dovecot - Sep 2005 - Basic namespaces question

I can't find a generalised "What the heck are namespaces all
about?" anywhere, can anyone point me to a decent one?

More directly, my question is this: if I set up two non-hidden private
namespaces (one for mbox and one for maildir), will a well-written IMAP client
automagically list folders from both as if they were part of (or below) the same
hierarchy, or do I have to set up two accounts, one with a prefix of (say) #mbox
and one of #maildir?

One step further, I'd like to eventually get mail from /var/mail/%u in mbox
format, and in "maildir:%h/.maildir" or "mbox:%h/.mail",
whichever exists (I'm migrating from imap-uw, and would like the benefits of
maildir without forcing users to change their mailstores in case they use pop3
or tools like mail(1)). I'm willing to do some coding for it, but I imagine
that it would be non-trivial if namespaces aren't automatically integrated

On Mon, 2005-09-19 at 10:51 -0700, David King wrote:
> I can't find a generalised "What the heck are namespaces all
about?" anywhere, can anyone point me to a decent one?
I updated the Namespaces page in wiki to explain it better.
> More directly, my question is this: if I set up two non-hidden private
namespaces (one for mbox and one for maildir), will a well-written IMAP client
automagically list folders from both as if they were part of (or below) the same
hierarchy, or do I have to set up two accounts, one with a prefix of (say) #mbox
and one of #maildir?
Dovecot lists namespaces as regular non-selectable folders among other
folders, so in your case you'd have #mbox and #maildir listed in the
root.
> One step further, I'd like to eventually get mail from /var/mail/%u in
mbox format, and in "maildir:%h/.maildir" or
"mbox:%h/.mail", whichever exists (I'm migrating from imap-uw, and
would like the benefits of maildir without forcing users to change their
mailstores in case they use pop3 or tools like mail(1)). I'm willing to do
some coding for it, but I imagine that it would be non-trivial if namespaces
aren't automatically integrated
Dovecot does already some kind of automatic detection for mailbox
locations. You could change it and leave default_mail_env and the
"location" field in namespaces empty so it'll be used.

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