dovecot - Jul 2003 - Why does dovecot confuse mutt?

Heylas,

I just switched my primary mail server from courier imap to dovecot (I've
been waiting to do this; dovecot showed up in debian testing for alpha, at
last).  So, using the same set of maildirs, there are slightly different
behaviors.

First, of course, dovecot displays the hierarchy as I thought it ought to be,
such that INBOX is a sibling of all other top-level boxes, not the parent of
everything.  This is A Good Thing[tm].  That works as expected.

However, as far as mutt is concerned, *every* mailbox has child folders.  My
muttrc contains the line: set folder=imap://localhost/.  (and the home folder is
set to imap://localhost/INBOX; the idea is to do all mail munging through the
server, never directly touching the maildirs with an MUA).  Oh, and I'm
using maildir (~/Maildir).  In mutt, from the currently-selected mailbox, one
can use 'c' to change boxes, and ? displays a navigable folder
hierarchy.  If a folder contains only mail (no child folders), it shows up as
"FolderName", if it has child folders (whether or not it has mail), it
shows up as "FolderName.".  You can display the mail in a folder that
has child folders, but it requires a different keystroke than the default (enter
selects a folder, which means showing child folders if there are any, showing
mail if there aren't; to display mail in a folder that has child folders,
space).

This is tripping me up a little, because of course the commands are mostly bred
into my fingertips, and it's a difficult adjustment.  I hit return, and I
see a folder that contains the "child" folder "../".

Is this a glitch in mutt's handling of information that I ought to report to
mutt maintainers?  Is it a glitch in dovecot's presentation of information
that I ought to report to ... err, well.  *laugh*  My other primary mail client
seems to cope beautifully with the information that's supplied (sylpheed, if
it matters).  But then, sylpheed also coped perfectly when courier was supplying
information.  I gather that courier and dovecot are reporting something slightly
different, somehow, but I don't really know what, and I don't know which
should be considered "correct".

Amy!

Hi,

I'm seeing the same problem with Eudora 5 and 6 so I'm guessing it's
not a
mutt problem.  Every mailbox appears as a folder  :(  I've had no response 
from Qualcomm about this despite offering to work with them about it.

However everything fine in Netscape 7.1 - and all _looks_ fine with Outlook 
Express 6 till you try open a mailbox within a folder and it simply 
complains "Mailbox doesn't exist: Maildir.Mailing 
lists.RHL-Beta".  Everything worked fine with all those clients using 
UW-IMAP so I'm wondering if it is a dovecot issue...

Reuben





At 02:52 p.m. 24/07/2003, Amelia A Lewis wrote:
>Heylas,
>
>I just switched my primary mail server from courier imap to dovecot
(I've
>been waiting to do this; dovecot showed up in debian testing for alpha, at 
>last).  So, using the same set of maildirs, there are slightly different 
>behaviors.
>
>First, of course, dovecot displays the hierarchy as I thought it ought to 
>be, such that INBOX is a sibling of all other top-level boxes, not the 
>parent of everything.  This is A Good Thing[tm].  That works as expected.
>
>However, as far as mutt is concerned, *every* mailbox has child 
>folders.  My muttrc contains the line: set folder=imap://localhost/.  (and 
>the home folder is set to imap://localhost/INBOX; the idea is to do all 
>mail munging through the server, never directly touching the maildirs with 
>an MUA).  Oh, and I'm using maildir (~/Maildir).  In mutt, from the 
>currently-selected mailbox, one can use 'c' to change boxes, and ? 
>displays a navigable folder hierarchy.  If a folder contains only mail (no 
>child folders), it shows up as "FolderName", if it has child
folders
>(whether or not it has mail), it shows up as "FolderName.".  You
can
>display the mail in a folder that has child folders, but it requires a 
>different keystroke than the default (enter selects a folder, which means 
>showing child folders if there are any, showing mail if there aren't; to
>display mail in a folder that has child folders, space).
>
>This is tripping me up a little, because of course the commands are mostly 
>bred into my fingertips, and it's a difficult adjustment.  I hit return,
>and I see a folder that contains the "child" folder
"../".
>
>Is this a glitch in mutt's handling of information that I ought to
report
>to mutt maintainers?  Is it a glitch in dovecot's presentation of 
>information that I ought to report to ... err, well.  *laugh*  My other 
>primary mail client seems to cope beautifully with the information
that's
>supplied (sylpheed, if it matters).  But then, sylpheed also coped 
>perfectly when courier was supplying information.  I gather that courier 
>and dovecot are reporting something slightly different, somehow, but I 
>don't really know what, and I don't know which should be considered
"correct".
>
>Amy!

On Thursday, Jul 24, 2003, at 05:52 Europe/Helsinki, Amelia A Lewis 
wrote:
> However, as far as mutt is concerned, *every* mailbox has child 
> folders.
I think this is because Dovecot doesn't send \NoChildren flag for 
mailboxes. I'm not sure when that got lost.. Maybe it's time to rewrite 
the mailbox listing code once again.