Re: To mbox or not, that is the question! (fwd)
On Tue, Apr 27, 2004 at 06:49:59PM +0200, Richard Lyons wrote:
> 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:
<snip>
> > | 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)
(Hmmm. What does he mean by "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.
I have noticed this exactly - using the "visual navigation" techniques.
(What else would you expect from an Outlook->Kmail->Mutt refugee?).
>
> 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
>
I came upon this same conclusion with experimentation and help from the
mutt list. I am not unhappy with it. Less magic is good.
<snip>
--
Mike
Moving forward in pushing back the envelope of the corporate paradigm.
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