On Wed, 19 Mar 2003, Andreas Aardal Hanssen wrote:<snip>
That is speculation. What is the real world benefit of providing different mailbox formats? How does the user, via an IMAP client, create mailboxes with differing formats? If we accept that it is useful for mail users to use different mailbox formats, why do the mailboxes need to live in the same structure?
This is a very interesting question. Technically, I've seen arguments that show that each format has some strengths and weaknesses. It would be nice to exploit the strengths of each, but I don't see how from a standard IMAP client.
So what is to be the native format for IMAP clients using bincimap? I propose that Maildir is sufficiently robust. With the exception of INBOX, I don't see a need handle mbox format at all.
That said, I also feel that there may be situations where it may be necessary to handle a hybrid mbox/maildir configuration. Since the backend is modular, why don't stop trying to enforce a standard, and instead allow modules to be build for mbox, Maildir, Maildir++, composite, or some totally new structure. As long as the API is robust enough, we should let the market drive the underlying storage structure.
Gary
