Michael Collette wrote: > To summarize what I'm suggesting let's start with a message on a server > with an attachment. User is accessing via a POP3 account. > > 1. Mozilla downloads the entire message. > 2. The attachment is decoded and stored on the hard drive in a directory > underneath /Mail called /Attach. > 3. Where the attachment was in the original message a text link is placed > instead pointing to the once attached file. The link is relative to > the /Mail directory. > > Very nearly any E-Mail client can recognize a "file//" link as this is > fairly standard. If the links are kept relative to the /Mail folder this > should work across platforms and mail clients.
This would be unmanageable. It requires the mail client to have knowledge of the link. How will the link get updated if the attachment or message is moved to another location? If mozilla has code added to monitor these changes and act on them, it has moved to a proprietary mail format. It doesn't matter if the file "validates" as an mbox, for all practical purposes, it is broken. I don't think users want to be prevented from organizing their mail, and I know that I certainly don't want to use a mail client that forces me to adopt a format that is incompatible with other mail clients. The key obstacle to your proposal is that it interferes with portability. mbox requires no conversion. If I decide to switch to another client, or back up/restore my mail, I don't want to use conversion utilities. I just want to copy the mbox files. That is exactly what I did when I switched from POP to IMAP. Once again, we arrive at the fundamental fact that there is nothing wrong with the way mozilla stores mail or with the format it uses. Leaving the attachments in the mbox is not inherently dangerous. By switching your user to Eudora, you still haven't solved his problem. Without properly configuring his AV software, who knows where the damage will occur next? What if it decides it doesn't like the look of his registry? Are you going to switch him to Linux? I hope so. That would end this discussion. ;)
