>It was probably Pike that said a cache is bugs waiting to happen. :-) I'm not disagreeing, but ...
>Maildir seems ill-suited to MH's needs as an `emails are files, use >Unix' store. But then that wasn't its aim. Does the rest of the world >just need IMAP access to the emails, e.g. for webmail? Perhaps >corrupting MH for Maildir is the wrong way around. Perhaps altering >MH's store to have fast scan as well as rmm, and have an IMAP server >that understands that new format, and how it can change under its feet, >is simpler. Here is my $0.02 on that topic. I'm fine with speeding up MH's store; that sound great! But ... I do not think adapting an existing or writing a new IMAP server for this "better, faster, stronger" MH store is a good idea. First, that was attempted already, with UW-IMAP. That project is now defunct, and Paul was one of the people who tried to keep the MH interface going; everyone said that it worked, but it wasn't great. >From what I'm hearing the the fundamental problem was an impedence mismatch between what IMAP needed and what the MH mailstore provided. Paul has been nibbling around the edges of saying this, but I would summarize his OVERALL point is that MH/nmh is used by a tiny, TINY fraction of email users, the way people use email has been changing, we're not keeping up, and this path isn't sustainable. I know how old _I_ am, and I'm a youngster compared to some of the other MH users out there :-) I think that maybe a few die-hards out there might still be happy with nmh as their primary email reader, but I think that the best growth opportunity for nmh is to be one of several tools you would use to access your mailbox. One of nmh's big weakness now is that you have to suck your email into its mailstore and once you put it in the MH mailstore not too many clients can get access to it (I am aware of some other MUAs which claim to support the MH mailstore, but every one I have looked at involves some compromises). And when I say "growth", I just don't mean more users (although that would be nice), but being MORE USEFUL would sure be great. Now I am not suggesting that we replace the MH mailstore with Maildir; that doesn't seem such a great idea to me. But supporting Maildir and IMAP sure seems like a no-brainer to me; that makes nmh MORE USEFUL to people. That gains us interoperability with other clients, and that means people aren't stuck with just using nmh, they can use whatever MUA they want in addition to nmh. As for providing our own IMAP server ... ugh. First, if our "IMAP support" means you have to run your OWN IMAP server, I think that's a massive failure on our part. Secondly, who is writing that code, exactly? An IMAP server is not exactly a small amount of code. I don't see other IMAP servers accepting patches for new mailstores, because like Paul said we are probably only of historical interest at this point. --Ken -- Nmh-workers https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/nmh-workers
