converting pine aliases to mutt

[Raju K V]

hi all,

I have a whole lot of pine aliases (in .addressbook). I need to convert
them to mutt. Can you suggest a simple method or point to an existing
script for doing the same?

Thanks in advance,
Raju

Re: zsh command completion for mutt

[Jimmy Mäkelä]

On Mon, Aug 30, 1999 at 07:49:17PM +0200, Thomas Roessler wrote:
> I'm tinkering around a bit with zsh.
> 
> Does anyone have something better than this for mutt command
> completion?  (I don't like that sub-directories hack too much, but
> it seems to be the only thing I get working.)
> 

I don't know if it's better, but I use the following completion:

compctl -x 's[-]' -s 'a b c d e f F H i m n p R s v vv x y z Z h' - \
'c[-1,-F][-1,-H][-1,-i][-1,-a]' -g '*(-)' - \
'c[-1,-f] s[./]' -g "*(-.)" - \
'c[-1,-f]' -P "+" -g "~/mail/**/*(-.:gs,$HOME/mail/,,)" - \
'c[-1,-s]' -P "\"" -\
'c[-1,-e]' -m - 'c[-1,-b][-1,-c]'\
-s '$(sed -e "/<.*>/\!d" -e "s/.*<\(.*\)>.*/\1/g" ~/.mail_aliases)' - \
'p[1],s[^-]' -s \
'$(sed -e "/<.*>/\!d" -e "s/.*<\(.*\)>.*/\1/g" ~/.mail_aliases)' -- mutt

I kind of like the recursive search for folders. And if I wan't a mailbox
which isn't in the standard place i just prefix it with ./.

Jimmy - [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: converting pine aliases to mutt

[Thomas Roessler]

On 1999-08-31 16:00:11 +0530, Raju K V wrote:

> I have a whole lot of pine aliases (in .addressbook). I need to convert
> them to mutt. Can you suggest a simple method or point to an existing
> script for doing the same?

Under ftp://ftp.guug.de/pub/mutt/contrib/, there is a script named
addrbook2aliases (or something like that).

Re: zsh command completion for mutt

[Thomas Roessler]

On 1999-08-31 12:43:58 +0200, Jimmy Mäkelä wrote:

> I don't know if it's better, but I use the following completion:

Nice.  However, the recursive path searching seems to be a bit slow...

color-high not working

[Oliver Immich]

Hello mutters,

since 0.95.6i Mutt lacks color-support in my terminals.
I am very sure about my rc - files being correct, everything 
else is working properly, too. If somebody on this list have 
a clue: Please tell me!

---> I installed mutt-1.0pre1i-2.cfp.rhl5.i386.rpm on my
 RH5.2 (not really 5.2, now)...

Many thanks in advance,

Oliver

color-support is gone

[Oliver Immich]

Hello ´Mutters´,

a few days ago I started using mutt and I am very very happy with it.
Everything I need or I have discovered so far is working well - except of
color-support which makes mutt even easier to use. I had colors with 0.95.4us,
but since then they´re gone. 
I installed the 1.0pre1i rpms on my RH 5.2 today. Everything´s fine but color-support. 
The rc-file is correct (I even used the ´old´ one without success).

So, if anybody have a clue - please tell me...

Many thanks in advance,

Oliver
 
-- 

#  #
#   [EMAIL PROTECTED]  # 
#   http://www.steadyproc.myokay.net#
#  #

How Do I Make (Only Some) Mail Appear in Russian?

[Irving_Wolfe]

I have some mail come in occasionally that
is, for example, in Russian, dos code page
1251, I think it is.  Most of the characters
look blank, but they are really there.  I
guess they have a high bit set and are not
coming out visible for me.  I try changing
my console font to all the different choices,
and some of them make characters appear, but
not the right ones (Cyrillic, and that really
spell Russian words).  

I am lost.  Can anyone help me?  By the way,
I only know a little bit of Russian, so I
probably cannot handle instructions that are
in Russian, and of course, given this problem,
I couldn't see the letters anyway.  It would
also be nice if I could switch my keyboard
back and forth, between generating English
and Russian.

Thanks in advance!

Sincerely,
 - Irving

Mutt + Vim Q's -Antwort

[TE-Labor Diplomant]

Hi,

>i'm using vim as my e-mail editor

I guess this is a good choice. Yup.


