Re: [Dovecot] Running a dovecot IMAPS server

[Charles Marcus]

On 9/24/2007, Scott Silva ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote:

I want something, that would allow me to do this -
1) different custom quote lines and different rules of using either 
full quote or just the latest message in the thread,

based on the account I'm using (I have 4 accounts configured in TB)

2) I want custom quote line, that would have date and time of the 
message am replying to.

Something like "On %DATE% %SENDER% wrote:"


This is configruable in Thunderbird but you must edit configs 
directly.


http://www.mozilla.org/support/thunderbird/tips


This would only get him #2, I don't see any way to get #1 - custom quote 
headers that are different for each account, much less be able to 
include quoted text for all messages in a thread (in TBird, replies are 
specific to one message only).


As I said before Quickquote will get him partly the way there...

--

Best regards,

Charles

Re: [Dovecot] Running a dovecot IMAPS server

[Scott Silva]

FiL @ Kpoxa spake the following on 9/24/2007 2:36 PM:

Charles Marcus wrote:

On 9/21/2007, FiL @ Kpoxa ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote:

I know this is totally unrelated to this topic, but...
Is there any extension to create and use templates?


? Just 'Save as' > Template...
Save as Template just save a message, but it doesn't allow you to use 
variables, use different templates, based on the action (reply, forward, 
new)

and so on.



I don't like " wrote:" in my reply messages and would
prefer some custom templates, that would be different for different
accounts.


Oh... maybe you meant 'custom quote line' instead of 'template'?

Quickquote can do this to an extent (not to mention its killer, 
couldn't-live-without-it feature, 'Quote only selected text')...

I want something, that would allow me to do this -
1) different custom quote lines and different rules of using either full 
quote or just the latest message in the thread,

based on the account I'm using (I have 4 accounts configured in TB)

2) I want custom quote line, that would have date and time of the 
message am replying to.

Something like "On %DATE% %SENDER% wrote:"


This is configruable in Thunderbird but you must edit configs directly.

http://www.mozilla.org/support/thunderbird/tips



3) I want cursor positioned AFTER quoted message automatically.

Most of the FIDO mailers back in 1990 had this functionality. I've seen 
some kind of Outlook Express add-on, that had something like that.

But there is nothing current and nothing that works with TB.


Thunderbird will also position after the quotes. Set it in account settings



Well, anyway, thank you for trying to help.

FiL






--

MailScanner is like deodorant...
You hope everybody uses it, and
you notice quickly if they don't

Re: [Dovecot] Running a dovecot IMAPS server

[FiL @ Kpoxa]

Charles Marcus wrote:

On 9/21/2007, FiL @ Kpoxa ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote:

I know this is totally unrelated to this topic, but...
Is there any extension to create and use templates?


? Just 'Save as' > Template...
Save as Template just save a message, but it doesn't allow you to use 
variables, use different templates, based on the action (reply, forward, 
new)

and so on.



I don't like " wrote:" in my reply messages and would
prefer some custom templates, that would be different for different
accounts.


Oh... maybe you meant 'custom quote line' instead of 'template'?

Quickquote can do this to an extent (not to mention its killer, 
couldn't-live-without-it feature, 'Quote only selected text')...

I want something, that would allow me to do this -
1) different custom quote lines and different rules of using either full 
quote or just the latest message in the thread,

based on the account I'm using (I have 4 accounts configured in TB)

2) I want custom quote line, that would have date and time of the 
message am replying to.

Something like "On %DATE% %SENDER% wrote:"

3) I want cursor positioned AFTER quoted message automatically.

Most of the FIDO mailers back in 1990 had this functionality. I've seen 
some kind of Outlook Express add-on, that had something like that.

But there is nothing current and nothing that works with TB.

Well, anyway, thank you for trying to help.

FiL

Re: [Dovecot] Running a dovecot IMAPS server

[Troy Engel]

FiL @ Kpoxa wrote:



I know this is totally unrelated to this topic, but...
Is there any extension to create and use templates? I don't like "name> wrote:" in my reply messages and would prefer

some custom templates, that would be different for different accounts.


