New message preservation

[Jared Rhine <jared@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

[John == jgoerzen@xxxxxxxxxxxx on Tue, 5 Nov 2002 10:47:21 -0600]
--text follows this line--
Jared> Are "new message" flags working fine for everyone else?

John> As far as I know, yes.

Fair enough.  I'll start digging.

John> What mail reader are you using?  And what version?

Wanderlust v2.8.1 in Emacs.  Judging from the "works for me"
diagnosis, I'd imagine that your best guess would be "probably your
client".  Wanderlust worked fine when it was doing straight IMAP, but
I can seen how the Maildir codebase might have separate problems.

[time passes]

Ok, I have a lead.  Not sure whether it's possible to point the finger
definitively here.  DJB's limited spec[1] says:

  When you move a file from new to cur, you have to change its name
  from uniq to uniq:info. Make sure to preserve the uniq string, so
  that separate messages can't bump into each other.

So Wanderlust does that using a straightforward implementation.
Starting with a 'new' directory of:

-- begin --

  /home/jared/mail/[...]/lists.courier-users/new:

  ... 4378 Oct 26 16:21 
1035674476_0.32046.badger,U=165,FMD5=a913453081e489f79498852ec40276af:2,
  ... 4329 Oct 26 17:50 
1035679832_0.1208.badger,U=166,FMD5=a913453081e489f79498852ec40276af:2,
  ... 3083 Oct 26 20:27 
1035689252_0.4047.badger,U=167,FMD5=a913453081e489f79498852ec40276af:2,

-- end --

I end up with a 'cur' directory of:

-- begin --

  /home/jared/mail/[...]/lists.courier-users/cur:

  ... 4378 Oct 26 16:21 
1035674476_0.32046.badger,U=165,FMD5=a913453081e489f79498852ec40276af:2,:2,
  ... 4329 Oct 26 17:50 
1035679832_0.1208.badger,U=166,FMD5=a913453081e489f79498852ec40276af:2,:2,
  ... 3083 Oct 26 20:27 
1035689252_0.4047.badger,U=167,FMD5=a913453081e489f79498852ec40276af:2,:2,

-- end --

So is it Wanderlust or offlineimap who is violating the spec,
technically?  Neither, I wager.

Are these the same sort of problems that mutt was having?  Should the
defacto standard be:

  When you move a file from new to cur, you have to change its name
  from uniq to uniq:info. Make sure to preserve the uniq string, so
  that separate messages can't bump into each other.  __But don't
  append the :info string if it already exists.___

Harumph.  Ideas?

[1] http://cr.yp.to/proto/maildir.html

-- jared@xxxxxxxxxxx

"Truth is a great flirt." -- Franz Liszt