Modest patch: offline IMAP support

[matthew_exon]

I've always been annoyed by the standard Maemo mail readers' inability to cache mail for offline reading.

For me, the real value of a pocketable computer is when I'm travelling overseas: that's the only time I spend long periods without access to my computer. But when I'm travelling I don't have Internet access - at best, maybe I can manage an unreliable wifi connection for half an hour. Nokia continues to insist that the tablets are "always on", and therefore offline caching (of web pages, maps, emails, etc etc) is unnecessary, so my tablet is constantly failing me precisely when I need it most. If only Android or iOS were any better I'd switch in a snap, but of course they're even worse!

But anyway, better to light a candle than curse the darkness, so...

These patched binaries allow me to cache my email, at least. Actually I just switched on functionality that has been present in Modest and Tinymail since the projects were started, but functionality that was broken and disabled. Frustrating to know that it was so close to working all this time!

http://mat.exon.name/modest/

I don't intend to support these at all, and no doubt the next release of Tinymail and/or Modest will obliterate the functionality. If you're interested in a more permanent solution, here's the critical bug report:

http://tinymail.org/trac/tinymail/ticket/91

[gordonshowers]

I used a slightly awkward workaround. I had set a rule on each email account to copy all mail to an "archive to phone" gmail account, and added that gmail account to modest on my phone. Then from modest I used the "move message" option to move each message to a folder on the memory card. You can also select the phone memory.

If only there was a "copy message" command as well as move, I wouldn't have needed the intermediate archiving gmail account.

Edit: Thanks a lot matthew_exon, I can now delete my intermediate gmail account!

[manavs]

I am assuming there would be a considerable speed increase when opening/browsing those imap folders as they would be pulled from the cache? Or will this only help with reading mail offline?

[matthew_exon]

Oh yeah, almost forgot, the big speed improvement is the other advantage of this :-) No need to be in offline mode, it's always faster.

[ruskie]

I'll stick to a non-caching imap client. But still great for those that want it.. it should be an opiton in the official client(no not enabled or disabled) but actually asked for each account.

Have you considered pushing the entire patch upstream?

[matthew_exon]

The whole thing depends on the bug in Tinymail being fixed. Until that happens, pushing the patch upstream will just result in memory leaks.

[dack001]

Nice!
May i ask where those mails are chached?
In the 2 gig ineternal or on the big fat-partition?

[hawaii]

Installing the patched package removes the generic-pr package, FWIW.

Best not to confuse with original packages so using +offline was a good thing, if anybody wants to sort it; simply edit the control file and use the original versions so nothing is conflicting. with the PR package expects.

Thank you very much for patching and packaging this.

[hawaii]

Seems to change the font in a reply window for some reason? Related?

[pelago]

Many thanks for this. Maybe the package and executable should be called "modest-community" or similar, to allow it to sit side-by-side with the official modest, if that will help avoid upgrade problems. It would also more easily allow users to compare and switch between the two versions.

I wonder if there are other community-created modest or tinymail patches that could be added to this version. Of course, these things should be pushed upstream, but it would be nice to be able to use fixed versions without having to wait for Nokia to release the next PR.