dovecot - Feb 2013 - understanding namespace configuration

i'm a little confused about namespace configuration.  reading
http://wiki2.dovecot.org/Namespaces , and looking at the examples, it seems that
when a namespace is declared, you can either do "namespace { ..." or
"namespace foo { ..." - i'm having trouble finding clarity on the
significance of "foo" though.  it would appear it's not required,
but then what is its purpose?  what does it mean?  does it imply something?

it's also unclear to me how to create the "default private
namespace".  i see that there are three types of namespaces, but the list
of namespace settings doesn't seem to include a parameter to set the
namespace type.  what am i missing?

it's also not quite clear how to denote a namespace as "default". 
from coming across this thread [
http://mailman2.u.washington.edu/pipermail/imap-protocol/2010-May/001077.html ]
it would indicate in theory that a namespace is denoted as default by using an
empty prefix - but i wasn't able to find corroboration of that in
dovecot's documentation.

thanks
-ben

On 23.2.2013, at 18.26, btb at bitrate.net wrote:
> i'm a little confused about namespace configuration.  reading
http://wiki2.dovecot.org/Namespaces , and looking at the examples, it seems that
when a namespace is declared, you can either do "namespace { ..." or
"namespace foo { ..." - i'm having trouble finding clarity on the
significance of "foo" though.  it would appear it's not required,
but then what is its purpose?  what does it mean?  does it imply something?
It serves no other purpose than being able to refer to the namespace later in
the config file.
> it's also unclear to me how to create the "default private
namespace".  i see that there are three types of namespaces, but the list
of namespace settings doesn't seem to include a parameter to set the
namespace type.  what am i missing?
namespace {
  type = private
  .. other settings ..
}

They are private by default though.  Also the wiki page was somewhat out of date
.. I updated it now. It no longer talks about "default private
namespace" at all, since it probably just adds confusion (especially with
v2.1+).
> it's also not quite clear how to denote a namespace as
"default".  from coming across this thread [
http://mailman2.u.washington.edu/pipermail/imap-protocol/2010-May/001077.html ]
it would indicate in theory that a namespace is denoted as default by using an
empty prefix - but i wasn't able to find corroboration of that in
dovecot's documentation.
You don't need to.