Pine and gmail together at last

October 30, 2007 5:31 PM

Maybe you can help me figure out my incredibly interesting gmail IMAP vs Pine problem. According to gmail, the only non-label folder you want to really map to a special IMAP folder is the Drafts folder. If you are still with me ...

Basically, pine always thinks I have a postponed-message. I am not sure if this happened as soon as I set the folder, or if it didn't happen until I saved a draft and then removed it. The details are:

I set my postponed messages folder to:
postponed-folder={imap.gmail.com/user=username@gmail/ssl/novalidate-cert}[Gmail]/Drafts

When I go to compose a new message, I am always prompted to continue my postponed composition (which no longer exists). If I answer yes, I receive the following errors:


[>Empty folder! No messages really postponed!<]
[>Internal folder cannot be deleted. (Failure)<]
[Can't delete {gmail-imap.l.google.com:993/imap/ssl/novalidate-cert/user="[e-mail]"}[Gmail]/Drafts]

I can then continue, and cancel the message without error, however the next time I go to compose a message I am asked if I want to continue the postponed-message

Googing for the error messages has people saying to remove the ~/mail/postponed-msgs file, however, my postponed-msgs is mapped to [Gmail]/Drafts

If I map the postponed-msgs to another folder, like just Drafts, which creates a label in gmail ([Imap]/Drafts), I can get it to complain of an empty folder, but canceling the message works, and I am no longer prompted to continue it.

I'm not really sure at this point if I'm broken, if gmail is broken, if I broke gmail, if it's a pine thing, or an Imap thing, therefore I humbly request advice.

Did I manage to stick a file on gmail that I can't delete? Did I fail at pine config 101? Is it a faux-pas to admit to using pine in the first place?

posted by 31d1 to computers & internet (3 comments total)

Could you create a new, empty gmail account and wire to that to see if the problem is inherent in the pine-gmail dysfunctional relationship or not? That would eliminate one of your potential issues.
posted by yerfatma at 5:42 PM on October 30, 2007

Actually yeah I just sent my .pinerc to a friend, and he confirmed this happened to him from the get go using his account.

He knows much more about pine and emaily stuff than me, but had no further ideas.
posted by 31d1 at 5:44 PM on October 30, 2007

It's because gmail won't let you delete their "drafts" folder (the real one). And for some reason it seems that Pine wants the drafts folder to only exist if there is a message in it. That is, Pine is trying to delete the folder since you have no drafts.

Sounds like you should do what you already tried, just use ([Imap]/Drafts), which Pine can happily delete when there is no message.
posted by lohmannn at 6:44 AM on October 31, 2007