This might not be exactly what you need but then again it might be - I 
use an extension named Clippings:


  https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/1347

When you're in the compose window, rightclick on an empty space in the 
text editing area and choose Clippings. I have templates for all sorts 
of things (new hire welcome message with company info, for instance) 
that save me a lot of time.


-te

--
Troy Engel | Systems Engineer
Fluid, Inc | http://www.fluid.com

Re: [Dovecot] Running a dovecot IMAPS server

[Bill Cole]

At 4:18 PM +0100 9/21/07, Timothy Murphy wrote:

On Fri 21 Sep 2007, Bill Cole wrote:


 It's a very bad idea for a mail client running on the same host as an
 IMAP server to try to access the same mailstore via the filesystem.


I don't know what you mean by "the same mailstore".
KMail on my laptop has a Local account, and an IMAPS account.
The Local account, which I rarely use, accesses messages on the laptop
(such as system messages).
the IMAPS account accesses messages on the desktop.
This seems to me to work perfectly.


I'm sorry, I clearly misunderstood your previous post.
--
Bill Cole
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: [Dovecot] Running a dovecot IMAPS server

[Charles Marcus]

On 9/21/2007, FiL @ Kpoxa ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote:

I know this is totally unrelated to this topic, but...
Is there any extension to create and use templates?


? Just 'Save as' > Template...


I don't like " wrote:" in my reply messages and would
prefer some custom templates, that would be different for different
accounts.


Oh... maybe you meant 'custom quote line' instead of 'template'?

Quickquote can do this to an extent (not to mention its killer, 
couldn't-live-without-it feature, 'Quote only selected text')...


--

Best regards,

Charles

Re: [Dovecot] Running a dovecot IMAPS server

[FiL @ Kpoxa]

Charles Marcus wrote:
1. No proper 'Signature Manager' (yes, I've seen and used the 
Signature extensions (Signature, Signature Switch, etc), but they 
still require you to manually create the sigs first. This is a 
*glaring* lack in my opinion...


2. Monolithic message storage... this is still a biggie to me, but I 
can live with it...



I know this is totally unrelated to this topic, but...
Is there any extension to create and use templates? I don't like "name> wrote:" in my reply messages and would prefer

some custom templates, that would be different for different accounts.
Thanks,

FiL

Re: [Dovecot] Running a dovecot IMAPS server

[Charles Marcus]

Does KMail actually work this way? This would be enough to make me 
try it out... although my day to day WS is a windows box, so I'd most 
likely wait until KDE4 is available on Windows...


Offtopic to the left -- before I switched to using GMail for my 
personal mail, I used to use Sylpheed ( http://sylpheed.sraoss.jp/en/ 
) and it stores messages in a MH format (a file-per-message design 
somewhat like Maildir) and it can import mbox files from Thunderbird. 
The client itself is very nice too, I remember really liking it a lot.


Bonus: Win32 binaries are also available. 


I tried it a long time ago, but it was still really buggy on Windows...

I do remember that its interface didn't seem to be nearly as polished 
(being that it was GTK based).


But, like I said - with TBirds extensions capability, I really don't see 
myself moving away. There are only two big things baout it I don't like:


1. No proper 'Signature Manager' (yes, I've seen and used the Signature 
extensions (Signature, Signature Switch, etc), but they still require 
you to manually create the sigs first. This is a *glaring* lack in my 
opinion...


2. Monolithic message storage... this is still a biggie to me, but I can 
live with it...


--

Best regards,

Charles

Re: [Dovecot] Running a dovecot IMAPS server

[Troy Engel]

Charles Marcus wrote:


Does KMail actually work this way? This would be enough to make me try 
it out... although my day to day WS is a windows box, so I'd most likely 
wait until KDE4 is available on Windows...


Offtopic to the left -- before I switched to using GMail for my personal 
mail, I used to use Sylpheed ( http://sylpheed.sraoss.jp/en/ ) and it 
stores messages in a MH format (a file-per-message design somewhat like 
Maildir) and it can import mbox files from Thunderbird. The client 
itself is very nice too, I remember really liking it a lot.


