Subject: Re: folder format in pcpine

From: "Cornelius C. Noack" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 24 Mar 2002 23:27:49 +0100 ((MEZ) Mitteleuropäische Zeit)

Hello everybody interested in the mbox issue:

I had sent a formal request to the pine developers to respond to
this discussion, and this is the answer I got (sorry it's a bit
dated -- I was away).

I guess it would be helpful if all of you who have a stake in this
would send a short message to Mark supporting the idea of having
a user option in the next release!

ccn.
-- 

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---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 8 Mar 2002 16:52:35 -0800 (PST)
From: Mark Crispin <[email-masked]>
To: Cornelius C. Noack <[email-masked]>
Cc: [email-masked]
Subject: Re: folder format in pcpine #020306@12:31:35.28991

On Wed, 6 Mar 2002, Cornelius C. Noack wrote:
> There has been an ongoing discussion about this (specifically
> the suggestion that pcpine provide an option for using the unix
> mbox format also in pcpine).

It is already possible to use the traditional UNIX mailbox format in PC
Pine, and has been possible for many years.  If you select a file that is
in traditional UNIX mailbox format, PC Pine will read it without
difficulty.

If you wish to create a new mailbox in traditional UNIX format in PC Pine,
you can do this by prefixing the new mailbox name with "#driver.unix/".
For example, suppose you want to save a message to a new traditional UNIX
format mailbox with name C:\Mail\junk.mbox.  You can do this in PC Pine by
entering "#driver.unix/C:\Mail\junk.mbox" to the folder name prompt.  Of
course, if your directory for saves is already C:\Mail, then you can
simply enter "#driver.unix/junk.mbox" without the other options.

If you want to avoid typing in "#driver.unix/" all the time, you can
add a new folder collection of "#driver.unix/[]".  You will have to edit
your PINERC file manually to add this, and you'll end up with something
like:

folder-collections=mail\[],
	mbox-create #driver.unix/mail\[]

The next time you save a message, just use ^N or ^P after the S command to
move to the mbox-create collection, and then type in the new name.

If you want us to change the default mailbox format in PC Pine to be
traditional UNIX mailbox format instead of mbox format, we can't do that.
There are several technical and historic reasons why traditional UNIX
mailbox format is neither the default nor the recommended format in PC
Pine.  Furthermore, changing the default format would cause trouble for
the existing installed base of PC Pine users.  If we were ever to change
the default format, it would probably be to the format used by Microsoft
IIS SMTP server and not traditional UNIX mailbox format.

What we may be able to do is add an advanced PINERC configuration option
in a future version of PC Pine to allow you to change your default mailbox
format for yourself.  However, there are some caveats.

If you change your default mailbox format, you will be running in a
non-recommended configuation which is known to have limitations and
reduced performance, and which is less thoroughly exercised than the
recommended configuration.  There is also no guarantee that doing so will
interoperate with any other PC based software which uses traditional UNIX
mbox format.  There is no standard for the handling of traditional UNIX
mbox format on the PC, or even for whether the newlines are UNIX-style LF
or PC-style CRLF.

Given these caveats, would a PINERC configuration option be acceptable for
you?

-- Mark --

http://staff.washington.edu/mrc
Science does not emerge from voting, party politics, or public debate.