Modest patch: offline IMAP support
 

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

Re: Modest patch: offline IMAP support
 

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!

Re: Modest patch: offline IMAP support
 

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?

Re: Modest patch: offline IMAP support
 

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.

Re: Modest patch: offline IMAP support
 

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?

Re: Modest patch: offline IMAP support
 

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

Re: Modest patch: offline IMAP support
 

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

Re: Modest patch: offline IMAP support
 

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.

Re: Modest patch: offline IMAP support
 

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

Re: Modest patch: offline IMAP support
 

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.

Re: Modest patch: offline IMAP support
 

dack001: it's in ~/.modest/cache, in the 2gb internal partition, so that's a good point, best not to let it grow too big!

Re: Modest patch: offline IMAP support
 

What's generic-pr? I certainly didn't look for any dependency problems, it's a "works for me" thing.

I don't want to start a fork of Modest or Tinymail or anything, I just had an itch that needed scratching. Email clients are especially vulnerable to feature creep, and open source makes it worse. Keeping Modest usable means turning to people and saying "That essential feature which is a no-brainer to include? We're not including it, go buy a Blackberry". If "modest-community" ever happened, I for one probably wouldn't use it!

The bug in Tinymail is different though. Fixing it doesn't add bloat, on the contrary it exercises unused code and keeps bitrot at bay. So that's the bit I think is worth pushing.

Re: Modest patch: offline IMAP support
 

:(
Thank your for your answer!

To bad, that means i can't use it. Atm i have ca 1 gig of emails in my main folder and its still growing :(
Wouldn't it be possible to relocate the cache to the FAT-Partition?
But i fear this might cause some problems if one would open the mail folder while the N900 is connected to the pc.

Looks as if i have to stick with easy-debians claws-mail a little longer.

Re: Modest patch: offline IMAP support
 

I'd be surprised if something like this didn't work, although I don't have time to test it myself:

mv ~/.modest/cache ~/MyDocs/
ln -s ~/MyDocs/cache ~/.modest/

No doubt dramas will ensue if you try to use the mail client while the USB cable is plugged in and mass storage mode enabled, but in general I'd think that should work. Also, it seems safe to just blow away the entire cache directory and restart from scratch, it's just a cache after all.

Re: Modest patch: offline IMAP support
 

Is this going to make it into the repos?

Re: Modest patch: offline IMAP support
 

No, this is not going into the repos, not unless the Tinymail team fix that bug.

Re: Modest patch: offline IMAP support
 

Hm, it seems your site might be down Mat? I'm very anxious to try our your fixes :)

Re: Modest patch: offline IMAP support
 

Sorry about that, damn thing goes up and down more often than <insert ribald humour here>.

Should be running now.

Re: Modest patch: offline IMAP support
 

Good point. There is another patched version, see http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=56634
It would make sense to combine the efforts, but that is up to the authors of course.

Re: Modest patch: offline IMAP support
 

Could somebody explain how to install thus?

Re: Modest patch: offline IMAP support
 

If you mean the offline imap patches, I tried to explain the process as simply as I could at the top of this page:

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

Is there something confusing there?

Re: Modest patch: offline IMAP support
 

Nothing confusing at all. I've been using them for 6+ months with no issues. Thanks for your work.

Re: Modest patch: offline IMAP support
 

The problem is that I am using the CSSU. The CSSU provides an updated version of modest. When I try apt-get install modest, I get the message that modest is already the newest version.

Can you provide the deb file please?

Re: Modest patch: offline IMAP support
 

There are binary packages on his site.

Re: Modest patch: offline IMAP support
 

The only thing I can find is the .diff file, but I don't know how to install it.
Can you provide a link to the .deb?

Re: Modest patch: offline IMAP support
 

The .debs are here:

http://apt.exon.name/pool/main/m/modest/

But I would probably recommend against mixing CSSU and this version of Modest. Anything fixed in the CSSU version won't be fixed in my version.

Re: Modest patch: offline IMAP support
 

Thank you very much!

It would be great if your patch could be included in the CSSU. That way we get a version of modest with latest fixes from the CSSU and the offline imap fix.

Re: Modest patch: offline IMAP support
 

i second this.

CSSU is a great effort, and modest needs to be all it can be!

Re: Modest patch: offline IMAP support
 

Oh, forgot to mention that you also need the patched .debs of Tinymail:

http://apt.exon.name/pool/main/t/tinymail/

Re: Modest patch: offline IMAP support
 

I asked for the offline IMAP stuff to be merged into the official trunk several times, and never got a friendly response, so I gave up. Recently pali asked for it to be merged into the CSSU and he also doesn't seem to have had much success.

I'm afraid I've all but given up on open source generally and am looking forward to buying a non-Maemo smart phone. Until then my patched version is good enough for me.

Re: Modest patch: offline IMAP support
 

The patches have been merged in CSSU.

Re: Modest patch: offline IMAP support
 

Well that is good news. Thanks!

Re: Modest patch: offline IMAP support
 

That's really cool!
Will the setting (caching or not) will be availlable to users?
Will it automatically cache every single mail, or can we set limits?

Re: Modest patch: offline IMAP support
 

Thanks for the good job!!

Why the option is named "mcenfladvsetupofflinesync"? Why not "Offline IMAP sync"?

Re: Modest patch: offline IMAP support
 

Well, from what I can tell, this offline imap sync patch is of the "quick and dirty" kind. Not only is that option not given a human-readable name, the patch also simply dumps all of your email into the "opt" directory. Without checking how much space is available. So, if you've got a lot of mail, you may end up filling the entire partition...

Re: Modest patch: offline IMAP support
 

I have installed the "stable" CSSU 4.1. It should not include a patch of this kind if it is not 99% safe. And obviously, it should be correctly named. Currently it looks like a too early patch.

Re: Modest patch: offline IMAP support
 

@ikerrg,

Treat all CSSU stuff as highly experimental. Stable vs Testing doesn't (in my opinion) mean anything.

My solution for offline IMAP is to use offlineimap to synchronize with my IMAP account (for now, gmail) as well as dovecot as local IMAP server. Modest only connects to this local server (address "127.0.0.1") so that e-mails are always available.

The only thing I yet have to solve is that:
(1) dovecot wakes up the CPU more than it should,
(2) modest doesn't show INBOX unless it detects you are connected. sort kills the idea of offline e-mail.

I use alpine instead of modest. Works perfectly.

Re: Modest patch: offline IMAP support
 

Had two gmail accounts with offline support and my /home/user got 100% full.

Just a heads up for those, who like me, blindly, enabled offline IMAP support option in Modest and forgot :)

Re: Modest patch: offline IMAP support
 

Can't you symlink /home/user/.modest/cache to a directory in MyDocs?

Re: Modest patch: offline IMAP support
 

I was afraid of problems when connecting as Mass Storage.

Anyway, made myself some problems. Deleted user/.modest contents, now when I start "modest -s" and try to check email, I get Segmentation fault.

Account and all settings are there.

Maybe someone has an idea? Is it worth pursuing a bug or should I recreate accounts from scratch as described in http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=88219 ?