[Dovecot] Possible to Customize File Naming Scheme?

[Dave Stubbs]

On 9/12/2011 12:22 PM, Timo Sirainen wrote:
> On 12.9.2011, at 19.10, Dave Stubbs wrote:
>
>> I'm watching how my mail system works, and I see that procmail creates a new file in the<folder>/new directory, each time an email is received.  This file is some complex combination of UIDs and things, suffixed by the server name.  So far, the filename has alphanumerics, a couple underscores, and a dot or two only.
>>
>> But once dovecot gets it's hands on the file and moves it to the<folder>/cur directory, it starts doing "terrible" things to the file name.  Now, the filename starts to have "evil" things in it, like colons and commas.  Is there a way to change this?
> That's how Maildir works to store message flags. If you don't like it, use something else.
Fair enough
>
>> I'm asking this primarily because I use dovecot as a massive long-term email archiving system.  One of the things one needs to be able to do when running a long-term archive like this is keep things as simple and accessible as possible.  The reason I use maildir is that I totally buy into the "one email, one file" idea - it means I don't have to store messages in big consolidated database files that are changeable with each new version of the vendor's software release (such as exchange DBs or Outlook PST files) or that are horrible performers (such as mbox).
> Dovecot v2.0's sdbox format could work for you.
>
>> One of the nice things about the maildir "each email is a separate file" idea is that you are not limited to maildir or dovecot or any other piece of software to handle, read, and process the files.
> Well, sdbox isn't good for that then anymore. Cydir backend could possibly work, although it is missing some features that dbox has and was mainly intended as an example code for super simple mailbox format.
Well, maybe sdbox could still work.  Just a quick question - what is the 
format of the u.* file?  Is it still a raw (possibly partially) 
mime-encoded file that contains the all-important From: line, just like 
a mail file in a maildir folder?  If so, I could sync the sdbox files 
elsewhere and index them if I could convince dovecot to use the filename 
scheme u.*.eml instead of u.*

Possible?  Or is the sdbox file format different?