>notice it has margins on the right and left leaving space on both sides.  it
>is also 'full' justified to those margins.

I'ld use something like:
:imap ,ip :se tw=40gqapk>ap

and then just type ,ip in the paragraph you want indented.
In my file, every personal command start with a , and ip would
mean 'indent paragraph'. Then, you set the width of the paragraph
(here 40 chars), format it (gqap), and indent it.


>i don't believe there's any way internal to vim that can do such a thing--
>maybe i'm wrong.

Depends on how internal you want internal things to be :^)

>if that's the case, maybe somesort of processing agent run after editing is
>finished but prior to mutt coming back up?  anyone have any thoughts on
>this?

You could run it through an external filter, typically written in Perl,
but it wouldn't be too portable anymore... On the other hand,
if you start using external filters, you can do much more work.
But it goes beyond the scope of this mail.


Hope that helps,
Yves.

Re: message width in vim?

[Shao Zhang]

Pete Toscano [[EMAIL PROTECTED]] wrote:
> hmmm, this is interesting and helpful, but i have a further question.
> how do you get vim (or is it even possible?) to "soft wrap" while
> editing and then insert  characters when you exit or write?  this
> would be nice in that, if you're editing a file and you remove a line or
> two from a line, if there's room to fit the first word(s) from the line
> after the current one, it'll move that/those word(s) to the current line
> and fix everything after that.  this would maked editing a paragraph much 
> easier.  of course, maybe i should just be using emacs instead of vim 
> (though i do love vim).

Sorry, cannot help you with this one. Can emacs actually do this? I
never know that. 

As the situation you descirbed, I always SHIFT-j to bring up the next
line if the current line is too short. And then I break lines manaully.
I don't normally write very long emails. So I am quite happy with that.

It is probably better to ask the vim mailing list, I am sure they will
work out something for you.

Shao.



-- 

Shao Zhang - Running Debian 2.1  ___ _   _
Department of Communications/ __| |_  __ _ ___  |_  / |_  __ _ _ _  __ _ 
University of New South Wales   \__ \ ' \/ _` / _ \  / /| ' \/ _` | ' \/ _` |
Sydney, Australia   |___/_||_\__,_\___/ /___|_||_\__,_|_||_\__, |
Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]  |___/ 
_

Re: color-support is gone

[esoR ocsirF]

On Sun, Aug 29, 1999 at 12:39:02AM +0200, Oliver Immich wrote:
> 
> 
> Hello ´Mutters´,
> 
> a few days ago I started using mutt and I am very very happy with it.
> Everything I need or I have discovered so far is working well - except of
> color-support which makes mutt even easier to use. I had colors with 0.95.4us,
> but since then they´re gone. 
> I installed the 1.0pre1i rpms on my RH 5.2 today. Everything´s fine but 
>color-support. 
> The rc-file is correct (I even used the ´old´ one without success).
> 
> So, if anybody have a clue - please tell me...
> 

Just for the fun of it ;-)

I am using mutt 1.0pre1i installedfrom a .deb  onto debians unstable 
and the color works fine. Perhaps it is not mutt that is a problem but
your distribution? 

-- 

Frisco Rose [EMAIL PROTECTED]   

Science Journal Ed. [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Hoke Center 307 Ph# 2-3787

Re: pgp autosign

[Michael Elkins]

[please send all questsion to [EMAIL PROTECTED]]

On Mon, Aug 30, 1999 at 04:10:15PM +0200, Bo?tjan Muller [NEONATUS] wrote:
> I would like to enable mutt to autosign all my outgoing mails except ones that
> go to [EMAIL PROTECTED] How can this be done, if it can be done at
> all?

You can do this (I believe) with send-hook, something like:
send-hook ~A set pgp_autosign
send-hook ~[EMAIL PROTECTED] unset pgp_autosign

me

Re: color-support is gone

[Fairlight]

On Tue, Aug 31, 1999 at 10:51:25AM -0700, esoR ocsirF cogitated:
> On Sun, Aug 29, 1999 at 12:39:02AM +0200, Oliver Immich wrote:
> > 
> > 
> > Hello ´Mutters´,
> > 
> > a few days ago I started using mutt and I am very very happy with it.
> > Everything I need or I have discovered so far is working well - except of
> > color-support which makes mutt even easier to use. I had colors with 0.95.4us,
> > but since then they´re gone. 
> > I installed the 1.0pre1i rpms on my RH 5.2 today. Everything´s fine but 
>color-support. 
> > The rc-file is correct (I even used the ´old´ one without success).
> > 
> > So, if anybody have a clue - please tell me...
> > 
> 
> Just for the fun of it ;-)
> 
> I am using mutt 1.0pre1i installedfrom a .deb  onto debians unstable 
> and the color works fine. Perhaps it is not mutt that is a problem but
> your distribution? 

