67 lines
2.6 KiB
Plaintext
67 lines
2.6 KiB
Plaintext
MBOX-Line: From mrc+imap at panda.com Mon Nov 7 10:31:50 2011
|
|
To: imap-protocol@u.washington.edu
|
|
From: Mark Crispin <mrc+imap@panda.com>
|
|
Date: Fri Jun 8 12:34:47 2018
|
|
Subject: [Imap-protocol] [noob] select & unseen?
|
|
In-Reply-To: <201111071808.pA7I8EtY029928@mxout11.cac.washington.edu>
|
|
References: <C61A1BDF-03DD-4ED9-BFCA-C6183F07DD3E@mac.com>
|
|
<4EB72A0C.31264.813832F8@David.Harris.pmail.gen.nz>
|
|
<alpine.OSX.2.00.1111061650360.9034@hsinghsing.panda.com>
|
|
<1320653922.13384.140660995615489@webmail.messagingengine.com>
|
|
<alpine.OSX.2.00.1111070726260.9034@hsinghsing.panda.com>
|
|
<201111071808.pA7I8EtY029928@mxout11.cac.washington.edu>
|
|
Message-ID: <alpine.OSX.2.00.1111071013340.9034@hsinghsing.panda.com>
|
|
|
|
On Mon, 7 Nov 2011, Pete Maclean wrote:
|
|
> there is no way to indicate in a SELECT response that there are no
|
|
> unseen messages.
|
|
|
|
That is unfortunately correct.
|
|
|
|
> However, if I understood one of
|
|
> Mark's comments correctly, it seems likely that many clients will not
|
|
> care about this information in isolation but only message flags in general.
|
|
|
|
Also correct.
|
|
|
|
> I did suggest to this customer that an unsolicited STATUS response
|
|
> could be sent of the form:
|
|
> * STATUS Mailbox (Unseen 0)
|
|
|
|
That would be a good idea; but there is a problem.
|
|
|
|
First, it will break any IMAP2 (RFC 1176) client. That is much less of a
|
|
concern today than it was 15 years ago. Yet we frequently find ourselves
|
|
having to deal with issues from much older software and even more obsolete
|
|
specifications.
|
|
|
|
Second, it presumes that the client knows what such an unsolicited STATUS
|
|
response means at that point.
|
|
|
|
Third, no matter how many times I say "clients MUST be prepared to accept
|
|
ANY response at ANY time (and, at worst, ignore a response that doesn't
|
|
seem to make sense in this context), there are clients that will puke when
|
|
they receive unsolicited responses that they think are "impossible" at
|
|
that point in the session.
|
|
|
|
That's probably fatal for the idea. It would otherwise be a nice and
|
|
elegant solution.
|
|
|
|
It was, in fact, proposed back then. The proposal died for those reasons.
|
|
Nobody was happy about that since it was a nice and elegant solution.
|
|
|
|
The only way we could have done it is by a new select-class command
|
|
(EXTSELECT?). In retrospect, that is what we should have done. Instead, we
|
|
kept a single IMAP2-compatible SELECT command. IMAP2 compatibility is also
|
|
why we hijacked untagged OK to carry response codes. It was very important
|
|
at the time.
|
|
|
|
Anyone got a time machine?
|
|
|
|
-- 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.
|
|
|