flags on backuped mails

[Marten Lehmann]

Hello,

to backup a mailbox, I would simply have to tar and gzip it. Mails are 
stored in the numbered files and flags are stored in the cyrus-files.

But restoring these mails including flags is very complicated. I would 
have to renumber them so they don't conflict with existing messages and 
as there is no way to merge the old cyrus files with the existing ones, 
all flags would be gone.

This leads to two points:

1. Why are message files names numbered and not randomized? Is it 
because of the IMAP UID of each message?

2. Why aren't flags stored in the file name, too? I used to see that 
with Maildirs and it is very clever: Flags are permanent and aren't lost 
if the index is broken. Anyway, the index speeds up access to the flags 
and the index can be rebuild from the flags in the filename. The 
flag-structure might be adopted from the Maildir-specification.

Has this been suggested before and was refused for a certain reason? Or 
should I contact the devel-list so they may include support for it?

Regards
Marten