On Sat, 28 Feb 2004, Volker Sauer wrote: >Oha, now I understand why I couldn't create a Unix-Structure which maps >directly to the IMAP-Tree. >But the question is then: what is the difference between ImapDir and >MailDir++?? I read the explenation on the website twice and after that,
Maildir++ is a depot structure suggested by Courier-IMAP, and before Binc IMAP came up with IMAPdir, it was the only IMAP->File system map for nested folders in IMAP. It's widely deployed, so Binc IMAP supports it. But IMAPdir is better. >I thought, that ImapDir allows subfolders in a Unix-style-way, but as I >see, this is not the case. So what is it?? You may be mixing up a few things here ;-). It allows folders at any level of nesting, and allows a folder to contain both messages and folders. It also allows subfolders of INBOX as well as root level folders (siblings of INBOX). This maps onto the UNIX filesystem as each leaf node having one entry. Currently there is no map from a UNIX nested subfolder structure back to IMAP, because all mappings we've seen so far are too messy and don't seem to benefit anyone ;-). >What is the difference between quota and maildirsize? QUOTA is an IMAP protocol extension. maildirsize is a feature in Maildir++ for keeping track of the size of the Maildir, and it's therefore useful for keeping track of the user's quota. Binc IMAP needs a generic way to support QUOTA, where maildirsize has to be supported for Binc IMAP to apply QUOTA with Maildir++. >Or better: if imap-quota is the same as Unix-filesystem-quotas - what >does maildirsize mean? It's not! :-). maildirsize is a file that contains the size of the mailbox as an integer. It's an inaccurate, somewhat broken idea which assumes that whomever accesses the Maildir mailboxes know how it works. It only counts the size of the files, not the directory entries; hence the inaccuracy. For most systems, it's all that's needed for keeping track of users' quotas. Courier-IMAP inserts the size of files in the files' filenames' unique part (exactly what DjB says _not_ to do) to speed up the calculation of a Maildir's size, and this size is stored in the maildirsize file. This file is updated on new arrivals, copying and inserting messages into a mailbox. maildirsize doesn't work on a system that only uses Courier-IMAP to access the Maildirs, as the delivery agent (for many Binc'ers, qmail-local) doesn't know anything about maildirsize so it'll keep delivering mails to that account. So maildirsize isn't trivial to add support for; but QUOTA support in general is something Binc IMAP can have handles for. In 1.3. :-) Andy -- Andreas Aardal Hanssen | http://www.andreas.hanssen.name/gpg Author of Binc IMAP | "It is better not to do something http://www.bincimap.org/ | than to do it poorly."