Well THAT was uncalled for.  :/  

Although I agree that mutt is likely not the problem...I'm running RH 5.2
and colour works fine in 0.95.6i and 0.95.7i.  I installed from
source/tarball though, not the RPMs.  

Check your term type with printenv, and check mutt -v and see if it's
listed as +HAVE_COLOR.

mark->
-- 
Fairlight->   |||[EMAIL PROTECTED]  | Fairlight Consulting
  __/\__  ||| "I'm talking for free...   | http://www.fairlite.com
 <__<>__> |||   It's a New Religion..."  | [EMAIL PROTECTED]
\/||| PGP Public Key available via finger @iglou, or Key servers

Re: color-support is gone

[Mark Luntzel]

well, was it configured with 

--with-slang

or

--with-curses=DIR

sounds like it wasnt, or your slang/ncurses paths are nonexistent/wack.

On Tue, Aug 31, 1999 at 10:51:25AM -0700, esoR ocsirF wrote:
> On Sun, Aug 29, 1999 at 12:39:02AM +0200, Oliver Immich wrote:
> > 
> > 
> > Hello ´Mutters´,
> > 
> > a few days ago I started using mutt and I am very very happy with it.
> > Everything I need or I have discovered so far is working well - except of
> > color-support which makes mutt even easier to use. I had colors with 0.95.4us,
> > but since then they´re gone. 
> > I installed the 1.0pre1i rpms on my RH 5.2 today. Everything´s fine but 
>color-support. 
> > The rc-file is correct (I even used the ´old´ one without success).
> > 
> > So, if anybody have a clue - please tell me...
> > 
> 
> Just for the fun of it ;-)
> 
> I am using mutt 1.0pre1i installedfrom a .deb  onto debians unstable 
> and the color works fine. Perhaps it is not mutt that is a problem but
> your distribution? 
> 
> -- 
> 
> Frisco Rose   [EMAIL PROTECTED]   
> 
> Science Journal Ed.   [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Hoke Center 307   Ph# 2-3787

-- 
-BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK-
Version: 3.1
GIT d--- s:+ a C UL P+ L++ E--- W+ N+ o-- K- w--- 
O- M-- V- PS+ PE Y+ PGP++ t+ 5++ X+ R* tv- b+ DI++ D++ 
G-- e+ h* r* z* 
--END GEEK CODE BLOCK--

BUG: 0.95.7i and possibly later.

[Fairlight]

I ran into an indexing bug that I think may need fixing...  Let me explain
the circumstances:

1) My folder variable is set to ~/Mail
2) save-hook and mbox-hook both point to =received
3) I had a folder-hook > 'set move=no'
4) I called mutt -f Mail/received (from $HOME)
5) I went to change folders and was presented with the question to move or
   not, despite the hook...obviously it did not match against > even though
   ~/Mail/received is >.  No biggie...BUT...I answered "yes"...

6) Mutt then re-read the mailbox and presented every message twice.  I 
   assumed that it had rewritten/appended all the messages to received.
   The index DEFINITELY had every message twice...count on status line was
   doubled.

7) I went out of mutt, somewhat irritated with my stupidity, and changed 
   my .muttrc to add extra folder-hooks for every possible name for
   =received so that I wouldn't do this again.  :)

8) BUG:  I re-called mutt as in step #4, and there was only one of each 
   message present...the duplicates were strictly in the indexing, and
   the received folder contains only one of each message.  (I had been 
   meaning to go clean up the mess I made...that I didn't really make.)

So...the bug is between #6 and #8.  Be careful...I don't know what would
have happened had I -not- quit and just deleted every other duplicate and
then re-saved out...might have lost everything.  I sure as hell don't want
anyone to find out.

mark->
-- 
Fairlight->   |||[EMAIL PROTECTED]  | Fairlight Consulting
  __/\__  ||| "I'm talking for free...   | http://www.fairlite.com
 <__<>__> |||   It's a New Religion..."  | [EMAIL PROTECTED]
\/||| PGP Public Key available via finger @iglou, or Key servers

Re: pgp autosign

[Joshua Weage]

That should work, although the following will also:

set pgp_autosign
send-hook email@somewhere "unset pgp_autosign; etc..."

