My brother manages a user account on the family computer for our mother, and
in his infinite wisdom has switched her between several different mail
clients (mozilla, kmail & evolution). This means that she does not have a
record of all her email in one place.
There are standards already - mbox, MH and maildir - which specify a way
to store multiple emails in the same place, but they do not categorize them
as mail clients do - into inbox/recieved mail, outbox/unsent mail, sent
mail, and user created directories and sub-directories.
A brief comparison of kmail and evolution (the primary mail clients on GNOME
and KDE)
Kmail maildir
Mail/inbox
Mail/.inbox.directory/work
Kmail mbox
Mail/inbox
Mail/.inbox/directory/work
Evolution maildir
Mail/inbox
Mail/inbox/work
Evolution mbox
Mail/inbox/mbox
Mail/inbox/subdirectory/work/mbox
Evolutions maildir method fails if you want to create a directory with the
name "cur", "tmp" or "new" (which are used by
maildir), or with the same
filename as an email in the directory.
I ask for comment: do you think that a method of categorizing mail could be
standardized upon?