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

[p.lussier at comcast.net]

In a message dated: Tue, 21 Oct 2003 19:23:03 EDT
bscott at ntisys.com said:

>On Sat, 18 Oct 2003, at 11:01am, p.lussier at comcast.net wrote:
>>>> 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
>
>In a message dated: Mon, 20 Oct 2003 20:30:46 EDT bscott at ntisys.com said:
>>> Clarification: IMAP is not a mail storage format.
>
>On Tue, 21 Oct 2003, at 1:50pm, p.lussier at comcast.net wrote:
>> I never said it was.
>
>  I took "stored under an IMAP format" as an implication that IMAP was a
>storage format.  If that was a misunderstanding, I do apologize for jumping
>on you.  But in that case, I really do think you could have been a bit more
>clear.  :-)

Well, I'll agree to mis-using terminology if you can agree that I 
understand the difference between a network protocol and a mail 
storage format :)

>  Oh?  I thought UW-IMAP supported mh mailboxes.  Or is your use of
>"correctly" especially significant here?

It sorta, kinda, but not really does.  The problem is that MH uses 
index files (called sequences) to keep track of things like which 
files are read, unread, etc.  UW-IMAP supposedly can access the 
message store, but it doesn't update sequences properly, and I'm not 
sure if it can deal with sub-folders either. (MH, being file/
directory based can have a theoretically infinite depth)

>You see, IMNSHO, IMAP is a vastly under-utilized and under-appreciated
>technology (kinda like Linux is/was).  

I agree, I just wish it were slightly more amenable to my wishes so I 
could enjoy it too :)

>  Actually, both.  :)  I had thought your objection to IMAP was that using a
>traditional IMAP client would lose all the benefits of the mh style of mail
>usage.  I also thought that an IMAP server that could handle mh folders was
>already available.

AFAIK, there is no existing client or server capable of dealing with 
MH.  In order to do so would require a significant amount of work on 
server.  I'm not sure how much work on the client side would need to 
be done.  Since, really, the client could just issue standard IMAP 
commands, and the server could translate those into MH commands on 
the backend and just spew the e-mail back down the IMAP pipe to the 
client.

As long as the IMAP server on the back end would need to know how to
deal with MH messages, folders, and sequences (among other things) on
the server side, it would just have to know how to translate/map this 
back to the client via IMAP.

>  All horses will continue to be beaten until revived.  ;-)

I can live with that.  I'm too used to a similar "Big Company" 
philosophy which states:

	Beatings will continue until morale improves! 

:)
-- 

Seeya,
Paul
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