Personal mail habits [was Blackberry-like device, MacOS X, and/or IMAP?]

[bscott at ntisys.com]

On Sat, 18 Oct 2003, at 11:01am, p.lussier at comcast.net wrote:
> The only down side is that I can't connect to it via IMAP, however, now
> that I have a broadband connection, that's not an issue :) (there are also
> a lot of things I can do with my e-mail in mh-format, that I can't do if
> it were stored under an IMAP format, but I digress)

  Clarification: IMAP is not a mail storage format.  IMAP is a protocol that
lets you access mail and mailboxes over a network.  It is independent of how
the mail is stored, and it is independent of how the mail is presented to
the end-user.  The point of IMAP is that it abstracts all of those things.  
I consider this a huge win.  It means that I can access my mailboxes from
any number of clients, on any number of operating systems, using any number
of computers, and still see the same mail.

  Of course, as has been noted before in this forum (between you and me, I
think), if one desires an mh-style presentation, one would need to write an
IMAP client that is also a filesystem driver for your operating system(s).  
That is, alas, somewhat impractical.

-- 
Ben Scott <bscott at ntisys.com>
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