Message-ID: <3A4F3461.422CC27E@iname.com> Date: Sun, 31 Dec 2000 13:28:01 +0000 From: Chris Reeves Subject: Re: [SLE] Mailer question Guido Milanese wrote:

a "generic" question. I have been using xfmail for a while, but for some reasons I am considering a new X11 mailer (I like pine but its customization is rather annoying).

I tried KMail, but I notice that it stores the mail appending each message to a large file that stores all the messages of a given type (e.g. all the SUSE

This will be mbox format (see below).

mail. xfmail stores data in a different way, i.e. opening directories for each type (e.g. Mail/SUSE) and saving each message in a separate, numbered file.

This is probably MH format (see below).

Question: which is more standard in Unix? That's because if I eventually find a X11 mailer that I like completely, I would like to be more or less sure to be using a non-proprietary format of archiviation.

I think the mbox format is more standard, but both are quite widely used. I've actually been looking into this as well recently. I'm trying to dump Netscape as a mail client, but I want to use one client in X (with drag and drop to file my messages) and another console mail client, since I frequently have to ssh in to my box to check mail. I thought this would be nice and simple, but so far I've had problems... I've no idea what format Netscape uses - it seems to be a variation on mbox, but pine doesn't recognise which messages have been read, etc. Anyway, here is a brief explanation of the common formats (from the Mutt, README, I think): mbox. This is the most widely used mailbox format for UNIX. All messages are stored in a single file. Each message has a line of the form: From me@cs.hmc.edu Fri, 11 Apr 1997 11:44:56 PST to denote the start of a new message (this is often referred to as the ``From_'' line). MMDF. This is a variant of the mbox format. Each message is surrounded by lines containing ``^A^A^A^A'' (four control-A's). MH. A radical departure from mbox and MMDF, a mailbox consists of a directory and each message is stored in a separate file. The filename indicates the message number (however, this is may not correspond to the message number Mutt displays). Deleted messages are renamed with a comma (,) prepended to the filename. Note: Mutt detects this type of mailbox by looking for either .mh_sequences or .xmhcache (needed to distinguish normal directories from MH mailboxes). Mutt does not update these files, yet. Maildir. The newest of the mailbox formats, used by the Qmail MTA (a replacement for sendmail). Similar to MH, except that it adds three subdirectories of the mailbox: tmp, new and cur. Filenames for the messages are chosen in such a way they are unique, even when two programs are writing the mailbox over NFS, which means that no file locking is needed. Hope that helps, Chris -- __ _ -o)/ / (_)__ __ ____ __ Chris Reeves /\\ /__/ / _ \/ // /\ \/ / ICQ# 22219005 _\_v __/_/_//_/\_,_/ /_/\_\