RE: [lemonade] Special-Purpose Mailboxes (was Notifications for multiple devices per user)

["Ben Last" <Ben.Last at emccsoft.com>]

Randall Gellens [mailto:randy at qualcomm.com] wrote, at 11 August 2006
02:19:
>Given the widespread use of Trash mailboxes, I can also see benefit in
having a way to identify
>to clients which mailboxes are so used by other clients.  However, I
can also see three reasons
>not to do this: (1) it seems unlikely that existing clients will be
updated to specify the Trash
>mailbox they are using, so having a way for them to do so won't help;
(2) since existing clients
>use different names for the Trash mailbox, anyone using multiple
clients probably has multiple
>Trash mailboxes; (3) it is unclear that mobile clients will want to
synchronize a Trash mailbox
>created by other clients: why waste bandwidth and memory caching
messages that the user has
>already marked for deletion?

Certainly my motivation for discussing this general area was issue (3)
above: we have no interest in implementing a Trash mailbox
(deleted/expunge works for us) but we do definitely want to avoid
showing other clients special-purpose mailboxes to the user, or
synchronzing them.

Randall: I respectfully disagree that your arguments above are arguments
against providing ways for clients to identify mailboxes.  Specific
responses:
(1) But even if they don't use a Trash, they may use Sent
Items/Drafts/Outbox mailboxes.
(2) But if clients that currently do use a Trash mailbox could spot an
existing one and re-use it, that would avoid the proliferation of
Trash/Deleted Items/Wastebasket mailboxes that can occur.
(3) If a client can identify other clients' Trash mailbox, it can avoid
synchronizing it.  If it can't, there's the risk that it will be
synchronized inadvertently. That would also confuse the end user: seeing
a Trash mailbox that doesn't hold newly deleted messages.

At least one of our use cases involves three clients in use for any one
account:
* A desktop client such as Eudora or Thunderbird
* A webmail client provided by the server vendor
* A mobile client

This is actually not an unusual setup for users in our target market, so
anything that helps inter-client interoperability is key for us.

ACAP would help with the Special-purpose Mailboxes problem, but as far
as I can tell, there are very few servers that implement it (and none of
the target server vendors for our client have any plans to implement
it).  For a client developer, especially in the mobile phone market, the
assumption must always be that one must interoperate with what is out
there now.  We have no control over the servers with which a customer
would expect our client to interoperate.  But given that the Lemonade
profiles and standards have a fair degree of momentum now, raising
problems such as special-purpose mailboxes here is about the best chance
we have of making our lives easier in the future!

Regards to all
Ben
EMCC Software Ltd

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