically. If you
do this with &OfflineIMAP;, remember to also remove your local status
cache (<filename>~/.offlineimap</filename> by default). Otherwise, &OfflineIMAP; will take
this as an intentional deletion of many messages and will interpret
your action as requesting them to be deleted from the server as well.
(If you don't understand this, don't worry; you probably won't
encounter this situation)
</para>
</refsect2>
<refsect2>
<title>Copying Messages Between Folders</title>
<para>
Normally, when you copy a message between folders or add a new message
to a folder locally, &OfflineIMAP;
will just do the right thing. However, sometimes this can be tricky
-- if your IMAP server does not provide the SEARCH command, or does
not return something useful, &OfflineIMAP;
cannot determine the new UID of the message. So, in these rare
instances, OfflineIMAP will upload the message to the IMAP server and
delete it from your local folder. Then, on your next sync, the
message will be re-downloaded with the proper UID.
&OfflineIMAP; makes sure that the message was properly uploaded before deleting it,
so there should be no risk of data loss.
</para>
</refsect2>
<refsect2>
<title>Use with Evolution</title>
<para>&OfflineIMAP; can work with Evolution. To do so, first configure
your &OfflineIMAP; account to have
<option>sep = /</option> in its configuration. Then, configure
Evolution with the
"Maildir-format mail directories" server type. For the path, you will need to
specify the name of the top-level folder
<emphasis>inside</emphasis> your &OfflineIMAP; storage location.
You're now set!
</para>
</refsect2>
<refsect2>
<title>Use with KMail</title>
<para>At this time, I believe that &OfflineIMAP; is not compatible
with KMail. KMail cannot work in any mode other than to move
all messages out of all folders immediately, which (besides being annoying
and fundamentally broken) is incompatible with &OfflineIMAP;.
</para>
</refsect2>
<refsect2>
<title>Mailing List</title>
<para>There is an OfflineIMAP mailing list available.
To subscribe, send the text "Subscribe" in the subject of a mail to
offlineimap-request@complete.org. To post, send the message to
offlineimap@complete.org.
</para>
</refsect2>
<refsect2>
<title>Bugs</title>
<para>Reports of bugs should be sent via e-mail to the
&OfflineIMAP; bug-tracking system (BTS) at
offlineimap@bugs.complete.org or submitted online using
the <ulink url="http://bugs.complete.org/">web interface</ulink>.
</para>
<para>
The Web site also lists all current bugs, where you can check their
status or contribute to fixing them.
</para>
</refsect2>
</refsect1>
<refsect1>
<title>Copyright</title>
<para>OfflineIMAP, and this manual, are Copyright &copy; 2002, 2003 John Goerzen.</para>
<para>
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.
</para>
<para>
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
GNU General Public License for more details.
</para>
<para>
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA</para>
<para>imaplib.py comes from the Python dev tree and is licensed under
the GPL-compatible PSF license as stated in the file
<filename>COPYRIGHT</filename> in the &OfflineIMAP;
distribution.
</para>
</refsect1>
<refsect1>
<title>Author</title>
<para>&OfflineIMAP;, its libraries, documentation, and all included files, except where
noted, was written by John Goerzen (<address>jgoerzen@complete.org</address>) and
copyright is held as stated in the COPYRIGHT section.
</para>
<para>
&OfflineIMAP; may be downloaded, and information found, from is
hopepage via either <ulink url="gopher://quux.org/1/devel/offlineimap">Gopher</ulink>
or <ulink url="http://quux.org/devel/offlineimap">HTTP</ulink>.
</para>
<para>
&OfflineIMAP; may also be downloaded using Subversion. Additionally,
the distributed tar.gz may be updated with a simple "svn update"
command; it is ready to go. For information on getting OfflineIMAP
with Subversion, please visit the
<ulink url="http://svn.complete.org/">complete.org Subversion page</ulink>.
</para>
</refsect1>
<refsect1>
<title>See Also</title>
<para>This is also a test. Foo bar.</para>
<para><application>mutt</application>(1),
<application>python</application>(1)
</para>
</refsect1>
</refentry>
</reference>