Bonus: Win32 binaries are also available.

hth,
-te

--
Troy Engel | Systems Engineer
Fluid Inc. | http://www.fluid.com

Re: [Dovecot] Running a dovecot IMAPS server

[FiL @ Kpoxa]

Timothy Murphy wrote:

I don't use KMail on my desktop, except as an experiment,
but when I do there do not appear to be any problems.
My Local folders are kept in directories ~/Mail/Folder1/[cur,new,tmp[/
and are not seen by IMAPS.
My IMAPS folders are kept in directories ~/Maildir/.Folder2/[cur,new,tmp]/
and are not seen my kmail.
  


If Local folders are under ~/Mail/  - this is OK.
But you were saying your local messages are under ~/Maildir/ - the same 
as dovecot-accessed.

And this is wrong. This might be working fine, but still, this is wrong.


FiL

Re: [Dovecot] Running a dovecot IMAPS server

[Charles Marcus]

On 9/21/2007, Bill Cole ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote:
A mailer shouldn't expect to be able to both work directly with a 
Maildir mailstore through the filesystem and with an IMAP server that 
is accessing the same mailstore. 


Absolutely... but one thing that I have wished for is 'maildir-like' 
support (ie, storing messages locally one file per message) in TBird for 
the local/cached messages/folder, so that I could delete a single email 
on the local side to force it to be redownloaded, rather than having to 
delete the entire mbox file, thus forcing TBird to have to redownload 
*all* email for that folder again (in some cases thousands of messages, 
and Gigabytes of data, if you are keeping local copies for 'off-line' 
access).


The word is it would take a major rewrite of TBird, so it isn't likely 
to be implemented soon.


Does KMail actually work this way? This would be enough to make me try 
it out... although my day to day WS is a windows box, so I'd most likely 
wait until KDE4 is available on Windows...


Although, honestly I like TBird so much that I cannot seriously believe 
I'd like KMail enough to permanently switch, even for this one major 
benefit.


--

Best regards,

Charles

Re: [Dovecot] Running a dovecot IMAPS server

[Timothy Murphy]

On Fri 21 Sep 2007, Bill Cole wrote:

> It's a very bad idea for a mail client running on the same host as an
> IMAP server to try to access the same mailstore via the filesystem.

I don't know what you mean by "the same mailstore".
KMail on my laptop has a Local account, and an IMAPS account.
The Local account, which I rarely use, accesses messages on the laptop
(such as system messages).
the IMAPS account accesses messages on the desktop.
This seems to me to work perfectly.

> >>  I still think you are missing something about how IMAP works...
> >
> >What exactly?
>
> 1. IMAP is not a file server protocol.

I don't know what this means, so I certainly never assumed it.

> 2. "What KMail does" is not a definition of any standard.

I never suggested it was.
But I use kmail, so what kmail does is of interest to me.

I find KMail works perfectly with dovecot
(I had some problems originally, 
because of the different directory structures.)

> 3. (Only based on your description) KMail does not seem to share much
> with common (albeit poorly standardized) IMAP client behavior.

KMail works perfectly as an IMAPS client, in my experience.

> A mailer shouldn't expect to be able to both work directly with a
> Maildir mailstore through the filesystem and with an IMAP server that
> is accessing the same mailstore.

I don't use KMail on my desktop, except as an experiment,
but when I do there do not appear to be any problems.
My Local folders are kept in directories ~/Mail/Folder1/[cur,new,tmp[/
and are not seen by IMAPS.
My IMAPS folders are kept in directories ~/Maildir/.Folder2/[cur,new,tmp]/
and are not seen my kmail.

