On Monday, February 10, 2003, at 09:07 AM, Bill Rising stridently complained:
> Perhaps there is some way to get the mail servers to run folders the > same > way as a file system. Otherwise, IMAP is pretty clumsy as a method for > keeping track of info, because it requires the user to know from the > outset which containers (folders) will be end nodes (mailboxes) and > which > will allow branches (be directories). So... if I decide that I need to > split a topic because of having to many messages, I have to make > another > directory with subdirectories, and then move all the mail messages > over. > Ugh. There's something to be said for KISS when implementing these things. IMAP may not be perfect, but it does allow you to modify your mail environment the same way that you modify files directories normally. You normally wouldn't expect to be able to turn a file into a directory, or vice versa. IMAP has this same limitation. I don't see this as a big surprise. Is it to hard to create a directory and then drag a mailbox into it? Moving messages is that easy. It's not as though you have to move the message one at a time. If you want some sort of fancy redistribution of the messages between mailboxes, then create some filtering rules and apply them to the mailbox. IMAP mailboxes are standard Unix mailboxes. This was done purposely so different IMAP clients would be compatible with each other -- and also compatible with most of the other Unix-type mail readers out there, such as Pine, Mutt, Eudora, ... > Somehow it seems hard to believe that something as widely used as IMAP > would have this rather basic limitation. The limitation is not nearly as drastic as you seem to think. You can move whole mailboxes between machines just by dragging them. I do this all the time to back up my mail. The biggest problem with switching between POP and IMAP is the paradigm shift. IMAP clients can do everything POP clients do, but they are also much more flexible. This flexibility causes the interface to be more complicated because you no longer have to just track local mailboxes, but you have to track mailboxes on other machines. I use IMAP because I read mail from several different machines, and even use different programs on the same machine. All my mailboxes and messages are the same, no matter what machine I read it from and what program I use. (This makes it really easy to switch e-mail programs, when a better one comes along.) For example, here's my typical setup. Most of my work mail comes into erdos.math.louisville.edu, forwarded from other accounts. Other work mail unfortunately appears on GroupWise, because it's so brain-dead that it can't forward properly; luckily, it has an IMAP interface. My personal mail gets forwarded to my Linux machine at home, which has an IMAP server installed. When I'm at work, my Mac, using Mail.app has those three accounts open all the time. I can read all the new mail in them right away, and I can transfer messages between mailboxes on them just by dragging. In fact, I have some filtering rules that transfer messages between the three accounts automatically. At home, I've lately been using Mulberry on the G4 desktop and Mail.app on the iBook. Both of them can open all three accounts, and I see the same mailboxes, no matter which machine I choose to use. When I'm traveling, I can still log into all three accounts and get at all my mail just as though I'm at home. | The next meeting of the Louisville Computer Society will | be February 25. The LCS Web page is <http://www.kymac.org>.
