MBOX-Line: From mrc at CAC.Washington.EDU  Sun Dec  2 00:11:53 2007
To: imap-protocol@u.washington.edu
From: Mark Crispin <mrc@CAC.Washington.EDU>
Date: Fri Jun  8 12:34:41 2018
Subject: [Imap-protocol] FLAGS reply
In-Reply-To: <1196582023.9771.694.camel@hurina>
References: <1196580950.9771.687.camel@hurina>
	<alpine.OSX.0.99999.0712012341230.9023@pangtzu.panda.com>
	<1196582023.9771.694.camel@hurina>
Message-ID: <alpine.OSX.0.99999.0712012355240.10935@pangtzu.panda.com>

On Sun, 2 Dec 2007, Timo Sirainen wrote:
> How about when keywords are removed?

There is no defined mechanism in IMAP to remove keywords.  Every time the 
question came up the result was a punt.

Although it makes sense to send a FLAGS/PERMANENTFLAGS update to remove a 
keyword, I do not recommend doing so for the following reasons:
  (1) It may be a keyword which the user intends to use later.  Note that
      only STORE is defined to create keywords, and some servers won't in
      APPEND and COPY.
  (2) Clients probably are totally unprepared to handle keywords vanishing
      in a session (and certainly would be for a keyword that is used in
      an existing message).

If there's a need to clean up old unused keywords, do so in a new session. 
But you should avoid doing so without a definite need due to reason (1) 
above.

-- 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.

