Re: [Nmh-workers] Braindump: Extended MH Format

[pmaydell]

Chad Walstrom wrote:
>Obviously, you don't want to REQUIRE clients to update the file if it
>works out better to have their own indexing mechanisms.  Sylpheed
>doesn't rely upon .mh_sequences,GNUS' .overview files, or .xmhcache
>files.

Um. If you don't require everybody to keep the index in step then there's
no point, because an index-aware client can't rely on the index being
in sync with the actual data.

Snip various. I'm afraid I've lost track of what the actual problem
you're trying to solve is; can you reexplain, please?

>> (GNUS already has a format like this, which it calls nnml, which is
>> nmh with a .overview file containing some headers from each message. I
>> haven't actually looked at the implementation, though.)
>
>Might be a good place to start.
>
>> It makes it harder to do things like 'grep foo ~/Mail/inbox/3???', of
>> course...

>    $ sed -ne '3000,3999p' ~/Mail/inbox/sequence.all | xargs -r grep foo

Er, that's harder :-)

>Again, my bad since we're probably referring to .mh_sequence rather than
>.mh_context.  Besides, how many IMAP servers do you know of that
>currently care about .mh_sequences?

If they don't properly support the current mh format which has been
around for yonks, what hope of getting them to handle any extended
improved version?

>In any case, I don't see a reason why a server or client MUST update
>sequence files.

Er, because they're part of the mh folder format?

(in response to Jerry Peek: all of this is very much pie-in-the-sky
as far as I'm concerned and I don't think anybody's going to be doing
any coding in the near future :-))

-- PMM