On Fri, Nov 04, 2005 at 12:07:55PM +0000, Paul Tansom wrote:
** Chris Green chris@areti.co.uk [2005-11-04 09:53]:
On Thu, Nov 03, 2005 at 09:24:26PM +0000, Wayne Stallwood wrote:
On Thu, 2005-11-03 at 15:28 +0000, MJ Ray wrote:
Can't mailsync do that without maildir? Maildir always looked to me like a third-choice format for normal users, after mbox and mh.
What's so bad about maildir? Personally it seems a lot more sane to me that just having one huge file with all my messages concatenated together.
It makes the computer/programmer side of things easier but it spoils the users' view of things to my mind. Although (I think) I'm changing from mbox to maildir it's because I want to take advantage of some of the technical advantages, I'm losing some usability in the process.
Surely the users' view of things is dependent on their mail client and totally transparant to mbox, maildir, mh, database or whatever. I'm curious to know what usability is being lost from the switch from mbox to maildir. I switched some time back because I found mbox files a pain to work with if I wasn't using a mail client, and they were also getting a bit slow and cumbersome. Maildir made things a lot easier.
Well with my MUA I lose a couple of things when moving from mbox to maildir:- I can no longer ask it to automatically delete empty mailboxes, as you can see from this thread deleting an empty maildir mailbox is non trivial, so MUAs don't offer the option.
I no longer get to see folder sizes in the mail folder listing, again because it's buried a few directory layers down from the MUA's point of view.
I suspect that many other mail clients won't even offer the above functions, but whatever they offer I think you will find that there are subtle differences according to the underlying type of mailbox.
The problem with the database approach is that there is no universal standard so you can't pick and choose your MUA if you are using a database approach. OK, Cyrus is an IMAP server with a database behind it but I'm not convinced that IMAP is the answer to everything either. I've yet to find an MUA that works well (and consitently) with IMAP.
Yes, Cyrus I wrote off very early on because it locked my mail away in a format I couldn't access - I tend to like local access to my mail with Mutt and secondary access if necessary through an IMAP client (although I've been primarily an IMAP user for a year or so and have just switched back to Mutt). Until I moved onto Linux and Mutt I was a Netscape/IMAP user for a long time (mid 90s iirc and Netscape Messaging server).
Yes, I use mutt too for the same sort of reasons I suspect. You just don't notice/use the things that you lose with mutt and maildir! :-)
I find that mutt and IMAP still isn't as easy and transparent as mutt with local files. It is one of the better IMAP clients though.