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

[Paul Lussier]

In a message dated: Mon, 20 Oct 2003 20:30:46 EDT
bscott at ntisys.com said:

>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.

<sigh> I never said it was.  I said I could not connect to my e-mail
via IMAP.  Which is perfectly true.  My e-mail is stored in a format
which no known IMAP server is capable of parsing correctly.  That does
not mean one could not be written, just that, as of today, I can not
connect to my e-mail via the IMAP protocol.

>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.

Which part of my statement insuated, implied, or otherwise stated the
opposite?

> The point of IMAP is that it abstracts all of those things.  
> I consider this a huge win.

As do I...

> 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.

Provided the IMAP server understands the format in which your e-mail
is stored!  In my case, the IMAP servers available do not, and, therefore,
I cannot connect to my e-mail via IMAP.

>Of course, as has been noted before in this forum (between you and me, I
>think),

Yes, most definitely, ad nauseum.

>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).  

Actually, it would need to be an IMAP server, since all the e-mail is stored
remotely.  The server would need the ability to parse the mh mailbox format,
deal with the various sequence files, indexes (via glimpse,) etc., and
spew the information back to the client for display.

>That is, alas, somewhat impractical.

Well, at least we agree on something :)

Now, can we put this discussion/debate between protocols and message
store formats to rest?


Seeya,
Paul
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