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Date:      Fri, 31 Mar 1995 13:21:52 -0500 (EST)
From:      Christopher Sedore <cmsedore@mailbox.syr.edu>
To:        Brian Tao <taob@gate.sinica.edu.tw>
Cc:        Terry Lambert <terry@cs.weber.edu>, freebsd-hackers@freefall.cdrom.com
Subject:   Re: Mail...
Message-ID:  <Pine.SOL.3.91.950331131926.25138D-100000@forbin.syr.edu>
In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSI.3.91.950401014023.1567A-100000@aries.ibms.sinica.edu.tw>

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On Sat, 1 Apr 1995, Brian Tao wrote:

> On Wed, 29 Mar 1995, Terry Lambert wrote:
> > 
> > Mail really wants a record oriented file system, or as you suggest, one
> > file system object per message.
> 
>     Precisely.  Since we are all used to seeing hierarchical
> filesystems, this model can be applied to a mail spool rather well.
> Each individual user's mailbox is represented as a directory
> structure, where the "inodes" make up the mailbox index.  Each message
> is represented as an individual file inside that directory.  If you
> want to get fancy, you can map each message to a subdirectory, with
> the headers, message body and MIME attachments as files.  Large
> organizations could then build up trees of mail filesystems and
> instruct mail readers to descend a hierarchy of directories the same
> way you would trace from a top-level domain down to the invidiual host
> and then to the user.

Isn't this more or less what MH does at a user level?  I've often thought 
that the MH model could be extended in many ways to do the above.  

-Chris



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