Re: [Dovecot] Running a dovecot IMAPS server

[Bill Cole]

At 3:28 AM +0100 9/21/07, Timothy Murphy wrote:

On Thu 20 Sep 2007, Charles Marcus wrote:


 > Incidentally, as far as I can see one has to keep a Local account
 > on kmail, as well as an IMAP account,

 Dunno why it would be necessary. TBird doesn't have an easy way to lose
 the 'Local Folders' - maybe kmail has something similar that you are
 referring to? I just keep those collapsed and ignore them.


There appear to be several default folders with kmail,
namely inbox, outbox, sent-mail, wastebin, draughts, templates .


Local folders are an issue entirely local to a mail client and 
irrelevant to any IMAP server.




 > since eg sent mail goes to ~/Maildir/sent-mail/cur/ .
 > I didn't find any kmail setting to change this.


It's a very bad idea for a mail client running on the same host as an 
IMAP server to try to access the same mailstore via the filesystem. 
Maildir is a fuzzy standard: as defined it ignores a lot of things 
that users of the format want, so Maildir++ exists and various 
programs that work with Maildir mailstores  have made their own 
mostly-harmless extensions to the original structure that are not 
standardized and may not interoperate.




 ???
 'Special' folders are definable by the client - in TBird, I always use
 'Sent', 'Drafts', 'Templates' and 'Trash' (these are the defaults too).


Maybe kmail is different ...


Apparently.

In any case, clients (KMail, Eudora, ChatterEmail, Mulberry, Outlook, 
whatever) create any particular folders that they they want to use 
for particular purposes   by telling the IMAP server to do so, and 
there is no well-defined standard for what 'special' folders exist on 
an IMAP server or how they are named or used.




 I still think you are missing something about how IMAP works...


What exactly?


1. IMAP is not a file server protocol.

2. "What KMail does" is not a definition of any standard.

3. (Only based on your description) KMail does not seem to share much 
with common (albeit poorly standardized) IMAP client behavior.



A mailer shouldn't expect to be able to both work directly with a 
Maildir mailstore through the filesystem and with an IMAP server that 
is accessing the same mailstore.

--
Bill Cole
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: [Dovecot] Running a dovecot IMAPS server

[Timothy Murphy]

On Thu 20 Sep 2007, Charles Marcus wrote:

> > Incidentally, as far as I can see one has to keep a Local account
> > on kmail, as well as an IMAP account,
>
> Dunno why it would be necessary. TBird doesn't have an easy way to lose
> the 'Local Folders' - maybe kmail has something similar that you are
> referring to? I just keep those collapsed and ignore them.

There appear to be several default folders with kmail,
namely inbox, outbox, sent-mail, wastebin, draughts, templates .

> > since eg sent mail goes to ~/Maildir/sent-mail/cur/ .
> > I didn't find any kmail setting to change this.
>
> ???
> 'Special' folders are definable by the client - in TBird, I always use
> 'Sent', 'Drafts', 'Templates' and 'Trash' (these are the defaults too).

Maybe kmail is different ...

> I still think you are missing something about how IMAP works...

What exactly?

Re: [Dovecot] Running a dovecot IMAPS server

[Charles Marcus]

On 9/20/2007, Timothy Murphy ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote:

Incidentally, as far as I can see one has to keep a Local account
on kmail, as well as an IMAP account,


Dunno why it would be necessary. TBird doesn't have an easy way to lose 
the 'Local Folders' - maybe kmail has something similar that you are 
referring to? I just keep those collapsed and ignore them.



since eg sent mail goes to ~/Maildir/sent-mail/cur/ .
I didn't find any kmail setting to change this.


???

'Special' folders are definable by the client - in TBird, I always use 
'Sent', 'Drafts', 'Templates' and 'Trash' (these are the defaults too).



Also, I assume it is sensible to leave the trash folder on the local
machine.


Sensible? No... but it is a personal preference...

I keep the Trash expiration (a TBird setting, not a server-side setting) 
separate from the defaults, set to delete messages older than 30 days - 
and I like having the trash on the IMAP server, but that is a personal 
preference.


I still think you are missing something about how IMAP works...

