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Re: Maildir question



On 2003-11-26 at 00:03 -0500, David T-G wrote:
> I don't see that; I see a list of exactly what is allowed in the Maildir,
> and anything not listed is not allowed.

It depends on your viewpoint. I would say, anything not explicitly
prohibited is allowed. The spec does not specifically prohibit nested
Maildirs.

> Only Dan can really answer authoritatively, though (although he may
> have already; I didn't ask on the qmail list), so it's not much worth
> discussing.

Yeah, right - only Dan can answer this authoritatively.
Unfortunately, it could be difficult to get a response from him 
sometimes. ;)

> % Exactly. Undefined does not mean illegal.
> 
> But since it isn't within the spec it is not expected to be supported and
> so it's just askign for trouble.  OK, so maybe I'll soften my position a
> bit to allow "undefined but not specifically prohibited", although I
> still stand by *my* interpretation above, but we don't ever want to be
> messing around in the undefined territory anyway!

I beg to disagree. The spec is focused on the structure of a (single)
Maildir. How you arrange your Maildirs is beyond its scope.
I wish Dan (or somebody else) would publish a new version of the spec,
or another spec, which addresses this issues.

This is exactly what Mr. Sam did with his Maildir++, by the way.
Personally, I do not agree with the design decisions Maildir++ based on.

> % Neither Mutt, nor OfflineIMAP (which I use to synchronize my laptop with
> % the server) do not have any problems with this setup.
> 
> That doesn't make it right :-)

... and doesn't make it wrong either. ;-P

> % It's up to MUAs and servers (IMAP, etc.) to prevent from creating nested
> % Maildirs with new,cur,tmp names. Users shouldn't have to know about the
> % internals. ;)
> 
> Touche, but all the MUA/server could say is "I refuse to allow that name
> since it presents a conflict", which to me is worse than saying "you
> can't create a Maildir within a Maildir" since the latter is more general
> and more uniform.

Such error message would be fine with me, and some (if not most of)
other users. I do not see why we would deny users ability to have nested
Maildirs just because it isn't "more general and more uniform". 
I don't buy that. ;)  Mutt is about flexibility, after all. ;)

Sergei

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