Importing maildir files

DEVONthink Tips
1

Does anyone know how to import maildir files? So far I have found two rather unpleasant ways:

  1. Set DT to import unknown files. This imports the files, but doesn’t recognize them as mail files so they have interesting names like 1, 2, 3.

  2. Append a dot to the file name so they look like 1. 2. 3. then move any mail in the target mail box to a temporary holding mailbox, copy the renamed files to the target mailbox, change ownership and permissions, and rebuild the mailbox. Of course, Apple’s rebuilding won’t actually work so you have to do this manually. Of course, mail is down while you perform the rebuilding. This works correctly, but is a lot of work that shouldn’t have to be done. Oh yes, once you have done this, DT no longer correctly reads the directory structure of the mailbox, so you have to restart DT as well.

Is there really no way to tell DT to read these files as mail files? I looked in the manual Googled and even used DEVONagent to search but could find nothing.

Also, sometimes DT logs import errors, but it doesn’t say what files have the errors, so how do you tell which files didn’t get imported?

2

If you refer to mail directory files as defined as such in the relevant Unix maildir specification, then it should work. If you are referring to an arbitrary folder with mailboxes, then it doesn’t work. We are using the Pantomime parsing code for this and it doesn’t support it.

3

Okay, thanks!