> Why not imagine a new protocol to go with it? Well, I suppose I could. What would it need?
It would need to establish a SESSION with the ability to AUTHENTICATE, probably supporting multiple AUTHENTICATION implementations for LOGIN. It would need the ability to LIST any directories used to organize data. It would certainly need the ability to CREATE inboxes for incoming data, and if you CREATE, you most likely need DELETE as well. It would be quite useful to STORE metadata flags with the data. And, of course, what use would the data be if you couldn't FETCH it? Because it could handle new events, it would be nice to communicate them with the client via something like IDLE and unrequested server responses. It would also be very helpful to SEARCH on the data, however, in order for search to know what to look for, it would need to define equivalents for ENVELOPEs, HEADERs, BODYs and their parts. It could even use ACLs to provide a basic permission system. With ACLs, it could richly support COPYs and MOVEs from one inbox to another. And, of course, you'd want a way to clean things up, so something like EXPUNGE would be useful. And finally, it would need a way to UPDATE data. And I'd like it to be a standard so it may be more readily accepted. What I don't like imagining is introducing yet another protocol to the world. I'd rather stand on the shoulders of giants. JM
