Special-Use Mailboxes ?

[Per Jessen]

Michael M Slusarz wrote:

> Quoting Per Jessen <per at computer.org>:
> 
>> I'm trying to get my head around this - the special_use flag is given
>> out to an IMAP client as a _hint_ of where certain messages belong?
> 
> Yes.  There's no guarantee that any of the messages currently in that
> mailbox adhere to that attribute though, so you can't make assumptions
> about any individual message.  But from a configuration perspective,
> it can be useful to at least provide a better default value(s) than a
> MUA-specific hard-coded value.

Right, thanks.

>> If that's correct, what would be the purpose of having two (or more)
>> such hints for e.g. \Sent ?
> 
> We allow different "identities" to be configured in our client -- e.g.
> I send out messages under a number of different
> e-mail/header/signatures.  It is *very* handy to have the sent-mail
> messages saved to a different mailbox for each identity. The RFC 
> defines the \Sent flag to include any mailbox "used to hold copies of
> messages that have been sent."  By this definition, each mailbox
> should be flagged with \Sent.
> 
> Or you have an existing account that contains pre-existing "Sent",
> "Sent Mail", and "sentmail" mailboxes.  All of those are valid sent
> mailboxes under the \Sent definition.

Yes, that would be an example - I have at least 6 different names
for "Sent", some accounts use three or even four.  I gather support of
these hints is still quite limited, but I'm still struggling with
understanding what good multiple hints of e.g. "Sent" is to a client? 
Is the hint also used to identify places to look for sent mail? 

Interesting stuff - now what about the actual problem of mapping
multiple such mailboxes into one?  My immediate thought
was "symlinks" - would that work?  


-- 
Per Jessen, Zürich (12.9°C)
http://www.hostsuisse.com/ - virtual servers, made in Switzerland.