Package: debian-policy Version: 3.5.6.0 Severity: wishlist Debian uses the traditional mailbox style by default. However, it has some disadvantages over maildir -- one of them is that it does a non-reversible modification to the message's text if it contains the sequence 'From ' at the beginning of a line. MUAs like mutt also save the user's mail folders in the same problematic format.
My proposal is to: 1. Use the maildir format by default for storage of the user's incoming mail. This means both the MTA must be configured for maildir by default (e.g. in eximconfig) and all the MUAs must be able to grok it without needing any manual configuration 2. Use the maildir format to store the user folders by default if the user's MUA allows it The issues are: - Debian is about choice. So, of course mailbox vs maildir will end up being a configuration question. Just make maildir the default, please. - Standards for where to put the user's incoming mail/where in $HOME to put the folders. I believe most programs which use maildir already share common places, but putting them in policy would be good. - Making programs which can't use it yet be able to use it - Somehow making programs able to guess which is the mbox/mdir choice of the day (perhaps using debconf). - Dealing with indecise people who change the default while the system is live References: 1. Content-Length Considered Harmful http://home.netscape.com/eng/mozilla/2.0/relnotes/demo/content-length.html 2. Benchmarking mbox versus maildir http://www.courier-mta.org/mbox-vs-maildir/ 3. Using maildir format http://cr.yp.to/proto/maildir.html 4. Maildir Bulletin http://www.coker.com.au/maildir-bulletin/ 5. maildir(5) http://www.qmail.org/qmail-manual-html/man5/maildir.html <insert standard "Debian should take the lead", "look at the xterm backspace mess and how well Debian handled it", etc> -- System Information Debian Release: testing/unstable Architecture: i386 Kernel: Linux flower 2.4.7 #1 Sat Jul 21 20:57:24 BRT 2001 i686 Locale: LANG=en_US.ISO8859-1, LC_CTYPE=en_US.ISO8859-1 Versions of packages debian-policy depends on: ii fileutils 4.1-2 GNU file management utilities.
