On Thursday, Mar 6, 2003, at 10:15 US/Central, Juri Haberland wrote:

Juri, I *think* he's saying that the messages are named something like the following: (conceptually, at least... I have no idea how they're actually named :)

Say for instance the webmail user creates a folder named 'FooBar' and puts 2 messages in it, as well as a folder named 'FooBar/Xanthes' and puts 1 message in it, and finally that the user has 3 messages still in their Inbox.

The server would then have 1 mail directory for the user, which might look *some*thing like this:

INBOX--siaeve78vae@afeie%vaeleijrf FooBar--laieva9av.a40%avelvijef^alevejfih@aseflj INBOX--jljefal@a.lieje^laejif INBOX--9jjlf3l3%lijave399v.ellaf FooBar.Xanthes--ljklaie9937vaelkjali%lijaeslj FooBar--iuewnnv78eiou%oiuvalen.ievj0

...where the stuff following "--" (my example delimiter) in each file name is a unique identifier of some sort used by the mail system; and the text preceding the "--" in the file name, is the webmail folder name that the message is associated with.

(Of course, the naming convention itself is sure to be different, but you get the idea.)

Here the webmail server recognizes the folder names prepended to their unique identifiers and shows them separated appropriately into folders, but the POP server merely sees 6 message files all contained in the POP server's idea of a mailbox... which means it could allow unified access to them all.

Is that what you mean, Tom?

If so, then... No. I don't think any IMAP system is currently using such a mail format. -- And assuming I'm right in that belief, I further believe that you would have to do some moderate-to-serious (re-)programming to make an IMAP server (such as courier) understand such a format.

It is effectively a new (and quite distinct) variation on the Maildir concept -- if my interpretation of what you mean is at all correct.

-James