MBOX-Line: From mrc at CAC.Washington.EDU  Wed May 30 16:57:10 2007
To: imap-protocol@u.washington.edu
From: Mark Crispin <mrc@CAC.Washington.EDU>
Date: Fri Jun  8 12:34:39 2018
Subject: [Imap-protocol] Vista Mail doesn't handle \NoSelect mailboxes?
In-Reply-To: <0C76931A-D7E4-4C6D-BFEA-D6DD712A08D2@apple.com>
References: <alpine.OSX.0.99.0705301048240.11683@pangtzu.panda.com>
	<20070530113546.Q27473@orthanc.ca>
	<alpine.WNT.0.99.0705301146290.5388@Shimo-Tomobiki.Panda.COM>
	<BF01B191-D34E-47DE-A4FB-EAF1CADE4715@apple.com>
	<alpine.OSX.0.99.0705301451230.13729@pangtzu.panda.com>
	<0C76931A-D7E4-4C6D-BFEA-D6DD712A08D2@apple.com>
Message-ID: <alpine.OSX.0.99.0705301623290.13729@pangtzu.panda.com>

On Wed, 30 May 2007, Sarah Wilkin wrote:
> That's interesting. Mail.app has historically (7+ years) sent CREATE + 
> SUBSCRIBE. Going by just:
> "The SUBSCRIBE command adds the specified mailbox name to the server's set of 
> "active" or "subscribed" mailboxes as returned by the LSUB command."

The best answer that I can offer is that if it was intended that 
newly-created mailboxes be subscribed automatically, the CREATE command 
would have done it.

IMAP tries to avoid unnecessary RTTs, and when it causes a 
seemingly-unnecessary RTT (e.g., the STATUS command not accepting a 
wildcard) it does so for a reason.

> I can see why a new client-created mailbox wouldn't want be to interpreted as 
> "inactive."

Well...let's talk about Pine users.  Pine users tend to create lots of 
archive mailboxes.  These mailboxes exist to save away messages from an 
incoming message mailbox.  IMAP's subscription feature would have been an 
ideal mechanism to separate the incoming message mailboxes from the 
archive mailboxes.

The problem was that we couldn't do that, because of all these other 
clients which unilaterally subscribe every name.  Anyone who used any 
other client even once would have their Pine configuration ruined.  So we 
had to give up; Pine has a private list of incoming message mailboxes in 
its own configuration.

There's another lesson in here, having to deal with ACAP's failure.  As 
attractive as it is to have configuration that can be shared across 
clients, doing so puts every client at the mercy of every other client. 
All it needs is one bad actor (and in this case the original bad actor was 
Netscape Messenger) to break the entire idea.

> There are also some clients (I can't remember exactly which: one 
> or more of Outlook, Entourage, or Thunderbird) that only show subscribed 
> mailboxes by default in the UI.

I know.  I've tried -- for over a decade -- to convince the developers of 
those clients not to do that.  Netscape Messager did the bad thing first, 
Outlook copied it, and the others followed.

> Thanks for the clarification of the original intent.

Thanks.  It would be great if Mail.app could implement the original 
intent, at least as an optional feature.

-- 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.

