Contacts and Calendars Standard

[Navindra Umanee]

Filip Van Raemdonck <mechanix at debian.org> wrote:
> Actually the only case where I've ever seen ~/mail/ being used was when
> I created new folders using IMP as a webmail frontend for some mail
> account...[1]

Hmmm, you must not have come across the billions of Pine users out
there... :-)

> I _have_ seen ~/Mail/, but only fairly recently, containing maildir boxes;

Mutt, Elm, nmh, the other big honchos, default to ~/Mail/...

> Procmail can handle at least mbox and maildir. And I think I can say that
> I've seen enough different systems (see [1]) to be able to judge that
> those two are what's used on the majority of mail systems.

The cost of updating everything for so little gain makes me cringe
instinctively...  I think the sysadmins out there would agree the less
change the better.  Calendars/Contacts is an easier problem; Unix mail
is just too entrenched -- through decades of system use.

As an aside, do you realise that some people actually like and rely on
the fact that different MUAs use different directories and configs?
It might be a questionable practice, but there you have it -- I even
know of people who do that on Windows.  I suppose you might argue the
case that this is just a bad habit promoted by lack of standardisation
and that it is actually *worth* rectifying the situation and paying
the cost.

> Remember, we are also not saying people will _have to_ convert. Only that
> this is believed to be the best way to interoperate. And hopefully the
> major DEs (and more importantly, their mail applications) will implement
> the proposed spec.

Could be I'm wrong.  It could be OK to agree on a standard for just
KDE and GNOME.  Can't stand GUI mail clients, myself, so what they do
in their little sandboxes doesn't really concern me...  but when they
start trying to standardise stuff for everyone, it gets worrying.  ;-)

Cheers,
Navin.

PS mbox format rules!