[Dovecot] IMAP and webmail applications

[Tom Allison]

I've been hunting around for a webmail application other than 
squirrelmail for reasons that really don't matter.

But I'm seeing that a lot of these applications tend to sometimes access 
servers via IMAP, but they always seem to have a touch more information 
needed than might be for an IMAP session.

An example is openwebmail.  It authenticates very similar to how dovecot 
authenticates, with a userdb and passdb specifications.  It reads 
directly off the disk for some of it's activities.

As for squirrelmail, they seem to want a lot of information regarding 
the mail architecture (mbox, maildir, folder locations...) and I don't 
really see where this could come into play with an IMAP implimentation.

So, not actually having read all 82 pages of RFC 2060 (but I did print 
them!), I'm trying to see what I might miss if I were to attempt a web 
mail application that was based entirely upon IMAPv4 with the only 
information known prior to connection is the server name.  Kind of like 
my mail client.

Will I get into trouble with mail directories/folders if I start 
accessing different IMAP servers other than dovecot?  Can I discover 
this without any hints from the user?

I'm not sure exactly what I'm asking for here, other than some thoughts 
on what I might have to watch out for or do without (when comparing to 
squirrelmail as an example).  I know I'll have to do something different 
if someone wants an addressbook, but I'm not there yet.