How does Windows Eudora handle IMAP attachments?

Windows Eudora and IMAP attachments.

Windows Eudora stores IMAP attachments inside the "Imap" cache folder

within the Eudora application folder. Each IMAP personality has its

own cache folder within the "Imap" folder. Each IMAP mailbox is

represented by its own folder within the personality's cache folder

that it belongs to. And each IMAP mailbox cache folder has an IMAP

Attachments folder, named "Attach". This is where Attachments and

attachment stubs downloaded from the respective mailbox are stored.

For example, say I've downloaded "john.txt" from my Inbox that

belongs to my "John" personality. The attachment will end up as

C:\Eudora\IMAP\John\Inbox\Attach\john.txt

When you fully download an IMAP message in an IMAP mailbox with all

of its attachments, the attachments are placed inside the "Attach"

folder within the IMAP mailbox's cache folder.

If you've partially downloaded an IMAP message with attachments,

Eudora keeps track of the attachments still on the server with "stub"

files. These stub files live inside the IMAP cache folder, within

the "Attach" folder inside each IMAP mailbox's cache folder, along

with the downloaded attachments from that mailbox. They contain only

enough information for Eudora to go and fetch the attachment when the

user specifies. Once the user clicks a not-yet-downloaded IMAP

attachment inside an IMAP message, Eudora fetches the attachments

from the server, and replaces the stub file with a copy of the actual

attachment.

Note, this is one main difference between the Mac and Windows

version. Mac Eudora moves the downloaded attachment to the main

attachment directory. It's able to do this because it keeps track of

attachments via a unique identifying number the Mac OS assigns to it.

The Windows version keeps track of attachments via path names, and

moving attachments at this point would cause links to it in the

message to break.

When forwarding, redirecting, etc. an IMAP message that has

attachments remaining to be downloaded, the user is presented with a

warning that will allow him/her to tell Eudora to fetch the

attachments immediately. This avoids the possibility of the user

unknowingly forwarding on an IMAP attachment stub, something useless

to any program except Eudora. This is another difference between the

Mac and Windows version: the Mac side issues no warning, and

automatically downloads attachments when they are needed.

When working with IMAP messages in Windows Eudora in IMAP mailboxes,

note that the attachments are treated as cache items as long as they

have not been moved by the user from the IMAP cache. That is, if you

delete an IMAP message (either via the Delete command or transferring the message to another folder, or when the message is removed during a resync, or when you issue a "Remove Cached Contents" command to wipe the local cache), the attachments are deleted if they have

not been moved.

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KEYWORDS: EPWIN, IMAP, ATTACHMENT