Josh

> > go to [EMAIL PROTECTED] How can this be done, if it can be done at
> > all?
> 
> You can do this (I believe) with send-hook, something like:
>   send-hook ~A set pgp_autosign
>   send-hook ~[EMAIL PROTECTED] unset pgp_autosign
> 
> me

-- 
-  Joshua Weage    -
-  Amateur Radio Call-sign: KC8LNZ -

Re: BUG: 0.95.7i and possibly later.

[Thomas Roessler]

On 1999-08-31 14:32:44 -0400, Fairlight wrote:

> 6) Mutt then re-read the mailbox and presented every message twice.
> I assumed that it had rewritten/appended all the messages to
> received. The index DEFINITELY had every message twice...count on
> status line was doubled.

Funny.  What kind of folder were you using for =received?

Re: pgp autosign

[Thomas Roessler]

That's not sufficient.  Remeber that variables set from within hooks
are persistant.

On 1999-08-31 15:13:26 -0400, Joshua Weage wrote:
> Date: Tue, 31 Aug 1999 15:13:26 -0400
> From: Joshua Weage <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: Re: pgp autosign
> Mail-Followup-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> 
>   That should work, although the following will also:
> 
> set pgp_autosign
> send-hook email@somewhere "unset pgp_autosign; etc..."
> 
> Josh
> 
> > > go to [EMAIL PROTECTED] How can this be done, if it can be done at
> > > all?
> > 
> > You can do this (I believe) with send-hook, something like:
> > send-hook ~A set pgp_autosign
> > send-hook ~[EMAIL PROTECTED] unset pgp_autosign
> > 
> > me
> 
> -- 
> -  Joshua Weage    -
> -  Amateur Radio Call-sign: KC8LNZ -
> 
> 

Re: BUG: 0.95.7i and possibly later.

[Fairlight]

On Tue, Aug 31, 1999 at 09:09:32PM +0200, Thomas Roessler cogitated:
> On 1999-08-31 14:32:44 -0400, Fairlight wrote:
> 
> > 6) Mutt then re-read the mailbox and presented every message twice.
> > I assumed that it had rewritten/appended all the messages to
> > received. The index DEFINITELY had every message twice...count on
> > status line was doubled.
> 
> Funny.  What kind of folder were you using for =received?

mbox.  Anything else I can provide (including my .muttrc), let me know...

I'm actually -happy- it didn't double every message for real...that would
have been a painful lesson.  But there was definitely a glitch in the index
redisplay.  Oddly enough, one of the duplicates was sorted out of order as
well...by two days.

mark->
-- 
Fairlight->   |||[EMAIL PROTECTED]  | Fairlight Consulting
  __/\__  ||| "I'm talking for free...   | http://www.fairlite.com
 <__<>__> |||   It's a New Religion..."  | [EMAIL PROTECTED]
\/||| PGP Public Key available via finger @iglou, or Key servers

Re: color-high not working

[Jeremy Blosser]

Oliver Immich [[EMAIL PROTECTED]] wrote:
> since 0.95.6i Mutt lacks color-support in my terminals.
> I am very sure about my rc - files being correct, everything 
> else is working properly, too. If somebody on this list have 
> a clue: Please tell me!
> 
> ---> I installed mutt-1.0pre1i-2.cfp.rhl5.i386.rpm on my
>  RH5.2 (not really 5.2, now)...

Check your TERM and make sure it supports color.  See the Mutt FAQ and try
the things there.

-- 
Jeremy Blosser   |   [EMAIL PROTECTED]   |   http://jblosser.firinn.org/
-+-+--
"If Microsoft can change and compete on quality, I've won." -- L. Torvalds

 PGP signature

Re: color-support is gone

[Oliver Immich]

Thanks a lot for your hints!

I uninstalled the rpm and configured the tarball
properly ( -> slang-0.99.38-8 is part of the 5.2 distro,
you wouldn´t guess that, would you).
Now, I´m having wonderful colors making my life easier.

Sorry for posting twice. First time seem to be gone lost...

Oliver.

