Re: [binc] Compatibility with other programs

On Thursday, May 12 at 08:12 PM, quoth Charles M. Gerungan:
>>>Will everything still work when using IMAPdir instead of maildir++?
>>
>>Depends on what you mean by work,
>
>Will maildrop still work? Will sqwebmail still work? Both are part of  
>the Courier family, which likes maildir++.

Maildrop works, yes. IMAPdir's are just collections of Maildir's, so 
maildrop will work as long as it continues to support Maildir. You just 
have to tell it where the Maildir's are (i.e. instead of just 
$HOME/Maildir/, new mail must be delivered to $HOME/IMAPdir/INBOX/).

Sqwebmail? I see no reason to think that it wouldn't work, unless it 
relies on specific Courier features. I haven't tried it myself (I'm a 
squirrelmail guy), but sqwebmail is just another web-based IMAP client 
(as far as I know). As long as it doesn't require any of the 
IMAP-extensions that courier supports (like the CHILDREN extension, for 
example) then it should be fine.

>>and on how you "shadow" the maildir directory.
>
>This will be a new box so I won't shadow anything. I agree that  
>wasn't clear in my OP.

Hmm. Well, as long as you can tell everything to use a different inbox 
than ~/Maildir/ then you're probably fine (and I can't think of a decent 
piece of software that you might use that wouldn't).

So, the key difference between Maildir++ and IMAPdir is subfolders. In 
Maildir++, subfolders are Maildirs that are placed in the filesystem 
hierarchy like so:

    Maildir/  <-------------------- inbox
    Maildir/.Folder/ <------------- subfolder
    Maildir/.Folder.Subfolder/ <--- subsubfolder

And IMAPdirs also use Maildir's for all the subfolders, but arrange them 
like this:

    IMAPdir/INBOX/  <-------------------- inbox
    IMAPdir/INBOX.Folder/  <------------- subfolder
    IMAPdir/INBOX.Folder.Subfolder/ <---- subsubfolder

For simple delivery and reading, it's easy enough to tell everything 
that has to work with the mail on the filesystem level that the inbox is 
somewhere new. The trick will be: does any piece of software that you 
use have to manipulate mail on the filesystem? And of that software, 
does any of it rely on how the folders are arranged?

In the list of software that you provided earlier, the only one that 
manipulates the mail at the filesystem level (AFAIK) is maildrop, and I 
know for a fact that maildrop can easily be configured to deliver to 
IMAPdir folders trivially. If you were migrating a Maildir system to 
IMAPdir, then you might possibly have scripts or other bits and bobs of 
software that rely on folders being arranged a particular way. But since 
you're starting fresh, I don't think you'll have too much trouble.

Now, I was oversimplifying when I said that the only difference between 
IMAPdir and Maildir is the folder layout. The other difference that I 
know about (and I'm pretty sure that's it) is how quota information is 
stored. In the realm of quota information, however, only two pieces of 
software need to know the details of how it works: the thing that 
delivers mail, and the thing that deletes mail. Since you're using Binc, 
it obviously knows how quotas work in IMAPdir, and anything that reads 
mail through Binc will too. For delivery... I don't know. I'd be 
surprised if maildrop understood Maildir++ quotas, much less IMAPdir 
quotas, and qmail certainly doesn't understand either one. But that's 
for someone more knowledgeable than me to help you with.

~Kyle
-- 
When the people fear the government, there is tyranny; when the 
government fears the people, there is liberty.
-- Thomas Jefferson

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