MBOX-Line: From snowjn at aol.com  Fri Oct 22 17:59:14 2010
To: imap-protocol@u.washington.edu
From: John Snow <snowjn@aol.com>
Date: Fri Jun  8 12:34:45 2018
Subject: [Imap-protocol] Session flags.
In-Reply-To: <alpine.OSX.2.00.1010221636200.70834@hsinghsing.panda.com>
References: <4CC1E456.5050208@aol.com>
	<alpine.OSX.2.00.1010221233060.69345@hsinghsing.panda.com>
	<4CC1EFDD.3000606@aol.com>
	<alpine.OSX.2.00.1010221323490.69345@hsinghsing.panda.com>
	<4CC206A3.8010909@aol.com>
	<alpine.OSX.2.00.1010221636200.70834@hsinghsing.panda.com>
Message-ID: <4CC23362.9000005@aol.com>

Thanks, that's what I wanted to know. 

Mark Crispin wrote:
> On Fri, 22 Oct 2010, John Snow wrote:
>> But what about my question?
>
> Your question has been answered many times, most recently just now.
>
> Read-only mailboxes that only have a single writeable status, whether
> newsgroups or the bboards of the 1980s, were in use and supported by IMAP
> from inception.  The user experience issue came up at once; as did the
> fact that - even way back then - there were client implementations that
> were not under my control.
>
> Specifically, these user experience facts came up very early, nearly 25
> years ago:
>  [1] No value is served by having STORE be a no-op.
>  [2] Negative value is served by having STORE return a NO.
>
> Without session flags, the only way for clients to present the desired
> user experience is to implement these entirely in the client.  Once 
> client
> display is disconnected from what the server says, the server loses the
> ability to have external flag changes update on the client; the client 
> has
> no clear guidance on whether or not to believe anything the server says.
>
> If you don't like session flags, then don't use session flags in your
> client.  The server clearly indicates, via PERMANENTFLAGS, which flags 
> are
> session flags; the flags that are in FLAGS but not PERMANENTFLAGS are
> session flags.  Do not attempt to STORE \* or any flag other than what 
> are
> in PERMANENTFLAGS.  Similarly, ignore any returned flag in FETCH that is
> not in PERMANENTFLAGS.  This is not a particularly challenging 
> programming
> task.
>
> Similarly, any competent server programmer will have no trouble
> implementing session flags sufficiently to comply with the protocol.
>
> -- 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.
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