Re: [Nmh-workers] What OS/Architecture Do You Run nmh On?

[Andy Bradford]

Thus said Ken Hornstein on Tue, 13 Feb 2018 10:09:07 -0500:

> But Bernstein ignored MH because he was not trying to invent a MAILBOX
> format, he was trying to invent a mailDROP ... really, I went back and
> looked. Yes, I know  people now use Maildir as a  mailbox, and I think
> that's weird, but it wasn't his intention.

As a longtime (and current)  qmail user, I'm interested in understanding
this argument  more in detail;  e.g. where did you  go back and  look to
support the claim that he was trying to invent a maildrop?

>From http://cr.yp.to/qmail.html:

    Reliable: qmail's straight-paper-path philosophy guarantees that
    a message,  once accepted into  the system, will never  be lost.
    qmail also  optionally supports  maildir, a  new, super-reliable
    user mailbox format. Maildirs, unlike mbox files and mh folders,
    won't be corrupted  if the system crashes  during delivery. Even
    better, not only  can a user safely read his  mail over NFS, but
    any number  of NFS clients can  deliver mail to him  at the same
    time.

That certainly seems to me that he  intended for it to replace a MAILBOX
format (unless perhaps I misunderstand what is meant by it).

Also, theres:

http://cr.yp.to/proto/maildir.html

Which again would seem to indicate that  it was intended to be a mailbox
and  not just  a maildrop;  here again,  it's entirely  possible that  I
misunderstand the difference to which you  alluded above, but I would be
interested in what  you found that suggests it was  intended solely as a
maildrop format.

Thanks,

Andy
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