looking for Cyrus mail format documentation

[Phil Howard]

A couple people have suggested to me that I use Cyrus-IMAP as
opposed to Courier-IMAP, and have given some good arguments
for that decision direction.  However, I have still have one
show stopper for that switch: some external programs that work
directly with the storage space of all the mail.  Due to the
nature of some of these programs, accessing that mail by means
of the IMAP protocol or any delivery protocol is not an option.

What I want to examine at this point is the potential ease of
converting those programs to work with the format Cyrus-IMAP
stores its mail.  Had Cyrus-IMAP used the Maildir format, this
would be a simple "unplug Courier" and "plugin Cyrus".  The
issue is not about converting existing messages (the transition
will be done with all empty mailboxes).  The issue is knowing
the details of the format in its entirety.

I've looked around the web site and the source file tree and I
find no documentation on this format.  I have been told two
different stories about references to other formats it is like.
But then, I've also heard people tell me Cyrus-IMAP really
does use Maildir format (and as far as I can see, that simply
is not true).

So basically, I'm asking if any documentation(s) exists which
would described (preferrably in a "standards" style) just what
the format is.  Please don't refer me to the source code, as
I already have that, and I've never found that method to be
a clean way to deal with all the issues (too often semantics
are missed because the implementation doesn't push requirements
to the edge).  Documents in ASCII, HTML, or PDF preferred.

I was also looking for documentation on SASL.  That I found in
the RFCs.  That's the kind of thing I'm looking for regarding
the file formats.

-- 
-----------------------------------------------------------------
| Phil Howard - KA9WGN |   Dallas   | http://linuxhomepage.com/ |
| phil-nospam at ipal.net | Texas, USA | http://ka9wgn.ham.org/    |
-----------------------------------------------------------------