On Wed, Sep 23, 2020 at 09:04:11AM +0100, Chris Green wrote:
> On Wed, Sep 23, 2020 at 09:44:22AM +1000, raf wrote:
>> On Tue, Sep 22, 2020 at 06:30:52PM +0100, Chris Green wrote:
>>> On Tue, Sep 22, 2020 at 05:46:53PM +0100, Chris Green wrote:
>>>> Is there some way I can get to use real directories to represent my
>>>> hierarchy of mail?
>From more recent emails in this thread, I see that you answered (in the
affirmative) your question above.
Still, for sake of completeness/posterity.
>>>> I manually rearrange my mail sometimes and to
>>>> deal with very long directory names isn't really practical. For
>>>> example I might decide to move mail as follows:-
>>>>
>>>> ~/Mail/folder/travel/zelmaFrance
>>>>
>>>> to
>>>>
>>>> ~/Mail/folder/travel/france/zelma
>>>>
>>>> With real directories such a move isn't too difficult but with the
>>>> default maildir naming it becomes painful.
Painful how?
>>>> Some software I believe does work the way I want with maildir but
>>>> the dotted hierarchy seems to be becoming the standard. Is there
>>>> no way round this? I'd really like to move to maildir but I really
>>>> can't see it being practical for me as it is.
>>>>
>>> I just run mb2md on my existing mail folders, I ended up with a
>>> single directory (~/Maildir) containing 2354 files mostly with
>>> ridiculously long names! This just isn't a sensible way to organise
>>> my mail.
>>
>> I might be talking nonsense, but that maildir hierarchy probably is
>> the correct thing, as defined by whoever came up with it, and is what
>> is needed for all(?) mail software that deals with maildir to work.
IIRC:
- Maildir was invented by Daniel J. Bernstein, author of the Qmail MTA.
- Maildir++, which extends Maildir, was invented by Sam Varshavchik,
author of the Courier MTA.
I may be wrong, but I believe that with Mutt you can use either Maildir
or Maildir++ as you prefer.
>> But if you want to manipulate the hierarchy separately from mail
>> software, and still have all mail software work correctly, you might
>> be able to implement (or convince someone to implement) a userspace
>> fuse file system that provides an alternative view of the real
>> maildir file system, that can be mounted alongside the real maildir
>> directory. Then, whatever mail software you want to use can work with
>> the real maildir hierarchy, and you can manipulate it in the way you
>> want outside of mail software. I have no idea how much effort would
>> be involved in such a fuse file system, though.
Creating a FUSE overlay is probably substantially more effort than using
an existing tool designed for the task, e.g. an MDA such as:
- Procmail
- Maildrop (part of Sam Varshavchik's suite of Courier-related software)
- Sieve (there are various implementations, of which Dovecot's is
perhaps the most widely used; but installing Dovecot is probably
overkill for a client machine rather than a server, so Procmail or
Maildrop might be better choices)
> The only things dealing with the maildirs are my own mail filter
> written in Python and mutt, nothing else.
Python should be able to handle Maildir and Maildir++ equally well:
Maildir is a directory-based mailbox format invented for the qmail
mail transfer agent and now widely supported by other programs.
Messages in a Maildir mailbox are stored in separate files within a
common directory structure. This design allows Maildir mailboxes to
be accessed and modified by multiple unrelated programs without data
corruption, so file locking is unnecessary. [..]
Folders of the style introduced by the Courier mail transfer agent
are also supported. Any subdirectory of the main mailbox is
considered a folder if '.' is the first character in its name.
Folder names are represented by Maildir without the leading '.'.
Each folder is itself a Maildir mailbox but should not contain other
folders. Instead, a logical nesting is indicated using '.' to
delimit levels, e.g., "Archived.2005.07".
Source: https://docs.python.org/3.8/library/mailbox.html#mailbox.Maildir
> Way back when maildir first appeared and I used qmail the way I want
> things to work was the way it *did* work. It's the maildir++ thing
> that's broken it.
I don't think anyone in the Mutt camp is forcing anyone else to use
Maildir++. So, if someone wants to use Qmail-style Maildir with Mutt,
the thing for them to do is probably to give it a try and maybe post on
the mailing list (or file a bug report) in case of specific problems.
Glad you got it working to your satisfaction in the end :)
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