Hi, everyone.<WARNING - reopening a old discussion>
Files in unix that start with a dot '.' are considered hidden by rule.
Maildir++ uses dots at the start of every folder to seperate mailboxes from ordinary files. This means that the folders themselves are hidden, while special files (cache, indexes) are not.
In IMAPdir folders are usually not hidden. We use the idea that folders do
not necessarily start with a dot '.', but we allow mailbox names to start
with a dot, hence the filename would start with a dot.
Except that this is defined as a special case in definition of IMAPdir (http://www.bincimap.org/bincimap-imapdir.html). I understand this was done to facillitate migration from Courier, but I believe that the value of this will diminish over time. As it is, if one wants use the IMAPdir scheme in a Maildir++ directory, one has to create a symbolic link for INBOX to point to the current directory. If we ask the users to do this, why not ask them to go step further and create symbolic links for all the Maildir++ directories (same name but no leading dot). This acheives both objectives of providing a simple migration path from Courier and providing a clean (exception free) spec for IMAPdir's.
</WARNING>
As an IMAPdir, would this not show up as ".\.\.oops"? Isn't this a little counter-intuitive? (see above discussion)So if the user wants such mailboxes, then they will be hidden in the file system. Most users would not want mailboxes that start with a dot, though. (Perhaps mailboxes called "...ooops", but it's rare).
Definitely! I recommend going EVEN FURTHER and say that everything in an IMAPdir that does not have a leading dot MUST be a maildir and that anything that has a leading dot can be ignored by IMAPdir clients (which may or may not be an IMAP server); that is, an IMAPdir client does not have to go poking around the dot-prefixed files looking for mail (unless said client wishes to hide the maildir from other clients).
This behavior work well with local clients, or clients that access the depot through means of opendir->readdir->closedir, and have no idea about IMAPdir or Maildir++, but rather of Maildir, mbox and so on.
So IMAPdir works well with these clients, except that special files are not hidden, so they will appear as mailboxes.
The question is, should special files be prepended with a dot with IMAPdir?
.bincimap-cache .bincimap-subscribed
Andy :-)
Henry
-- Henry Baragar Principal, Technical Architecture 416-453-5626 Instantiated Software Inc. http://www.instantiated.ca
