[Users] Move #mh to shared folder.

[Mark Filipak]

On 2013/4/6 7:28 AM, Holger Berndt wrote:
> On Fr, 05.04.2013 22:01, Mark Filipak wrote:
>
>>> In Claws Mail, a mailbox and an account are two distinct concepts.
>>
>> Yes! But the nomenclature is getting into the way. The idea that
>> the container of mailboxes is 'The Mailbox' is getting in the way
>> of understanding.
>
> That's your very own idea. A "mailbox" not a container of mailboxes.

I don't know what you mean, but it's not important.

> I think what's getting in your way of understanding is that you're
> trying to change everything even before having taken the effort to
> understand it.

You're right to be cautious. I understand how email applications work.

>> The 1st step is to give everything a name. A well chosen name...
-snip-
> The things have appropriate names.

In some cases, yes; in some cases, no.

> There is a "mailbox", which is basically a storage location. You can
> have one or multiple of those, and they can be stored on different
> physical locations.
>
> Inside a mailbox, you can have a nested "folder" structure.

"Inbox" is the name of a mailbox, is it not? "Sent" is name of a folder, not a mailbox, correct? If I create a filter that routes mail to "Joe", then Joe is a mailbox named "Joe", is that not correct?

> Then there are "account"s, which handle the take-over from your mailbox
> to the provider for sending and (possibly) receiving.

Those are Claws processes. Accounts are what people have on mail and news servers, or am I wrong?

> That's actually pretty consistent to what the terms mean in other
> applications as well. It's just that some push the user to have a 1:1
> association between accounts and mailboxes, and thus can use the
> terms interchangably.

I must be misreading what you write. It seems to me that you are using the terms interchangeably.

>>> A mailbox is used to store messages. An account is used to pull in
>>> and/or send out messages.

It seems to me that a mailbox is a folder to which Claws automatically delivers mail (as opposed to a folder to which the user has manually moved messages), and that an account is a service that runs on a mail or news server on behalf of a mail client and therefore has nothing directly to do with Claws other than configuration (username, password, credential, authentication, encryption, etc.), and that the process that pulls the mail from the server is a fetch.

>>> There's no problem in having multiple
>>> accounts that fetch messages and dump them into the very same mailbox.
>>
>> Account? These are Mail Accounts? How about Mail Sources? Mail comes
>> from Mail Sources (POP & IMAP servers) and gets deposited in Mail
>> Boxes.
>
> That's only half the truth (accounts do not only receive...
-snip-

I was addressing only the mail reception part of the story because it's the most complex. Sending mail is a relatively simple task.

> A "source" is also more abstract than an "account".

I disagree. "Source" is specific. It's "account" that's abstract. "Account" is abstract because it's a metaphor. Also, you're using "account" only because the guys who write server code use it. They use it only because, by extension, it requires a user account on the server system. The software architecture term for where a message comes from is "source". IMHO, that's the term that should be used.
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