Re: To mbox or not, that is the question! (fwd)

[Richard Lyons <richard@the-place.net>]

On Tuesday 27 April 2004 17:48, Derrick 'dman' Hudson wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 26, 2004 at 11:26:48PM -0400, Mike M wrote:
> | On Mon, Apr 26, 2004 at 10:52:24PM +0100, Jonathan Dowland wrote:
[...]
> | >
> | > You're perhaps correct in noticing that mutt won't offer up
> | > subdirs in this fashion through its menus, or with = shortcuts.
> |
> | I went from kmail to mutt and noticed the support for folder
> | hierarchy in kmail is "special" and has hidden files associated
> | with it.  I was using mbox in kmail and I am now using Maildir in
> | mutt.
>
> Aha.  That explains a lot.  The mbox format does not allow for a mail
> folder to contain both messages and subfolders.  Apparently kmail
> follows courier-imap's lead in how the on-disk store differs from the
> end-user presentation of the data.  The Maildir format does allow for
> a folder to contain both messages and subfolders, as long as the
> subfolders do not have the name 'new', 'cur' or 'tmp'.  mutt doesn't
> do any fancy tricks to make the on-disk layout of the folders appear
> to be different than it really is.
>
> | I created the illusion of folder hierarchy in mutt/Maildir
>
> There is no need for an illusion in mutt, unless that illusion is
> necessitated by kmail (or courier-imap).
>
> | Before I could use mutt to read the mbox folder system, I had to
> | manually convert the folder names to non-hidden names.
>
> This is not quite true.  mutt doesn't care what the folders are named
> or where on disk they are.  However, the visual navigation in mutt
> may hide "hidden" files and directories.  (I don't know for certain
> because I never use mutt's visual navigation features)
>
>
> Anyways, now that you've explained how kmail stored the folders
> on-disk it all makes sense :-).

You can use maildir in kmail - or in fact mix the two.  the difficulty 
when trying to share with other mailreaders (eg mutt) is that any 
subdirectories created in kmail, even in maildir format, are not really 
there. 

If, in kmail, you create folders foo and foo|bar, and put some mail into 
both, then look in mutt, you see only the mail in foo/. And if you do
cd ~/Mail
ls        ;you will see foo
ls foo    ;you will see 'cur   new   tmp'  -  no sign of bar

But if you do 
cd ~/Mail
mkdir admin
mkdir admin/dull
and look in kmail - they don't exist.
so look in mutt if there are cur, new, and tmp subdirs in admin, mutt 
will show it, but then it says admin/dull is not a mailbox, even if you 
have copied mail into it (in CLI).  But if you delete the cur, new, and 
tmp subdirs from admin, mutt now shows you dull and the mail in it.

So it is impossible to have a hierarchy in which there are both mail and 
subdirectories in any directory.  And if interoperability with kmail is 
needed, only a flat file structure will work.  The best compromise is a 
fake hierarchy using maildirs called, eg:
   admin
   admin-dull
   admin-boring
   lists-du
   lists-lilypond

which shows up the same in either mailreader.

At least, that is what I seem to have found...

-- 
richard
You can put mail in them in mutt and