Rich Gray wrote: > Alex Baer wrote: >> >> Re-creation of index files was unfortunately not done instantly in >> earlier versions. For large mbox files it takes ages. The whole concept >> slows down actions, such as copying 500 messages from one folder to >> another one significantly. It takes so long, at times, that I guess, the >> index is recreated for every single message. May I expect that Seamonkey >> has become a bit smarter here in recent incarnations? > > Indexing and copying operations will be slower with mdir. For mbox, > only a single file per folder must be indexed. With mdir, each message > is a file, so in your 500 message folder example, there would be 500 file > opens and closes. That's a heck of a lot more overhead. Same for the > copy. 1000 opens and closes. Mbox should be much faster for such things. > > In my mind, the advantage for mdir is with incremental backups, like > Apple Time Machine and search mechanisms like Spotlight. Receiving > a new message means that only that new file need be backed up, instead > of the whole folder's worth of data. Presenting messages to Spotlight > is hard in the many messages/file mbox format. >
Is there really an index for maildir needed? I assume, maildir would work quite well without an index, because each message is a file, and every file has an "index" in the file system. In fact, I don't see index files in maildir filesystem folders. Also, I would assume, that reading and processing multiple message files can be done in parallel on modern systems, while mbox probably only allows sequential processing. Not sure, if mail clients supporting maildir really read and process multiple messages in parallel, though, frankly. Regardless, if my assumptions above are correct, my experience is, that KMail is quite a bit faster working on folders with many thousands of messages than Seamonkey Mail. But I have to add, that operations where this speed difference becomes evident, are rarely used, such as copying large bunches of mails between mail folders. So it's noticeably, but not something that would prevent anyone from using Seamonkey Mail. Regards, Alex _______________________________________________ support-seamonkey mailing list [email protected] https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/support-seamonkey
