Subject: Re: mail_append()

From: Bill Yeager <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 8 Sep 1992 10:56:00 PDT

>> - Pass it a stream of some other open mailbox to serve to indicate the
   format of the mailbox.

I think this can be somewhat subtle. 

1. If the mailbox to which one is appending exists, then the driver can be
automatically decided by the mailbox type of this mailbox.

2. If it doesn't exist, then if the mailbox type of INBOX is known, I imagine a
user would like to have that format for append. I certainly would, even if I
often open mailboxes of a different mailbox type. I, for example, use tenex
format for the majority of my messages, but often read bezerkly mailboxes. I'd
want my backing-store of saved messages to be in tenex format(*).

3. If INBOX format isn't known, then your plan above makes sense.

The question I have is: What does append mean if a user's INBOX mailbox type is
mh mode? Does one create a subdirectory in the Mail/ folder called Append/ and
then iterate by message number as is done in mh mode?

Bill

(*) The intention all along with IMAP was that the user should never have to
worry about the format of mail on the repository, but this hasn't worked out
because people often connect directly to this system to read their mail from
home. This mode of operation will persist until most users have network
connections to their homes which I think is still in the near-distant future.
So, I guess it is necessary to be able to accomodate all of these
formats.
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