Can mutt be persuaded to use a sensible maildir hierarchy?

[Chris Green]

Does mutt still use the (IMHO silly) maildir hierarchy where mail
'folders' are simply represented by another '.' and name in the
maildir directory name?

Is there some way I can get to use real directories to represent my
hierarchy of mail?  I manually rearrange my mail sometimes and to deal
with very long directory names isn't really practical. For example I
might decide to move mail as follows:-

    ~/Mail/folder/travel/zelmaFrance 

        to

    ~/Mail/folder/travel/france/zelma

With real directories such a move isn't too difficult but with the
default maildir naming it becomes painful.

Some software I believe does work the way I want with maildir but the
dotted hierarchy seems to be becoming the standard.  Is there no way
round this?  I'd really like to move to maildir but I really can't see
it being practical for me as it is.

-- 
Chris Green