This is now implemented as a plugin in hg. Usage in the commit message:
http://hg.dovecot.org/dovecot-2.1/rev/f5bb9f6b304d
Also there's a generic change where symlinks within same directory are treated
as mailbox aliases, which aren't counted towards quota.
On 2.9.2012, at 18.32, Timo Sirainen wrote:
> I've been wondering about ways to handle all the various different Sent/Sent
> Messages/Sent Items/etc mailboxes that different clients create and if there
> could be a way to make them work at least somewhat better. I'm mainly
> thinking about ISP-like installations where users are using tons of different
> clients and there's no way to get everyone configured properly. Of course the
> eventual solution is hopefully that all the clients will support SPECIAL-USE
> extension, but while waiting for that maybe mailbox aliases could help some.
>
> So one possibility would be to force autocreation of wanted specific mailbox
> names, and create aliases for the other commonly used mailboxes. The main
> difference here for the current behavior is that all of the mailboxes would
> contain the same mails, instead of different mails going to different
> mailboxes with different clients. So for example:
>
> ..
> mailbox Sent {
> auto = create
> special_use = \Sent
> }
> mailbox "Sent Messages" {
> special_use = \Sent
> alias_for = Sent
> }
> ..
>
> If "Sent Messages" doesn't exist:
> - DELETE Sent works as usual
> - RENAME Sent works as usual
>
> If "Sent Messages" is created:
> - it's symlinked to Sent
> - DELETE "Sent messages" deletes the symlink, not the contents
> - RENAME "Sent messages" isn't allowed
> - DELETE/RENAME Sent fails with message: Delete/Rename for Sent not allowed
> before "Sent Messages" is deleted.
>
> Thoughts?
>
> The main disadvantage is that clients would still see two different
> mailboxes, and some would download contents from both of them.
>
> I was thinking about creating some wiki page which could list the best
> working configurations and also a client list, which would specify if it
> supports SPECIAL-USE and what the default mailbox names it uses are.
