On Tue, Sep 22, 2020 at 06:30:52PM +0100, Chris Green <c...@isbd.net> wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 22, 2020 at 05:46:53PM +0100, Chris Green wrote: > > Does mutt still use the (IMHO silly) maildir hierarchy where mail > > 'folders' are simply represented by another '.' and name in the > > maildir directory name? > > > > Is there some way I can get to use real directories to represent my > > hierarchy of mail? I manually rearrange my mail sometimes and to deal > > with very long directory names isn't really practical. For example I > > might decide to move mail as follows:- > > > > ~/Mail/folder/travel/zelmaFrance > > > > to > > > > ~/Mail/folder/travel/france/zelma > > > > With real directories such a move isn't too difficult but with the > > default maildir naming it becomes painful. > > > > Some software I believe does work the way I want with maildir but the > > dotted hierarchy seems to be becoming the standard. Is there no way > > round this? I'd really like to move to maildir but I really can't see > > it being practical for me as it is. > > > I just run mb2md on my existing mail folders, I ended up with a single > directory (~/Maildir) containing 2354 files mostly with ridiculously > long names! This just isn't a sensible way to organise my mail. > > -- > Chris Green I might be talking nonsense, but that maildir hierarchy probably is the correct thing, as defined by whoever came up with it, and is what is needed for all(?) mail software that deals with maildir to work. But if you want to manipulate the hierarchy separately from mail software, and still have all mail software work correctly, you might be able to implement (or convince someone to implement) a userspace fuse file system that provides an alternative view of the real maildir file system, that can be mounted alongside the real maildir directory. Then, whatever mail software you want to use can work with the real maildir hierarchy, and you can manipulate it in the way you want outside of mail software. I have no idea how much effort would be involved in such a fuse file system, though. An alternative, if the only problem is renaming folders, is to write a shell script or something that renames maildir folders. That would be a lot less effort. But I really don't know what I'm talking about. I use mbox. Perhaps you can rename/move folders in a mail client and then you don't need to look at the guts underneath. That would be the easiest way. I know that GUI IMAP clients can do that. Can mutt do that? I found this: https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/44508/mutt-rename-imap-folder cheers, raf
