On Thu, May 15, 2025 at 02:25:44PM -0700, Will Yardley wrote:
It's interesting that in replies, Mutt uses >From escaping, though in
the actual raw mbox file, it's not present.
No, you're confusing two different uses of '>' at the beginning of a line.
A reply can quote the original message, and when it does, and the reply
is plain text, then each line of the quoted text is preceded with '>',
to mark it as a quote. This convention originated in Usenet, long ago.
It has nothing to do with file formats.
You can see that in this message: in your text, quoted above, each line
is preceded with '>'.
">From " quoting is part of mbox file format, done to...well, read this:
<http://www.panix.com/~kh/mailstorage/>
This page:
https://www.loc.gov/preservation/digital/formats/fdd/fdd000383.shtml
has some details.
https://www.loc.gov/preservation/digital/formats/fdd/fdd000386.shtml
mentions MBOXCL and MBOXCL2 dating back to SYSVr4. So, if that's the
case, that may have been the widely understood "mbox" used well before
Mutt was first written?
Sure.
mboxo 1974
Berkeley mbox 1978?
mboxcl2 SYSVr4, 1985?
Rahul Dhesi mbox 1995
The Library of Congress stuff you cite above, and what it links to[1],
are correct, except they leave out the Berkeley variant. There have
also been many other minor variants, done for not much reason.
[1]
<https://web.archive.org/web/20161023162432/jdebp.eu/FGA/mail-mbox-formats.html>
