[Dovecot] Not using "." as separator?

[Grant Edwards]

On 2008-03-06, Timo Sirainen <tss at iki.fi> wrote:
> On Thu, 2008-03-06 at 16:25 +0000, Grant Edwards wrote:
>> > then standard Maildir++ utilities are likely to get confused
>> > because a folder known to the client as "a.b" will appear in
>> > the filesystem with a name of 'a\2eb'.
>> 
>> That's a pain.
>
> With v1.1 you could use a "normal" directory layout for maildirs as well
> with:
>
> mail_location = maildir:~/Maildir:LAYOUT=fs

That will be wonderful!  

I never really understood why people decided to try to emulate
a filesystem using special characters in filenames. I don't
know if that originated in the maildir camp or the IMAP server
camp, but it's always been a real hassle for those of us who
accessed thing both directly via local mail clients (who don't
tread "." as special) and via an IMAP server (which does tread
"." as special).  Were either maildir or IMAP servers really
intended to run on an OS that didn't have such a thing as
directories/folders/whatever?

Right now I've switched everything to mbox format to avoid the
"." pitfall, but one of my local clients only understands
maildir and IMAP, so I had to switch it over to use
imap://localhost/.  It all works, but having to use IMAP to
access files that are right there in ~/Mail bugs me. :)

-- 
Grant Edwards                   grante             Yow! Did I say I was
                                  at               a sardine?  Or a bus???
                               visi.com