[Dovecot] Mail disappearing

[Chris Green]

On Tue, Aug 09, 2005 at 10:46:57PM +0100, Paul Tansom wrote:
> Please don't scare the wotsits out of me, I've just abandoned Courier
> IMAP for two reasons:
> 
> 1) it seems incapable of handling subfolders anywhere but below the
> Inbox and the only help suggested is that I should ask the people
> writing my mail client to fix it - so that covers Microsoft (x2),
> Mozilla (x2), Eudora, Evolution and Squirrel mail for starters!
> 
Of course it can't because it uses the brain-dead convention of
folders all being files at the same level with '.' separators in the
filenames indicating folders.

Thus a folder called 'holidays' is actually a directory called
'INBOX.holidays' and a folder called 'holidays/france' is a directory
called 'INBOX.holidays.france'.  Why any sort of mail server would
want to construct a folder hierarchy like this I can never understand.
It's not just Courier either, there are a few maildir based servers
which do it.

(I'm not absolutely sure that the directories have the INBOX stuck on
the front but however it's done they have to be all rooted in the same
place because of the stupid idea of using '.' in the name rather than
a really separate directory)

-- 
Chris Green (chris at areti.co.uk)

    "Never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by incompetence."