[Re: Email question (part 2)]

[Matt Graham]

Cory Spitz <spitzcor@cray.com> wrote:
> On Thu, 20 Sep 2001, Edward Glowacki wrote: 
>> Forgot another question I had:
>> Any email programs use a database for storing messages?  Would
>> storing email in a database be logical?
> Would it be logical?  Don't know :)  But you would definitely want
> some way to import/export your mail from/to the text mail box format
> (is there an RFC for this) so that you could still use other readers.

What, precisely, does storing messages in a database buy you that procmail
doesn't buy you?  It sounds to me like adding another layer of abstraction on
top of something that's already abstract enough for general purposes.  I
suppose you could add something that would filter on message content, sticking
keywords into various "keyword" fields as well as "From:", "To:", "Subject:"
and "X-Mail-Thingy:" fields, then put the entire message into a BLOB.

And then you have to do something sensible with the info in the database,
which is the hard part.  The only sorting features of mail clients that I've
used so far are "Sort messages by {date,from,subject,size}" and the standard
"sort things into folders".  But then, I don't receive hundreds of messages a
day and can sort things by eyeball.

I can't remember whether there is an RFC for mbox and mdir, but both formats
are well-documented and should be easy to export into.

-- 
Matt G / Dances With Crows
There is no Darkness in Eternity/But only Light too dim for us to see
"I backed up my brain to tape, but tar says the tape contains no data...."