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[Nmh-workers] Braindump: Extended MH Format
From: |
Chad Walstrom |
Subject: |
[Nmh-workers] Braindump: Extended MH Format |
Date: |
Thu, 9 Dec 2004 22:38:05 -0600 |
User-agent: |
Mutt/1.5.6+20040722i |
I posted this as my ~/.plan file on my website... my crappy
web-log-ish-thing. I highly doubt anything I have to say is new, but it
helped me form my opinion about Maildir, that it's not really worth the
attention it's getting.
http://wookimus.net/~chewie
After a long-winded examination of all things mail format, I conclude
with this little idea (again, probably not new):
If the only compelling reason to switch to Maildir from MH is the
file locking semantics, why not fix MH? Rather than storing index
data as the file names themselves, why not leave it up to the email
client or IMAP server to store sequences in meta-data files? Perhaps
as an additional field in .mh_context or a separate file. Generate
the file name with something like libuuid to create a "Universally
Unique Id", either time-based or completely random. dot-files are
metadata, files are email (perhaps with a ".msg" or ".mh" suffix),
and directories are folders. Simple. Let's call it "Extended MH
Format".
Any merit to this idea? I understand it would change the way sequences
would need to be handled, but we could hide that in a library call. The
command-line utilities don't need to change the way they reference an
email.
(Pardon my use of mutt... *grin*)
--
Chad Walstrom <address@hidden> http://www.wookimus.net/
assert(expired(knowledge)); /* core dump */
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