--

Best regards,

Charles

Re: [Dovecot] Running a dovecot IMAPS server

[Timothy Murphy]

Timo Sirainen wrote:

>> To clarify my question, suppose one has email organised in server X
>> as described above, in directories ~/Maildir/Family/[cur.new.tmp/ , etc.
>> And now suppose one wants to access this email from laptop Y.
>> How exactly does one have to change the setup on machine X?
>> And what does one set mail_location to?
> 
> Why do you want it to work like that? Can't you just use the Maildir++
> layout and use the email only via IMAP?
> 
>> It seems to me that this is an issue likely to be faced by anyone
>> wanting to run a small home network.
>> reading email on various machines,
>> and wanting this email to be kept "in sync".
> 
> If you use only IMAP, there should be no problem.

Just a note to say I have everything working fine now.
As suggested, I am basically using IMAP for everything.

Looking back, there were two problems.

Firstly, for some reason I kept getting a warning
that the "resource .INBOX.directory" could not be found
(this is not the exact message).

Secondly, it took an extraordinarily long time
for the IMAPS directory on my laptop to appear.
In fact, it only appeared (to my surprise)
when I re-booted the laptop after several hours.
I take it that this was somehow related
to SSL or TSL authentication.

I found that I had to move my old ~/Maildir/Folder/cur/*
messages "by hand" to the IMAP folder created by kmail
at ~/Maildir/.Folder/new/ ;
kmail did not allow me to move messages from a Local folder
to an IMAP folder, although it saw both.

Incidentally, as far as I can see one has to keep a Local account
on kmail, as well as an IMAP account,
since eg sent mail goes to ~/Maildir/sent-mail/cur/ .
I didn't find any kmail setting to change this.
Also, I assume it is sensible to leave the trash folder
on the local machine.

One tiny query; my .procmailrc has DEFAULT set to
$HOME/Maildir/ ,which seems to work fine.
Someone suggested it should be set to $HOME/Maildir/new/ ?

In any case, dovecot IMAPS is working perfectly now, as I said.
Thank you very much for what seems an excellent program.
I had previously tried to set up a Cyrus IMAP server,
but for one reason or another this did not work
(under Fedora 7).

Re: [Dovecot] Running a dovecot IMAPS server

[Timo Sirainen]

On Sun, 2007-09-16 at 20:56 -0700, Troy Engel wrote:
> IMAP allows folders present on the server which are not presented to the 
> client when it logs in, hence the idea of subscribing. Unsubscribed 
> folders are great for archiving old stuff that you don't really need to 
> see but need to keep around. By not subscribing after you renamed the 
> folder to include a dot it remained invisible to your client.

This is actually client-specific, some clients don't support
subscriptions at all and others can be configured to use or not use
them.

I've written a bit more about how I think they should be implemented in
http://www.imapwiki.org/ClientImplementation/MailboxList ->
Subscriptions.



signature.asc
Description: This is a digitally signed message part

Re: [Dovecot] Running a dovecot IMAPS server

[Troy Engel]

Timothy Murphy wrote:


It could therefore be described as a "normal" maildir format;
and if dovecot does not like this format,
I think this should be explained clearly in the dovecot documentation.
[I didn't find the Maildir vs Maildir++ account very illuminating.]


I'm jumping in late to the game (sorry missed your original post 
somehow); my personal opinion here is that kmail is doing what I would 
call non-standard Maildir-ing, and it's causing you confusion with what 
most of us learn about Maildir in our travels.


From what I understand via the spec and all Timo's posts, the actual 
folder format is never laid down in stone and is open to each 
implementation. However the default/accepted Maildir format as used by 
all the big boys (courier, dovecot, exim, postfix, etc.) is:


  ~/Maildir/.Family/
  ~/Maildir/.Friends/

The Maildir hierarchy that kmail is giving you is not the ad-hoc 
accepted norm; they chose to do away with the leading '.' character it 
appears (I don't use kmail). The dot-prefix format is what I call 
normal, kmail seems abnormal (in the big picture, but kmail is doing 
nothing wrong per spec!) From your above statement you believe it to be 
the reverse and that dovecot doesn't like the format -- it's not that, 
it's that dovecot was built to work out of the box with the accepted 
global norm which is a dot-prefix Maildir hierarchy.



