On Wed, Sep 23, 2020 at 09:44:22AM +1000, raf wrote: > 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. > The only things dealing with the maildirs are my own mail filter written in Python and mutt, nothing else.
Way back when maildir first appeared and I used qmail the way I want things to work was the way it *did* work. It's the maildir++ thing that's broken it. > 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 > No IMAP, no POP3. :-) -- Chris Green
