Re: Using Maildir with Balsa

[Peter Bloomfield <PeterBloomfield bellsouth net>]

On 02/24/2004 10:19:10 PM, ravi@mylug.org wrote:
> Hi all!
> 
> 
> I tried RTFM/A but this particular question though has often  
> been asked but I could not grasp the replies to those  
> questions. So I'm asking you this yet again.
> 
> I wish to have my mails in Maildir format and the Druid doesn't  
> create Maildir by default.
> 
> I don't have any older Maildirs, so please tell me from start  
> how to set up Balsa to use only Maildir ?
> 
> I've had really bad experience with mbox used with pine so I'd  
> shifted to webmail but now some where I read that Balsa uses  
> libmutt so has most of the nice stuff that mutt has. So I  
> thought I will switch over to Balsa.
> 
> Regards,
> Ravi Shekhar S

The Balsa Druid creates ~/mail/outbox, ~/mail/sentbox, ~/mail/ 
draftbox, and ~/mail/trash, all in mbox format.  When you first  
start Balsa, use File => New => Local Maildir mailbox to create  
four new mailboxes, say Outbox, Sentbox, Draftbox, and Trashbox.   
If you  just type each name in the Mailbox Path entry, the new  
mailbox will be created in ~/mail.

Now you can mark the new Sentbox, Draftbox, and Trashbox as the  
corresponding special mailboxes using the mailbox's context menu  
(right click on the mailbox, or select it and hit Shift-F10).   
Making the new Outbox into your outbox is more delicate, as Balsa  
doesn't offer that action on the context menu.  Choosing the  
wrong mailbox could lead to problems, but your new maildir-format  
Outbox will be fine.  You'll need to close Balsa, and edit ~/. 
gnome2/balsa: look for the [mailbox-Outbox] section, and replace  
the Path and Type fields.  Compare with the other [mailbox-...]  
sections to see what's needed.

HTH,

Peter

BTW: Balsa's 2.1 series no longer uses the libmutt backend.  It's  
still unstable, but it will become stable at some point.   
However, the change will be transparent to the user, apart from  
better performance.