MBOX-Line: From mrc at CAC.Washington.EDU  Mon Nov 28 11:31:57 2005
To: imap-protocol@u.washington.edu
From: Mark Crispin <mrc@CAC.Washington.EDU>
Date: Fri Jun  8 12:34:36 2018
Subject: [Imap-protocol] Re: IMAP capability for maximum APPEND message size?
In-Reply-To: <8E4E069D3416C28B7F5E166C@ninevah.local>
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	<1132831193.14231.285.camel@localhost.localdomain> 
	<Pine.OSX.4.64.0511240618280.533@pangtzu.panda.com>
	<1132853918.6797.13.camel@hurina>
	<Pine.OSX.4.64.0511281018540.562@pangtzu.panda.com>
	<8E4E069D3416C28B7F5E166C@ninevah.local>
Message-ID: <Pine.OSX.4.64.0511281114200.562@pangtzu.panda.com>

On Mon, 28 Nov 2005, Cyrus Daboo wrote:
> Well this begs for better error reporting as much as anything else.

I disagree in this case.

First, the client is probably more interested in knowing that there is a 
limit *before* it builds a godzillagram.

Second, the level of detail required to convey "your message of <n> octets 
exceeds the server limit of <m> octets" in a meaningful way to the client 
is considerably greater than anyone is likely to implement.  Most clients 
don't even use most of the existing status reporting codes in IMAP to good 
effect, much less the codes from SMTP; they look for a few values and 
ignore the rest.

This isn't to say that IMAP error reporting can not (or should not) be 
enhanced.  Obviously, it can and should.  But this isn't the right 
argument for that.

> The 
> MAXAPPEND capability does not guarantee that a client can append up to that 
> amount without error, all it guarantees is that an attempt to store more than 
> that will fail. i.e. a client still has to cope with APPEND failures even 
> with MAXAPPEND.

Correct.  This corresponds exactly with the SIZE verb in SMTP.

I think that this is useful, but only if done in a simple capability (as 
SIZE is in SMTP).  Some of what has been discussed (e.g., as part of 
annotations) smacks of over-engineering.

-- 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.