With v1.1 you can do this with:

mail_location = maildir:~/Maildir:LAYOUT=fs


I'm not clear what this means.


I believe Timo means that in the latest code (1.1 is alpha status) he 
has added new features, and one of those features is to use the 
filesystem separator for folders. Since '/' is the standard on *nix, 
then your kmail format would magically be recognized and used without 
it's dot-prefix.


  1.0 dot-prefix: ~/Maildir/.Family.Marge/
  1.1 LAYOUT=fs:  ~/Maildir/Family/Marge/


Why do you want it to work like that? Can't you just use the Maildir++
layout and use the email only via IMAP?


I would be quite happy to do this,
but when I tried briefly re-naming ~/Maildir/Family/ to ~/Maildir/.Family/
on my server and re-started dovecot it did not seem to work -
I did not see the Family folder on my client (using IMAPS).


You went a little too fast. :) After renaming the folder to .Family, use 
your email client to subscribe to the folder; I don't use kmail but in 
Thunderbird you rightmouse click on Inbox and choose Subscribe from the 
popup menu. Technically this places the name of the subscribed folder in 
a file named 'subscriptions' in the ~/Maildir/ directory on the server. 
Dovecot only presents the folders listed in this subscriptions file to 
the client when the client asks for a list of folders.


IMAP allows folders present on the server which are not presented to the 
client when it logs in, hence the idea of subscribing. Unsubscribed 
folders are great for archiving old stuff that you don't really need to 
see but need to keep around. By not subscribing after you renamed the 
folder to include a dot it remained invisible to your client.


hth,
-te

--
Troy Engel | Systems Engineer
Fluid Inc. | http://www.fluid.com

Re: [Dovecot] Running a dovecot IMAPS server

[Timothy Murphy]

Timo Sirainen wrote:

>> > Dovecot has both mbox and Maildir format support.
>> 
>> I find the statement that dovecot has maildir format support misleading.
>> 
>> By maildir support, I mean that mail is contained in directories
>> ~/Maildir/inbox/[cur,new,tmp], ~/Maildir/Family/[cur.new.tmp],
>> ~/Maildir/Finance/[cur,new,tmp], etc.
> 
> That's one way to implement multiple mailboxes to Maildir format, but
> there's no such standard.

First of all, thank you for responding, and (more importantly) for dovecot.

I wasn't suggesting that the maildir format I described was "standard",
just that it is the one you will get if you set up an email system
using kmail in the usual way.

It could therefore be described as a "normal" maildir format;
and if dovecot does not like this format,
I think this should be explained clearly in the dovecot documentation.
[I didn't find the Maildir vs Maildir++ account very illuminating.]

>> As far as I can see, if you now set up an IMAP server using dovecot
>> on this machine, setting
>> mail_location = maildir:~/Maildir/
>> in /etc/dovecot.conf
>> then the email in the folders Family, Finance, etc
>> will not be seen by an IMAP client.
> 
> With v1.1 you can do this with:
> 
> mail_location = maildir:~/Maildir:LAYOUT=fs

I'm not clear what this means.
Dovecot-1.1 has not yet come to Fedora 7, which I use,
but I would be more than happy to compile it,
if you are saying that I could then stick with my present mail setup 
on my server?

>> To clarify my question, suppose one has email organised in server X
>> as described above, in directories ~/Maildir/Family/[cur.new.tmp/ , etc.
>> And now suppose one wants to access this email from laptop Y.
>> How exactly does one have to change the setup on machine X?
>> And what does one set mail_location to?
> 
> Why do you want it to work like that? Can't you just use the Maildir++
> layout and use the email only via IMAP?

I would be quite happy to do this,
but when I tried briefly re-naming ~/Maildir/Family/ to ~/Maildir/.Family/
on my server and re-started dovecot it did not seem to work -
I did not see the Family folder on my client (using IMAPS).

