You can still use the path_info() information and not use the query string at all.

F.ex. I have an archive for the Sybperl-l mailing list here. The mod_perl handler looks like this:

<Location /archive>
SetHandler perl-script
PerlHandler My::Archive
</Location>
[download]

However, the "My::Archive" module understands things like: http://www.peppler.org/archive/sybperl-l/2003/11/7567.html by doing the following:

sub handler {
    my $r = shift;

    my $path = $r->path_info();
    my $q = Apache::Request->new($r);

    my $dbh = getDataBaseHandle();

    $path =~ s/\.html$//;
    my ($junk, $list, $year, $mon, $msg) = split(/\//, $path);
    if(!$year) {
        displayYears($q, $dbh, $list);
    } elsif(!$mon) {
        displayMonths($q, $dbh, $list, $year);
    } elsif(!$msg) {
        displayMsgs($q, $dbh, $list, $year, $mon);
    } else {
        displayMessage($q, $dbh, $list, $year, $mon, $msg);
    }
}
[download]

... and yes, the mail archive is stored in a Sybase database.

Michael