MBOX-Line: From mrc at CAC.Washington.EDU  Tue Oct 30 21:52:27 2007
To: imap-protocol@u.washington.edu
From: Mark Crispin <mrc@CAC.Washington.EDU>
Date: Fri Jun  8 12:34:40 2018
Subject: [Imap-protocol] re: GMail
In-Reply-To: <16687.1193801494@succubus.panacea.null.org>
References: <alpine.WNT.0.9999.0710241938220.520@Shimo-Tomobiki.Panda.COM>
	<alpine.WNT.0.9999.0710270924180.4788@Shimo-Tomobiki.Panda.COM>
	<5202.1193523708.069559@peirce.dave.cridland.net>
	<alpine.OSX.0.9999.0710271708460.11181@pangtzu.panda.com>
	<1193531029.25921.561.camel@hurina>
	<alpine.WNT.0.9999.0710271748490.204456@Ningyo-no-Mori.Panda.COM>
	<RMRLrFbL0dA92HCVkk6Cgw.md5@libertango.oryx.com>
	<alpine.OSX.0.9999.0710280923190.11181@pangtzu.panda.com>
	<d1klUHoFkFbXOtQmbn1Bww.md5@libertango.oryx.com>
	<47263322.7040702@psaux.com> <1193689139.25921.618.camel@hurina>
	<472653EE.9080102@psaux.com>
	<alpine.WNT.0.9999.0710291450130.3152@Tomobiki-Cho.CAC.Washignton.EDU>
	<D24F4660-40CA-4114-8E3A-A74CFA9CECAB@apple.com>
	<alpine.WNT.0.9999.0710291546390.3152@Tomobiki-Cho.CAC.Washignton.EDU>
	<1040.1193739773.286509@peirce.dave.cridland.net>
	<alpine.OSX.0.9999.0710300841340.13875@pangtzu.panda.com>
	<16687.1193801494@succubus.panacea.null.org>
Message-ID: <alpine.OSX.0.9999.0710302137070.20419@pangtzu.panda.com>

On Wed, 31 Oct 2007, Joel Reicher wrote:
> How would you handle mailboxes in public "areas" (namespaces, points in
> a hierarchy) without something like the subscription facility? I thought
> the whole idea was that a user might not want to have listed all the
> mailboxes from such an area. Is the expectation now that users setup
> their desired subset on the client, potentially repeating this setup on
> different clients?

Unfortunately, this is not how subscriptions have been used by most 
clients.

Most clients "work" by doing a one-time LIST of *, SUBSCRIBE all the 
returned names, and from then on do LSUB instead of LIST.  Any attempt to 
use subscriptions in the intended way with one of the few correct clients 
will be broken as soon as you use one of the majority clients.

This came about because the cretins who wrote [censored] over 10 years ago 
decided that since "you're not supposed to use * in LIST, that must be a 
bug in UW imapd, so this is what we do instead."  The majority of clients 
have mindlessly copied this behavior ever since.

I won't name [censored] client, and it is thankfully long extinct.

IMHO, subscriptions are hopelessly broken and are not reliably 
interoperable.  This qualifies subscriptions as cruft that should be 
deleted from IMAP.  I don't like saying this, but at some point it is wise 
to cut losses.  The benefit of having ones .newsrc exported via IMAP pales 
compared to the costs of all these clients that do LIST "" * followed by 
thousands of SUBSCRIBE commands.

If it is desirable to have some way of recording a subset of public 
mailboxes for use by multiple clients, it needs to be done by some other 
mechanism.

-- Mark --

http://panda.com/mrc
Democracy is two wolves and a sheep deciding what to eat for lunch.
Liberty is a well-armed sheep contesting the vote.

