On Sun, Mar 11, 2001 at 06:05:47PM -0500, John R. Levine wrote:
> >Putting the linecount in there makes more sense. Some MUAs might be happy
> >about that, and it still allows easy calculation of wiresize (add
> >number of lines to physical size). More info, less bytes :)
> >
> >> Optimally the wire-size is calculated when the mail is written to
> >> Maildir/tmp/ and then applied as an "info" flag when the file is moved
> >> to Maildir/new/.
> >
> >Yes. Mind the performance penalty tho.
>
> Not a bad idea.
Agreed. Line count is probably a more useful number as the other
values can be derived. I retract my POPsize suggestion in favour of
line count.
> The performance penalty would be tiny, reading buffers
> that are about to be written out won't cause an extra page fault.
I also agree that it's an acceptable CP cost to scan a buffer just
prior to writing. CP is cheap and plentiful on most qmail systems.
> >> A possible complication with this approach is that my reading of
> >> Maildir infers that "info" can only be set when the file moves from
> >> Maildir/new/ to Maildir/cur/.
> >
> >That's what the spec says, indeed. A delivery process is not supposed
> >to know anything, so :info is not needed in new/.
>
> Gee, we find that even Dan isn't infallible. In retrospect, there's all
> sorts of hints that the delivery process could leave.
Yep. And it probably wouldn't be too hard to change the standard
though I note that, eg, mutt totally ignores any existing "info"
values. But I'm willing to bet that they will change code if they see
a good reason and they will be especially interested in a change that
lets them know line count without scanning.
Regards.
