On Friday, October 22 at 12:13 AM, quoth Payal Rathod: > On Thu, Oct 21, 2004 at 02:32:26PM -0400, Henry Baragar wrote: > > Check out http://www.bincimap.org/bincimap-imapdir.html. > > Thanks for the tip. I checked that URL and the link to Maildir++ too. > But I am still little bit confused as to what a Depot mean exactly?
Essentially? "depot" means "style of organization".
So the basic idea is: how do we map the IMAP folder layout to the disk
layout, given that we don't want to let the Maildir folders (cur, tmp,
and new) interfere with what folder names a user can pick? There are two
methods, Maildir++ and IMAPdir. Here's how they work. Let's say we have
a simple IMAP hierarchy, like so:
INBOX
INBOX/Sent
INBOX/Sent/Old
INBOX/Trash
With Maildir++, this is stored on-disk like so:
Maildir/cur
Maildir/new
Maildir/tmp
Maildir/.Sent/cur
Maildir/.Sent/new
Maildir/.Sent/tmp
Maildir/.Sent.Old/cur
Maildir/.Sent.Old/new
Maildir/.Sent.Old/tmp
Maildir/.Trash/cur
Maildir/.Trash/new
Maildir/.Trash/tmp
This has a drawback, however. According to the IMAP spec, you are
allowed to have folders that are at the same hierarchical level as the
INBOX (this is referred to as "top-level" folders). In other words, the
following is also a valid IMAP hierarchy:
INBOX
INBOX/Trash
Sent
Now, the Maildir++ method of organizing things isn't flexible enough to
allow that---essentially, as far as Maildir++ is concerned *everything*
is a sub-directory of INBOX (this is a slight simplification, but let's
stick with it). The solution? IMAPdir. With IMAPdir the above IMAP
hierarchy is stored on disk like so:
Folder/INBOX/cur
Folder/INBOX/new
Folder/INBOX/tmp
Folder/INBOX.Trash/cur
Folder/INBOX.Trash/new
Folder/INBOX.Trash/tmp
Folder/Sent/cur
Folder/Sent/new
Folder/Sent/tmp
IMAPdir has other nifty features (like the ability to integrate mbox
directories), but they're kinda irrelevant to the basic question you're
asking.
Now, with all this you may be asking yourself "well, okay, if IMAPdir is
so cool, why have the other?" and the answer is: compatability and
convenience. Getting some mail systems to deliver to folders other than
$HOME/Maildir can be difficult, and when converting from some other
Maildir-savvy IMAP servers (like Courier) to binc, using the Maildir++
method makes the conversion particularly easy (because it's essentially
the same way those other IMAP servers do it).
So, to answer your question directly, what is a depot? A depot is a
"style" or "method" of organizing the mail on the server behind the
scenes.
Did that help?
~Kyle
--
I prefer to be called "EVIL GENIUS!"
-- Jumba, from "Lilo & Stitch"
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