I wonder if I could press you to say exactly how I should change the setup
on the server, and also how I should define mail_location in dovecot.conf ,
and what I should set DEFAULT to in .procmailrc ?
Or point me to some location where this is set out -
I didn't find any explicit instructions like this in the dovecot wiki.

Re: [Dovecot] Running a dovecot IMAPS server

[Timothy Murphy]

On Sun 16 Sep 2007, Jos Vos wrote:

> > Just to be clear what I am saying.
> > Suppose you have a standard maildir setup on computer X,
> > with directories ~/Maildir/inbox/[cur,new,tmp]/ ,
> > ~/Maildir/family/[cur,new,tmp]/ , etc.
> >
> > Suppose now you start dovecot IMAP on computer X.
> > Then you will not be able to see the family folder on computer Y,
> > running as an IMAP client, ie with an IMAP kmail account
> > pointing to computer X.
> >
> > If I am right, you have to re-organise and re-name the folders on X
> > if you want to see them on Y.
> > And if you do this, you can no longer seem them on X with kmail.
>
> Dovecot has both mbox and Maildir format support.

I find the statement that dovecot has maildir format support misleading.

By maildir support, I mean that mail is contained in directories
~/Maildir/inbox/[cur,new,tmp], ~/Maildir/Family/[cur.new.tmp],
~/Maildir/Finance/[cur,new,tmp], etc.

This is the setup created if one runs kmail as mail client,
specifying that one is using maildir format,
and using the GUI to create new folders Family, Finance, etc.

As far as I can see, if you now set up an IMAP server using dovecot
on this machine, setting 
mail_location = maildir:~/Maildir/
in /etc/dovecot.conf
then the email in the folders Family, Finance, etc
will not be seen by an IMAP client.

> But as soon as you have an e-mail klant using a non-supported mailbox
> format *or* that is storing mail folders in a supported format but in
> a non-standard place, tour theory applies, yes.

What is the "standard" place for mail folders?

> See also  for more info about this all.

I've studied that wiki, and not found clear information on this point.

To clarify my question, suppose one has email organised in server X
as described above, in directories ~/Maildir/Family/[cur.new.tmp/ , etc.
And now suppose one wants to access this email from laptop Y.
How exactly does one have to change the setup on machine X?
And what does one set mail_location to?

It seems to me that this is an issue likely to be faced by anyone
wanting to run a small home network.
reading email on various machines,
and wanting this email to be kept "in sync".

Maybe dovecot is not a suitable program for this purpose?

Re: [Dovecot] Running a dovecot IMAPS server

[Timo Sirainen]

On Sun, 2007-09-16 at 13:03 +0100, Timothy Murphy wrote:
> > Dovecot has both mbox and Maildir format support.
> 
> I find the statement that dovecot has maildir format support misleading.
> 
> By maildir support, I mean that mail is contained in directories
> ~/Maildir/inbox/[cur,new,tmp], ~/Maildir/Family/[cur.new.tmp],
> ~/Maildir/Finance/[cur,new,tmp], etc.

That's one way to implement multiple mailboxes to Maildir format, but
there's no such standard.

> As far as I can see, if you now set up an IMAP server using dovecot
> on this machine, setting 
>   mail_location = maildir:~/Maildir/
> in /etc/dovecot.conf
> then the email in the folders Family, Finance, etc
> will not be seen by an IMAP client.

With v1.1 you can do this with:

mail_location = maildir:~/Maildir:LAYOUT=fs

> To clarify my question, suppose one has email organised in server X
> as described above, in directories ~/Maildir/Family/[cur.new.tmp/ , etc.
> And now suppose one wants to access this email from laptop Y.
> How exactly does one have to change the setup on machine X?
> And what does one set mail_location to?

Why do you want it to work like that? Can't you just use the Maildir++
layout and use the email only via IMAP?

> It seems to me that this is an issue likely to be faced by anyone
> wanting to run a small home network.
> reading email on various machines,
> and wanting this email to be kept "in sync".

If you use only IMAP, there should be no problem.


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