--- /dev/null	Thu Jan 01 00:00:00 1970 +0000
+++ b/README	Fri Aug 09 12:15:38 2002 +0300
@@ -0,0 +1,86 @@
+
+ * Alpha release
+
+This release has not been extensively tested, I don't recommend putting it
+into production usage yet. All the IMAP4rev1 features are fully supported,
+except custom message flags still need to be implemented. There's several
+minor problems left, see TODO file.
+
+ * Mail storages
+
+Maildir is the preferred storage with most robust implementation. mbox
+support is available but currently it relies a little bit on good luck, I
+made it mostly for personal use and I strongly recommend using maildir if
+at all possible.
+
+Maildir folders are done like with courier. INBOX is the ~/Maildir
+directory, all the other folders named as ".<folder>.<subfolder>.<etc>"
+under it, any directories not starting with a dot are simply ignored.
+Deleting folders is made atomic by renaming them as "..<folder name>" and
+deleting the directory after that. So, all directories beginning with ".."
+are deleted whenever they're noticed. Indexes are stored into each folder's
+root directory.
+
+mbox storage currently requires that all mail is in user-writable
+directory, eg. ~/mail. Especially using /var/mail/user is NOT supported.
+You may however create a ~/mail/inbox hardlink (or symlink if not chrooted)
+to pointing to /var/mail/user. All files in the mail directory are
+considered as mailboxes. Directories specify subfolders in IMAP. "inbox"
+file specifies the INBOX folder and can not be named otherwise. Indexes are
+stored into ".imap/<mailbox name>/" directories.
+
+imap process detects the storage from MAIL-environment which is preferred
+to be in format "<storage>:<data>", for example "maildir:~/Maildir". It's
+anyway allowed to be in pretty much any format as long as some of the
+storages recognizes it as a valid data, so for example "MAIL=~/mail" is
+first checked by maildir storage to see if it's valid maildir and
+mbox storage after that.
+
+If the MAIL environment isn't given at all, all the storages are gone
+through which try to find a valid directory for themselves to use. Also as
+a special case, if MAILDIR environment exists, maildir storage is used with
+the directory specified in it.
+
+Maildir storage is autodetected by checking if <directory>/cur/ exists and
+we have rwx access to it. If directory isn't known, / and ~/Maildir are
+checked. / is checked because we could be chrooted.
+
+mbox storage is autodetected by checking if .imap/ (+rwx), inbox (+rw) or
+mbox (+rw) exists in directory. If directory isn't known, / is tried first.
+After that, ~/mail and ~/Mail directories are used if they're found without
+checking if they even contain any files.
+
+ * Code
+
+The code is split into a several libraries and binaries:
+
+ src/master      - imap-master binary (see docs/design.txt)
+ src/login       - imap-login binary
+ src/auth        - imap-auth binary
+ src/imap        - imap binary
+
+ src/lib         - Generic library functions
+ src/lib-mail    - RFC-822 and MIME parsering code
+ src/lib-imap    - IMAP-specific functions for parsing, sending, etc.
+ src/lib-index   - Mailbox indexing library, slightly IMAP-specific
+ src/lib-storage - Mail storage separated into interface and implementation.
+                   imap binary uses only the interface so it's possible to
+		   add support for any kind of mail storage (eg. SQL).
+
+ * RFCs conformed
+
+822  - Standard for ARPA Internet Text Messages
+2822 - Internet Message Format (updated rfc822)
+2045..2049 - Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME)
+
+2060 - IMAP4rev1
+2180 - IMAP4 Multi-Accessed Mailbox Practice
+
+2595 - Using TLS with IMAP, POP3 and ACAP
+2831 - Using Digest Authentication as a SASL Mechanism (DIGEST-MD5)
+
+rfc2831
+
+ * Contact info
+
+Timo Sirainen <tss@iki.fi>, http://dovecot.procontrol.fi/