On Fri, Nov 27, 2009 at 01:06:04PM -0800, Joshua Juran wrote: > On Nov 27, 2009, at 10:04 AM, Simon Wistow wrote: > >> On Fri, Nov 27, 2009 at 01:29:26PM +0000, Roger Burton West said: >>> I should like to find the person who decided that since "bookmarks" >>> and >>> "history" were both lists of URLs they ought to be integrated in a >>> single database. I should like to shake him warmly by the throat >>> until >>> his head comes off. >> >> ObJWZ: http://www.jwz.org/doc/mailsum.html > > The loosely related formats specified only vaguely (or not at all) and > known collectively as 'mbox' are too broken to live. > > From what I've seen, at any rate. I don't care how long it's been in use > -- "we've always done it this way" is no excuse for data corruption. And > yes, inserting garbage characters into my mail because mbox uses a common > English term as a record separator counts as data corruption, especially > when it's the same character used for quoting. > > Horribly, horribly broken. Although the format's broken isn't half as > hateful as the community's complacency allowing it to persist. > > Josh
True, but I prefer that kind of corruption to the corruption I experienced every 2 weeks or so when I tried out the joys known as Entourage and Thunderbird. mbox sure sucks, but other people seem to manage to suck more. Currently I'm trying out maildir with offlineimap, but the cost of processing thousands of independent files can suck too. -josh
