Re: Writing a GNOME mail client.

[Drazen Kacar <dave srce hr>]

Gleef wrote:

> MTA's generally use one of two different schemes to store their messages:
>   * One file per folder, many messages per folder (Sendmail, Sendmail Pro)
>   * One file per message, one directory per folder (QMail, Post.Office)
> 
> IMHO, any decent mail client should support both.  If we have to pick one
> to start with, pick the one file per folder, since Sendmail is the most
> popular MTA, particularly with Free systems.

That's nice, but there is one additional feature which is IMO worth
adding. On a multiuser system it's quite possible that several users will
receive mail from the same mailing list. With the current mail readers
each one has to store copies locally. It would be nice if there was
a central spool for the mailing lists, so each of them would have to
have an index only (with status field for each message, since they
would have read only access for them). This way there would be less
storage space used, less DNLC and inode usage and a better overall
performance.

The only way it can be done now is by using a local news server and turning
mailing lists into local news groups. Since there are many news readers
which can't use more than one news server in a single invocation,
this is not a briliant solution.

-- 
 .-.   .-.    Life is a sexually transmitted disease.
(_  \ /  _)
     |        dave@srce.hr
     |        dave@fly.cc.fer.hr