-- 
--
 
   [EMAIL PROTECTED]
   http://www.steadyproc.myokay.net  
 
--

Re: pgp autosign

[Joshua Weage]

If that is the case, then anything that was changed with
a send-hook applies to all further messages that you send
until another send-hook is encountered?  IMO, that is a bad
idea, and isn't mentioned in the manual.  What is the
appropriate send-hook to use to switch back to "normal"
operation, yet still allow other hooks to work properly?

Josh


On Tue, Aug 31, 1999 at 09:15:16PM +0200, Thomas Roessler wrote:
> That's not sufficient.  Remeber that variables set from within hooks
> are persistant.
> 
> On 1999-08-31 15:13:26 -0400, Joshua Weage wrote:
> > That should work, although the following will also:
> > 
> > set pgp_autosign
> > send-hook email@somewhere "unset pgp_autosign; etc..."
> > 
> > Josh

-- 
-  Joshua Weage    -
-  Amateur Radio Call-sign: KC8LNZ -

Re: pgp autosign

[Jeremy Blosser]

Joshua Weage [[EMAIL PROTECTED]] wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 31, 1999 at 09:15:16PM +0200, Thomas Roessler wrote:
> > That's not sufficient.  Remeber that variables set from within hooks
> > are persistant.
> > 
>
>   If that is the case, then anything that was changed with a send-hook
>   applies to all further messages that you send until another send-hook is
>   encountered?  IMO, that is a bad idea, and isn't mentioned in the
>   manual.

With all the stuff that send-hooks and other hooks can do, it isn't really
feasible to have them just apply one time.

> What is the appropriate send-hook to use to switch back to "normal"
> operation, yet still allow other hooks to work properly?

It's the hook mentioned in the message you originally replied to.  /All/
matching send-hooks are executed for a given message, in order.  So what
you want to do is set a default behaviour first:

send-hook . "default behaviour"

The regexp '.' matches all messages, so this will be executed for ... all
messages.  Put more specific hooks after that:

send-hook . "default behaviour"
send-hook user@somewhere "other behaviour"

This is at least mentioned in the manual in the folder-hook section.

-- 
Jeremy Blosser   |   [EMAIL PROTECTED]   |   http://jblosser.firinn.org/
-+-+--
"If Microsoft can change and compete on quality, I've won." -- L. Torvalds

 PGP signature

Re: pgp autosign

[Rob Reid]

At  6:23 PM EDT on August 31 Joshua Weage sent off:
>   If that is the case, then anything that was changed with
> a send-hook applies to all further messages that you send
> until another send-hook is encountered?  IMO, that is a bad
> idea, and isn't mentioned in the manual.  What is the
> appropriate send-hook to use to switch back to "normal"
> operation, yet still allow other hooks to work properly?

~A (match All), just like Michael's original post.  The logic is:
first mutt finds the send-hook for everything (unset pgp_autosign) and
then for email@somewhere it finds the additional instruction set
pgp_autosign  (i.e. order matters).

The default could also be done like

send-hook !email@somewhere unset pgp_autosign

but if you have more than one set of send-hooks it's easier to just
match ~A.

-- 
"What's in the box?"
"Pain, but if you dig deep enough you might find a prize."
"That's right, it's Gom Jabar cereal!"
-- Geoff Raye (on #uiuc)
Robert I. Reid <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> http://astro.utoronto.ca/~reid/
PGP Key: http://astro.utoronto.ca/~reid/pgp.html

Re: pgp autosign

[David DeSimone]

Joshua Weage <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> set pgp_autosign
> send-hook email@somewhere "unset pgp_autosign; etc..."

No, that won't work, because once you send some mail to
, pgp_autosign will be unset, and remain unset.

> > send-hook ~A set pgp_autosign
> > send-hook ~[EMAIL PROTECTED] unset pgp_autosign

That's why this solution works better.

-- 
David DeSimone   | "The doctrine of human equality reposes on this:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]   |  that there is no man really clever who has not
Hewlett-Packard  |  found that he is stupid." -- Gilbert K. Chesterson
UX WTEC Engineer |PGP: 5B 47 34 9F 3B 9A B0 0D  AB A6 15 F1 BB BE 8C 44

Re: IMAP folder path

[David DeSimone]

Brendan Cully <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> Should mutt append the delimiter except against the root namespace
> {imapserver}, or should you just have to say 'set
> folder="{imapserver}Mail/" (mutt will never append the slash to imap
> folders)?

it's probably not useful for Mutt to append the delimeter when no
foldername has been specified, as the user's folder collection is
probably what's desired.

