freedesktop - Sep 2004 - [fdo] Mail storage / maildir extensions

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?

> 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.
>
> I ask for comment: do you think that a method of categorizing mail could be
> standardized upon?
For an example of a mail client which does something completely different, see 
balsa.  Balsa manages all mailbox files/directories explicitly - no 
subdirectory support - which makes it a very convenient mailbox format 
converter, but slightly harder to categorize your mail.