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Re:Verizon/Yahoo Blocking Attempts to Archive Yahoo Groups –... by nicoburns on Monday December 09, 2019 @10:08AM (#21743228)
Hmm... a standalone viewer for these formats (that exposed a webserver that could be accessed in a browser) sounds like it would pretty trivial given a parser for the email format itself. Especially maildir!

How big are these archives? Do you have any samples? Does the viewer need any special features? (threading?)

Re:Verizon/Yahoo Blocking Attempts to Archive Yahoo Groups –... by Alex3917 on Monday December 09, 2019 @10:19AM (#21743327)
> pretty trivial given a parser for the email format itself

The problem is that there isn't any standard that defines what can and can't go inside the body of an email message. So if you want to post each email message exactly in a thread exactly as is, i.e. each with completely different typography and with all the replies attached and not sanitized in any way, then that's relatively easy. But it's also completely unreadable for more than about 30 seconds, and doesn't allow for good search functionality. These problems aren't a deal breaker if you're only trying to make sense of your own inbox, but when you're looking for specific information across millions of people's inboxes then they're a complete nonstarter.