On Wed, 4 Jun 2003, Arnt Gulbrandsen wrote: > date-time is used a few times in the grammar, but in SEARCH date is > used, e.g. SINCE date, not SINCE date-time. Is there any particular > reason for that?
Yes. When IMAP was first defined, times and timezones were much less reliable than they are today. Also, do you really want to search for a message on the exact second? That's what a date-time search would be. I suspect that what you want is a fuzzier search "at about" a particular time. But in the case of the sent-on date/time, do you use the sender's timezone, the timezone of the sender's mail injection point, or your own timezone (all three of which can be different!)? Once you think about it, you realize that it's much more complicated than it seems at first glance. IMAP punts on all of this; a date-only SEARCH gives you a 24 hour fuzz (a 48-hour fuzz using a combination of SINCE and BEFORE may be safer than ON) and then the client can zoom in depending upon the client's design. -- Mark -- http://staff.washington.edu/mrc Science does not emerge from voting, party politics, or public debate. Si vis pacem, para bellum.
