On Tue, 17 Jun 2003 10:42:27 -0700 (Pacific Daylight Time) Mark Crispin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
On Tue, 17 Jun 2003, Vladimir A. Butenko wrote:
> All
> modern mailers expect that the UIDs are strictly positive integers, and >this
> fact should be specified in the semantics part of the standard. The fact
> that negative UIDs would have problems with the current syntax is >[almost]
> irrelevant.
I agree with the first statement, but not the second statement. But I'm willing to moderate that with a rephrase such as "semantic rules such as no-negative-UIDs should be explicit, and not derived implicitly from the syntax."
Yes, thanks. The point about "academic" nature of my note is valid, but the reality is that the IMAP "language" became complex enough to be treated seriously. I.e. if a simple protocol like POP3 can be described using just the basic syntax rules and samples, the same approach does not work with IMAP. It *does* require some boring academic-type work, involving clear definitions and formal specifications - of the operation and data model semantics - and RFC3501 has done a lot in this direction.
And it's not a useless scholastic exercise, as - AFAIR - all IMAP-related changes we did in CommuniGate Pro during the last 24 months were caused by the fact that our interpretation and, hmm, "proper" interpretation of the IMAP standard were different - on the semantics level.
That's all I wanted to say...
... on this topic. One more thing :-)
I have the following mailbox:
INBOX/foo.
Should it be the same as "InBoX/foo"? Even if we decide that this is implementation-specific, it should say so in the standard. My vote is to make "INBOX" the reserved word whereever it is met on the "top" level.
If some server developer does not want to think about the situations that cannot happen on his server :-), let this question be changed to:
Using the samples in the RFC3501, can one assume that if SELECT ~crispin/INBOX succeeds, then SELECT ~crispin/InBoX will succeed, too and that it will select the same mailbox?
-- Mark --
http://staff.washington.edu/mrc Science does not emerge from voting, party politics, or public debate. Si vis pacem, para bellum.
Sincerely, Vladimir
