On Thu, 02 May 2002 03:03:23 +0200, Friedrich Lobenstock wrote: > So please be so kind and elaborate a bit why dual-use mailboxes > make life harder for imap complient clients.
The IMAP protocol has a mechanism to determine whether a mailbox is dual-use or not. Broken clients do not use this mechanism and instead assume that all mailboxes are dual-use. They break in wierd ways when a mailbox is not dual use. Some even require the user to set a configuration option to say "this server does not have dual-use mailboxes" which half-works to undo the brokenness. Good clients understand when a mailbox is dual-use and when it is not. However, when a mailbox is dual-use, it becomes more complicated for the user. The user can no longer select a name and have it open a list of subordinate names (directory) or open a message browser (mailbox). Instead, the user now has to choose between commands to either open the name as a directory or open it as mailbox. The result is extra complexity and confusion for the user. We see this frequently in Pine when the user switches servers to a server. Suddenly, the user is confronted with usage complexity that he never experienced before The design of the UW server is to maintain compatibility with UNIX conventions and traditions. Above all, the traditional UNIX format support is focused on compatibility with the past 30 years of UNIX mail history. mbx, although not a legacy format, by design shares many of the same attributes including compatible naming with traditional UNIX format. There are other servers which do not have the goal of compatibility with UNIX conventions and traditions. If incompatibility is a closer match to your needs, then you should consider those servers.
