AIUI MIME definitions <http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2045.txt> for Content-Type media type and subtype specify case insensitivity. Most email messages in the wild now use lower case. IMAP uses MIME types when FETCHing information about messages. IMAP4rev1 <http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2060.txt> insists that a small number of types must be returned in upper case only. it is then silent on the point of whether all types must be capitalised.
the SimpleMessageAttributes is a complete nightmare. i have a hacked version on my local fork that doesn't crash evolution and thunderbird so often. i don't propose putting these changes into trunk since i've come to the conclusion that javamail isn't suitable for serving IMAP (it refuses to process around 1% of my messages) and i need to switch to MIME4J to support FETCH. (the requires substantial changes to mailbox but i'll post tackle that in a separate thread.) IMHO SimpleMessageAttributes is the wrong approach to specification compliant implementation. i would prefer to separate encoding from data model. i would also prefer the data to be modelled directly from the specification. for example, the grammar includes a media_basic contruct which i would prefer to model as a MediaBase object. i think that this design will eliminate a large number of the current errors which stem directly from the use of raw javamail data. it will not (however) help in areas where IMAP4rev1 is deficient. so, i think i'll throw these questions to the list. should all media types and sub types be capitalized? - robert
