On Tue, Sep 29, 2020 at 08:30:42AM +0100, Chris Green wrote: > On Mon, Sep 28, 2020 at 07:01:25PM -0500, Derek Martin wrote: > > On Sat, Sep 26, 2020 at 08:29:22PM +0100, Chris Green wrote: > > > > > This is by no means a show stopper, I'm going to stay with maildir, > > > > > but it woud be nice to be able to improve it a bit. > > > > > > > > I'd recommend using a "maildir browser" which knows how to interpret the > > > > information you're looking for (and which mutt is very good at). > > > > > > > ?? I'm a bit lost here, you recommend a "maildir browser" and say "... > > > which mutt is very good at", so is mutt a maildir browser? > > > > Translation: The file browser is for files (and directories, which are > > also files, albeit special ones) and tells you information that is > > generally useful for file-things. For mail, use the message index > > and/or the sidebar. Most directories *are not* mail folders, and > > therefore attempting to display information useful for mail folders on > > directories in the file browser is the Wrong Thing™. > > Yes, but maildir 'mailboxes' *are* directories [...]
No, actually, they aren't. They're an abstraction that is composed of a multi-level directory structure, which as you have seen can be structured a couple different ways. The file browser is not intended to deal with that... it's for dealing with files, and allowing you to navigate around the file system. Sometimes that is so that you can select folders that happen to contain mail, like when you're using the change folder command, and other times it has absolutely nothing to do with that, like when you're saving file attachments. > and when I navigate to one in mutt the date is the date the > directory was created (nothing to do with the date(s) of the latest > mail in there) and no sizes or anything are displayed. Correct. Updating the message files will update its parent directory, but the maildir's top-level directory is not that directory. It's cur, or new, or tmp... Adding a sub-folder would, however, update the maildir's top-level directory. > For example I have a directory /home/chris/mail/folder/apexLodge/agm > which is a maildir:- > > chris@esprimo$ ls -l /home/chris/mail/folder/apexLodge/agm > total 12 > drwx------ 2 chris chris 4096 Sep 25 12:38 cur > drwx------ 2 chris chris 4096 Sep 25 12:38 new > drwx------ 2 chris chris 4096 Sep 25 12:38 tmp > chris@esprimo$ [...] > I have 'set folder_format="%N %-32.32f %m %n"'. I did have a date as > well but all that shows is 'Sep 25' the date of creation of the > maildir which is no use at all, it's just the date that the maildir was > created nothing to do with the dates of mail inside tne maildir. Yup. > The same place in a mbox hierarchy shows me the size of the maibox and > the date of the last change. You're looking at this all wrong. It's purely a side effect of how the mailbox abstraction is represented: you get that only because they just happen to be files--exactly what the file browser was meant to handle. You can't expect that different implementations of the abstraction will always have the exact same properties. If the mail was instead in a database, it would completely defy external inspection via file browser, though of course the file browser would still let you navigate to the on-disk files that comprised the database (assuming they're not on some sort of database-specific partition, like Oracle or other databases may use). You could get a hint about its size, but depending on the implementation, you may have no way to know what portion of those files comprised the database's indexes, views, internal structures, or other implementation-specific details. Different implementations have different properties, which provide different advantages and disadvantages. Maildir is not mbox. If you want mbox behavior, use mbox. -- Derek D. Martin http://www.pizzashack.org/ GPG Key ID: 0xDFBEAD02 -=-=-=-=- This message is posted from an invalid address. Replying to it will result in undeliverable mail due to spam prevention. Sorry for the inconvenience.
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