[Dovecot] Gmail like virtual mailboxes

[Timo Sirainen]

On Fri, 2011-06-10 at 08:57 +0200, Aleve Sicofante wrote:
> I'm new to this list so let me introduce myself: I'm a computer
> literate user (I've done some C programming long ago and can run a
> Linux system and do some light admin), I've never installed a mail
> server before and I'm in the process of migrating my family and my
> small business from Gmail (Google Apps) to a virtual server mainly for
> privacy reasons. I'm in love with Gmail's label system and I just
> plain hate traditional folders. I use hierarchical labels (as if they
> were folders but with a message belonging to many at the same time)
> and that MUST be preserved in the migration. I've looked at Courier's
> IMAP keywords implementation and it looks good, but everyone on the
> internet is recommending Dovecot, so here I am.

I've thought about making this easy some day, but it's a lot of work.

> I've tried hard to find information about using unlimited hierarchical
> labels, virtual mailboxes or any other way of mimicing Gmail's
> functionality with Dovecot, but I'm lost.
> 
> First of all: can it be done?

Not easily. You could create one virtual Dovecot folder for each IMAP
keyword, but the client side would be problematic. You'd need to have
some way of setting the keywords, and just about no clients support
that. I guess another way of setting keywords could be by using the
regular "copy message" feature of clients, where instead of actually
copying it would just set a keyword.

Another problem is that keywords are a very restricted subset of ASCII.
There have been talk in imap-protocol mailing list about expanding this
a few weeks ago.