Hello, this is my first post to the list. I have several mailservers running courier-imap, but am planning to
convert one (and maybe more) to dovecot 1.1.4. In the process I am
also looking to finally implement shared maildirs. As it is well known some clients (notable Apple's Mail) have problems
in showing shared folders if the correct private namespace (INBOX) is
set in the client, as only folders beneath the INBOX root are displayed. I have seen some solutions proposed, but none satisfactory.

As the problem stems in the invisibility of secondary namespaces from
Mail.app, I though that tricking the namespace prefix to push the
shared mailboxes inside the private INBOX namespace could be a
solution and tried the following:

namespace public { separator = . prefix = INBOX.Public. inbox = no location = maildir:/SharedMaildirs/Public:CONTROL=~/Maildir/ control/Public:INDEX=~/Maildir/index/Public hidden = yes list = yes subscriptions = yes }

note the bogus INBOX.Public prefix.

Note also that CONTROL might be better not set as this is a Maildir
(see Keyword sharing in http://wiki.dovecot.org/SharedMailboxes)

Initially I had defined an additional public namespace with the same
maildir and a normal prefix, but this seems not necessary.

Well, after some tests from Thunderbird, Mail and cone (yes, the
courier UA) I can say it works . Still have to check Outlook and
Opera, but this is encouraging.

As the public namespace Public is actually contained inside the
private (INBOX), as if it was a private mailbox (with no messages)
called Public, it is actually possible to create such a mailbox inside
INBOX and end up with a private mailbox called Public containing
private messages AND public mailboxes... Any mailbox that a user
creats inside Public instead, will end up being a public mailbox as
expected.

Thanks or any comments.

Giuliano