Date: Thu, 3 Apr 2003 12:00:46 -0800 (Pacific Standard Time)
From: Mark Crispin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
On Thu, 3 Apr 2003, Timo Sirainen wrote:
> Suppose I have:
> * NAMESPACE (("" "/")) NIL (("shared/" "/"))
This seems like a poor namespace, since the public namespace name
("shared/") overlaps with the private namespace name with no
distinguishing prefix. The convention, as described in RFC 3501, is to
use a prefix of "#", e.g.
* NAMESPACE (("" "/")) NIL (("#shared/" "/"))
Using a prefix doesn't change the fundamental problem of the client,
since the client has no way of knowing that the prefix is magical or
coincidence.
> If client does LIST "" %, is the "shared" allowed to be included in the
> list reply? What if their hierarchy separators are different? Listing
> them would help those clients that don't understand namespaces.
In my opinion, LIST "" % should only list the private namespace, and you
will cause much confusion (and ultimately grief) to clients if you
included other namespaces.
It will be unsurprising to long time readers of the list that I
disagree completely with Mark's suggestion here.
If LIST "" % doesn't show the "shared" hierarchy, many e-mail clients
will hide it from the user and make the shared hierarchy
inaccessible. (For instance, it would be impossible for users to
access the shared hierarchy without a NAMESPACE aware client.) I would
recommend naming it "Shared Folders" as that is what many other IMAP
servers use.
Many IMAP servers do the "Shared Folders" as a nesting inside of the
personal namespace and it works quite well.
Larry