However, adding the delimiter at other times does seem to make sense.
I wonder, though, if our original poster, who used a setting like
folder="{imapserver}INBOX." was attempting to get Mutt to translate
"+folder" into "{imapserver}INBOX.folder", which means a folder
literally named "INBOX.folder" in the server's folder collection
for this user?  Perhaps the server isn't using "." as the directory
delimiter after all...  But these things are hard to guess.  :)

> It should work.  Mutt should translate '/' to the delimiter
> appropriate to the path.  If it doesn't I'd like to see it (I haven't
> tested this code, just read it).

Hmm, all the IMAP servers I've seen use "/" as the pathname separator,
so I can't tell.  :)

-- 
David DeSimone   | "The doctrine of human equality reposes on this:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]   |  that there is no man really clever who has not
Hewlett-Packard  |  found that he is stupid." -- Gilbert K. Chesterson
UX WTEC Engineer |PGP: 5B 47 34 9F 3B 9A B0 0D  AB A6 15 F1 BB BE 8C 44

Re: newbie : lot of problems with mutt

[David DeSimone]

Raju K. V. <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> -rwxr-xr-x   1 root other 3047603 Aug 28 19:01 mutt*
> -rwxr-sr-x   1 root mail54665 Aug 28 19:01 mutt_dotlock*

This looks correct.

> -rwxrwxr-x   1 root mail 2694 Aug 28 19:04 /var/mail/root

That's fine, except that your mail file is readable by world!  Also, I
don't know why it's executable.

For dot-locking, though, the DIRECTORY needs to have group-write
permissions.  The ownership and permissions you show above on
/var/mail/root, should be the exact permissions of /var/mail. 
/var/mail/root itself should be root.mail, 660 permissions.

> Also any hint on why mails cannot be sent with mutt? I can send mails
> using pine or elm.

Does your sendmail work?  If you run a command line such as
"sendmail -bv root", does it appear that the message will be
delivered correctly?

Since Elm also uses the local sendmail, there is probably something
wrong with the command line that Mutt is generating.  Maybe the
dsn_notify (and similar) options are set wrong.

-- 
David DeSimone   | "The doctrine of human equality reposes on this:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]   |  that there is no man really clever who has not
Hewlett-Packard  |  found that he is stupid." -- Gilbert K. Chesterson
UX WTEC Engineer |PGP: 5B 47 34 9F 3B 9A B0 0D  AB A6 15 F1 BB BE 8C 44

Re: IMAP folder path

[Brian D. Winters]

On Mon, Aug 30, 1999 at 03:22:42PM -0500, David DeSimone wrote:
> I wonder, though, if our original poster, who used a setting like
> folder="{imapserver}INBOX." was attempting to get Mutt to translate
> "+folder" into "{imapserver}INBOX.folder", which means a folder
> literally named "INBOX.folder" in the server's folder collection
> for this user?  Perhaps the server isn't using "." as the directory
> delimiter after all...  But these things are hard to guess.  :)

There is no need to guess, this has been explained more or less
completely (and your memory is wrong about the exact folder=... line,
which might be part of your continuing confusion), but rather than try
to cover the whole thing again and not lose you this time around, let
me refer you to the definitive source:

http://andrew2.andrew.cmu.edu/cyrus/imapd/overview.html#mboxname

Perhaps the first sentence of the section "Mailbox Namespace" explains
it all:

The Cyrus IMAP server presents mailboxes using the netnews
namespace convention.

By netnews I believe they mean newsgroups as in usenet, etc.  They
don't put things in terms like "directory" and "mailbox file", but one
of the things that is pretty clear is that '.' is their separator.
All users are under "user" (somewhat akin to /home), and "INBOX" is an
alias for "user.".  The last name found in a '.'  delimited
list is treated as the mailbox, and the rest constitutes the path to
that mailbox.  This leads to the strange (for IMAP) behavior that
Brendan mentioned about "mailboxes can also be directories".

Wow, this might be ingenious if it didn't go against the way every
IMAP client I know of works.  I wish the people working on supporting
these servers in mutt the best of luck!

Also, since when I fully specified a path in mutt I was using '/', and
Cyrus clearly wants '.', mutt does appear to be doing proper
translation.

Brian