Steffen Kaiser wrote:
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On Wed, 12 Nov 2008, Daniel L. Miller wrote:
I don't if this has been discussed before - or already implemented -
but it would be great if I could define one or more "aliases" for a
folder. A particular example might be "Sent" where different
(badly-written) clients might have hard-coded "Sent" folder locations
like "Sent", "Sent Items", "Sent Mail", "Mail Delivered", etc. - and
I'd love to get those consolidated.
It would also be nice to show a different set of folders based on the
client - or if that's not possible (if the client doesn't identify
itself as part of the login sequence) then somehow via login name -
maybe by an extension? So where my usual login might be
"[EMAIL PROTECTED]", and that would continue to be supported as the
default login, I could now have "[EMAIL PROTECTED]",
"[EMAIL PROTECTED]", etc.?
Because the IMAP client does not identify itself, the server does not
know, which alias to return to the client. I'm not convinced that the
extension method you describe will be widely accepted.
"Widely accepted"? Not sure what you meant - or I guess I didn't
express myself well. In my own case, for a particular reason that
seemed justified at the time, my mail user names are the complete mail
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (even though I'm really only doing one domain). My
intent was that whatever the user name as defined in the database used
by Dovecot - could then have appended or inserted or whatever some
identifier flag that Dovecot would use in selecting the folders to share
with the client. So I'm asking for a Dovecot-specific modification to
be made to Dovecot - followed by implementation instructions for the
clients. I wasn't aware of any particular limitations on mail usernames
imposed by clients - but if there are, we should certainly that into
account.
I definitely would like a solution for this problem as well.
But if the server would return all aliases, most recent clients will
at least download all headers from all of them (not knowing about that
they are all equal); if the server would return just one alias, the
client would assume that its folder has been deleted and redownload
the sent message as soon as the folder re-appears.
At a very simple level - so it's system wide, not per-user, would
include a database similar to the following:
Default Extension: TBird
TBird: -Sent-Items, -Composing, -Posted
Mobile: Sent-Items=Sent, Composing=Drafts
Mutt: Posted=Sent, Writing=Drafts
PMail: Flown=Sent, Droppings=Trash
Now when a client connects, Dovecot parses the username. If no
extension is present, Dovecot applies the filters defined as the
default. Otherwise, based on the extension, perform the appropriate
folder name conversion. The first line I showed goes beyond translation
and would allow for specific folder "hiding" based on the client -
perhaps if there was a dedicated-purpose folder for a particular client
that there is no translation for in other clients (perhaps a
special-function junk folder or something).
--
Daniel
