Re: [MORG] XLIST extension

Timo Sirainen <tss@iki.fi> Tue, 29 September 2009 14:33 UTC

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From: Timo Sirainen <tss@iki.fi>
To: barryleiba@computer.org
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Date: Tue, 29 Sep 2009 10:34:41 -0400
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Subject: Re: [MORG] XLIST extension
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On Tue, 2009-09-29 at 01:06 -0400, Barry Leiba wrote:
> > The idea is basically to find what some of those "standard mailboxes"
> > are called by the server. So instead of every client using a different
> > "Sent Messages", "Sent Items, "Sent", etc. mailboxes the client could
> > just look up the existing mailbox from server that has \Sent flag.
> 
> This has been proposed before.  It could be done as a ListExt
> extension.  One question would be whether Google (and other
> implementors) would switch to a standard version, if we standardized
> something that's different from what they're using.

My guess is that unless it's a really simple change, they wouldn't
bother.

> The whole point
> of ListExt was to eliminate the pile of LIST variants... so XLIST,
> specifically, would be a Bad Idea, because of that.

I was thinking that we could simply add those \Sent etc. flags to a
regular LIST reply, similar to how CHILDREN extension works. So I could
simply make XLIST an alias for LIST. Then perhaps some day Gmail also
supports both and XLIST can retire eventually..

Or I guess the other way would be to explicitly ask for those flags,
like:

LIST () "" * return (types)

But if the point is to actually get this standard used, I think it would
all depend on getting Gmail to do the change. And I don't really see
them implementing the rest of LIST-EXTENDED, at least not in a standards
compliant way..

> > The way it works now is that when client uses XLIST command instead of
> > LIST command (identical otherwise), server can return these flags also
> > in LIST replies:
> >
> >  - \Drafts
> >  - \Trash
> >  - \Sent
> >  - \Spam
> >  - \Starred
> >  - \Allmail
> >
> > The first four are pretty standard used by most IMAP clients. \Starred
> > is some gmail-specific I guess. \Allmail apparently could be described
> > as a virtual mailbox containing user's all messages in all mailboxes.
> 
> "Starred" is basically a virtual mailbox that collects all the
> \Flagged messages from all mailboxes.  And "Allmail" isn't quite all
> messages in all mailboxes.  It's all mail in all mailboxes *except*
> Sent, Drafts, Trash, and Spam... at least as Gmail has implemented it.

OK. I've really no idea what to do about making those two a standard..

> The whole idea needs more discussion.... Some time on the Hiroshima
> agenda, maybe?

That would be fine by me.