Re: IMAP MUA and filtering

[Brian May <bam@debian.org>]

>>>>> "Damon" == Damon Muller <dm-debian-user@empire.net.au> writes:

    Damon> I use effectively this combination myself, and it works
    Damon> really well.

My only dislike of the above is courier-imap. It insists that all
folders appear below "INBOX" (eg. "INBOX.trash") which in turn looks
messy and prevents using a hierarchy for your own folders.

ie. A commonly known commercial mail program for a non-Debian
non-Linux OS would display:

imap
  |- INBOX
     |- trash
     |- sent_mail
     |- sent_mail_1998
     |- sent_mail_1999
     |- sent_mail_1999_January

which is totally broken IMHO, as what I want is:

imap
  |- INBOX
  |- trash
  |- sent_mail
     |- 1998
     |- 1999
        |- January (this one might be tricky, as nested folders to this
                    depth are not supported by the Maildir++ standard[1]).

as none of the folders have anything to do with "INBOX", but
Courier-imap does not support this.

The author was written something and claims that this behaviour is not
broken[2], but instead blames the client. I remain unconvinced.

I do not believe he answers the question in the FAQ (change the
question from "Why can't I create any top-level folders, only
subfolders of INBOX?"  to "Why do all folder names need to be prefixed
with 'INBOX.'?" and the answer might make more sense).

In short all folders have to be sub folders of "INBOX" because that is
what courier-imap uses to indicate private (non-shared) mail, and no
solution to this problem is given.

Note:

[1] <URL:http://www.inter7.com/courierimap/README.maildirquota.html>,
and search for "Mission statement".

[2] <URL:http://www.inter7.com/courierimap/FAQ.html#namespace>


-- 
Brian May <bam@debian.org>