MBOX-Line: From mrc at CAC.Washington.EDU  Wed May 30 17:55:04 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: <108EB7FB-D05E-4AF2-A2A8-20C52D808616@iki.fi>
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>
	<1180563766.32181.2028.camel@hurina>
	<alpine.WNT.0.99.0705301555120.2080@Shimo-Tomobiki.Panda.COM>
	<1180567472.32181.2062.camel@hurina>
	<alpine.OSX.0.99.0705301626140.13729@pangtzu.panda.com>
	<108EB7FB-D05E-4AF2-A2A8-20C52D808616@iki.fi>
Message-ID: <alpine.OSX.0.99.0705301723170.13729@pangtzu.panda.com>

On Thu, 31 May 2007, Timo Sirainen wrote:
>> How is it useful to have a subscription list that is little (or not at all) 
>> different than the full mailbox list?
> I want to see a list of my mailboxes. Unfortunately my screen space is 
> limited and can't display all of them, but having some of the rarely used 
> archived mailboxes removed from the list helps at least a bit.

I want to see a list of my mailboxes that receive incoming messages. 
However, because of clients that automatically subscribe all my mailboxes, 
I can't use the subscription list and must instead have that list in my 
client's configuration.

How is that a good thing?

If you want to isolate a small number of mailboxes, why not put them 
together in a directory and not expand that directory.

>> Does your server export newsgroups?  Do you think it is useful that 
>> everybody's subscription list include all newsgroups by default?  If no, 
>> how do you reconcile that with your statement?
> No, of course not.

I'm glad that you agree.

> But it's a very small percentage of people who use IMAP 
> that way. I don't know anyone who reads news via IMAP.

I do, as do other people at UW.

Cyrus, or at least the original design, integrates user mailboxes into the 
news namespace.

Isn't this really the case of self-fufilling prophecy?

> So I don't think it's 
> unreasonable that mail clients' user interface would be designed to work more 
> along the lines of "user has only relatively small number of mailboxes" 
> instead of "user has thousands of mailboxes".

We have numerous users at UW (including my boss) with thousands of 
mailboxes.  Private mailboxes at that!

What use is it for IMAP to have facilities to handle such things if client 
software renders those facilities useless?

> This of course doesn't mean 
> that clients should behave horribly with a large mailbox list, but it does 
> mean that I think "show only subscribed mailboxes" option is a good enough 
> user interface design for most users.

I don't think that the helpdesk thinks it is "good enough" when a user 
calls in to complain that his such-and-such mailbox "vanished"; and it 
turns out that the mailbox is there but the stupid "show only subscribed 
mailboxes" client doesn't show it.

Users hit these problems ALL the time.

> And in such UI design CREATE+SUBSCRIBE 
> combination is just fine (but not automatically subscribing to all mailboxes 
> of course, that's pointless).

I call this a horrible UI design.  If CREATE+SUBSCRIBE was intended, it 
would have been in the protocol.

What's more, there is NOTHING about a client doing things my way that 
preclude you from doing things your way if you wish.  You can subscribe as 
many names as you want.

However, a client that does things your way precludes me from doing things 
my way.

>>>> I am starting to think that the solution is to remove subscriptions from 
>>>> IMAP entirely, and replace it with a mechanism to stores a list of IMAP 
>>>> URLs.
>>> What would be their purpose then?
>> The original purpose of subscriptions:
>> Identifying those mailboxes which receive incoming messages.
> Why does there have to be such a list? I want to see a list of mailboxes I've 
> subscribed to, regardless of whether they receive incoming messages.

Case 1:

A user has 1453 mailboxes.

Of these, 4 receive incoming messages.  The other 1439 mailboxes are 
archive mailboxes that are only written to by COPY operations.

The user wants to scan for new messages in his incoming messages 
mailboxes.

Are you seriously suggesting that the client should check all 1453 
mailboxes when it is know that only 4 could possibly have incoming 
messages?


Case 2:

A user has multiple IMAP servers.

When walking up to a kiosk, he wants to access his INBOX on one IMAP 
server, and have the subscription list provide the glue to tell the kiosk 
about the other IMAP servers.

-- 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.

