MBOX-Line: From MRC at CAC.Washington.EDU  Mon Oct 29 15:05:37 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
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Message-ID: <alpine.WNT.0.9999.0710291450130.3152@Tomobiki-Cho.CAC.Washignton.EDU>

On Mon, 29 Oct 2007, Tim Showalter wrote:
>> 1 ENABLE UTF-8 UNSOLICITED-RESPONSES-WITHOUT-IDLE ETC
> IMAP lore says this is what killed IMAP 3.

There was quite a bit that killed IMAP3; a total misunderstanding the 
unsolicited data model of IMAP, an incorrect understanding of how to 
handle MIME, and some truly silly facilities like SET.EOL.

Then there are such obtuse statements as "this allows the client not to 
have to block on some complex predicate that involves watching to see an 
update in a cache cell" which make no sense until you you realize that it 
refers to one particular client written in Common Lisp.

> I'm not opposed to client-side capabilities, as I think we need a way to get 
> rid of some of the cruft of the protocol eventually.  But I do think we ought 
> to be able to specify a strict, increasing order for such extensions.

I am of two minds here.

I very much agree with getting rid of cruft.  On the other hand, a strict, 
increasing order of extensions opens a wide avenue for mischief in which a 
desirable facility can not be added without first adding other cruft that 
was slipped in the mandatory upgrade path.

If I knew a way to steer between this Scylla and Charybdis, I would offer 
it.

Perhaps we should just punt doing the right thing to IMAP5, and add 
UTF8.FLAGS as a FETCH command and UTF8.LIST/UTF8.LSUB as basic commands 
(with perhaps something for LISTEXT if you like...but I don't want a 
dependency on LISTEXT).

-- Mark --

http://staff.washington.edu/mrc
Science does not emerge from voting, party politics, or public debate.
Si vis pacem, para bellum.

