Can mutt be persuaded to use a sensible maildir hierarchy?

[Chris Green]

On Wed, Sep 23, 2020 at 09:44:22AM +1000, raf wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 22, 2020 at 06:30:52PM +0100, Chris Green <cl at isbd.net> wrote:
> 
> > On Tue, Sep 22, 2020 at 05:46:53PM +0100, Chris Green wrote:
> > > 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.
> > > 
> > I just run mb2md on my existing mail folders, I ended up with a single
> > directory (~/Maildir) containing 2354 files mostly with ridiculously
> > long names!  This just isn't a sensible way to organise my mail.
> > 
> > -- 
> > Chris Green
> 
> I might be talking nonsense, but that maildir hierarchy
> probably is the correct thing, as defined by whoever
> came up with it, and is what is needed for all(?) mail
> software that deals with maildir to work. But if you
> want to manipulate the hierarchy separately from mail
> software, and still have all mail software work
> correctly, you might be able to implement (or convince
> someone to implement) a userspace fuse file system that
> provides an alternative view of the real maildir file
> system, that can be mounted alongside the real maildir
> directory. Then, whatever mail software you want to use
> can work with the real maildir hierarchy, and you can
> manipulate it in the way you want outside of mail
> software. I have no idea how much effort would be
> involved in such a fuse file system, though.
> 
The only things dealing with the maildirs are my own mail filter
written in Python and mutt, nothing else.

Way back when maildir first appeared and I used qmail the way I want
things to work was the way it *did* work.  It's the maildir++ thing
that's broken it.


> An alternative, if the only problem is renaming
> folders, is to write a shell script or something that
> renames maildir folders. That would be a lot less
> effort.
> 
> But I really don't know what I'm talking about. I use
> mbox.
> 
> Perhaps you can rename/move folders in a mail client
> and then you don't need to look at the guts underneath.
> That would be the easiest way. I know that GUI IMAP
> clients can do that. Can mutt do that? I found this:
> 
>   https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/44508/mutt-rename-imap-folder
> 
No IMAP, no POP3. :-)

-- 
Chris Green