2.1.6 Internet Message Access Protocol Extension (imapext)

NOTE: This charter is a snapshot of the 64th IETF Meeting in Vancouver, British Columbia Canada. It may now be out-of-date.

Last Modified: 2005-10-24

Chair(s):

Pete Resnick <presnick@qualcomm.com>
Lisa Dusseault <lisa@osafoundation.org>

Applications Area Director(s):

Ted Hardie <hardie@qualcomm.com>
Scott Hollenbeck <shollenbeck@verisign.com>

Applications Area Advisor:

Scott Hollenbeck <shollenbeck@verisign.com>

Mailing Lists:

General Discussion: ietf-imapext@imc.org
To Subscribe: ietf-imapext-request@imc.org
Archive: http://www.imc.org/ietf-imapext/

Description of Working Group:

The IETF IMAP extensions Working Group shall revise and publish
standards-track extensions to IMAP4 for performing the following
functions:

1. Sorting, threading, and viewing (to be dealt with by one or more
  mechanisms)

2. Access Control Lists

3. Message-level annotations

Revising the base IMAP4rev1 specification is out of the scope of this
WG. However, this WG will ensure that whatever extensions it does
propose do not worsen any existing problems in the base specification
of IMAP, nor do they make any such problems harder to address in the
future.

Goals and Milestones:

Done  Submit revised Sorting/Threading/Viewing spec(s) to IESG
Done  Submit draft on conditional storage to help multiple clients use a single mailbox to IESG
Done  Submit I-D to *update* existing ACL RFC, explaining rights & listing rights in CAPABILITY response
Aug 2005  WG last call for comparator draft
Sep 2005  WG last call for i18n draft
Sep 2005  WG Last call for annotate draft
Sep 2005  Submit to IESG: comparator
Oct 2005  WG last call for LIST extensions draft, defining syntax allowing much better extensibility in the frequently-extended LIST command, and supporting other drafts in this WG
Oct 2005  Submit to IESG: i18n
Oct 2005  Submit to IESG: annotate
Nov 2005  New draft of ACL2 proposal which would *obsolete* existing ACL RFC
Nov 2005  Submit to IESG: List Extensions
Feb 2006  ACL2 to WG Last Call -- note that if this milestone is not met we agreed to close the WG and defer ACL2 to another WG

Internet-Drafts:

  • draft-ietf-imapext-sort-17.txt
  • draft-ietf-imapext-list-extensions-14.txt
  • draft-ietf-imapext-condstore-06.txt
  • draft-ietf-imapext-i18n-05.txt
  • draft-ietf-imapext-2086upd-08.txt

    No Request For Comments

    Current Meeting Report

    This is a high level summary of IMAPEXT discussion Nov 8 2005, mostly focusing 
    on consensus gathering (subject of course to ratification on this list).  
    More detailed notes of the meeting can effectively be found in the Jabber 
    room where we tried to convey what was being said in the room.
    http://www.xmpp.org/ietf-logs/imapext@ietf.xmpp.org/2005-11-08.html
    
    LISTEXT
    
      In WG last call. Chris Newman, Philip Guenther and Dave Cridland will 
    review (full or changes)
    
    CONDSTORE
    
      Our "refactoring" of condstore document is believed to be without effect 
    on requirements or protocol on the wire, merely a removal of a dependency.  
    Since CONDSTORE is in RFC queue this still obviously merits careful review 
    but it is our belief that this does not require pulling from queue.  Chairs 
    will post document changes to list and to ADs for verification before 
    actually changing condstore.
    
      We noted that if the mirroring of flags<--> annotations is removed 
    *entirely* from ANNOTATE, then this would have a significant effect on 
    CONDSTORE.  We will attempt to continue to reserve the flags namespace in 
    annotations to limit the damage to CONDSTORE.
    
    ANNOTATE
    
      Simplification decided in Paris: make it optional to support private 
    attributes.  This isn't yet in draft but in Cyrus' local copy.
    
      Remove content-type and display-name attributes from the wire protocol.  
    This means that clients will have to know the content-type and decide on an 
    appropriate display-name based on reading specs or other out-of-band 
    mechanisms.  This decision does weaken the ability of IMAP clients to browse 
    unfamiliar attributes and we recognize that.  Cyrus will propose text.
    
      SEARCH should only operate on an annotation's value.  This is more 
    obvious anyway with the removal of content-type and display-name. We'll 
    need some discussion about exact language for the draft so that we 
    understand exactly how this works.  Same thing goes for use of %/* in 
    attribute names and applies to FETCH too.  Cyrus is tasked with coming 
    up with text.
    
      See decision on not mirroring flags to annotations but continue to 
    reserve namespace to minimize impact on CONDSTORE. Cyrus will propose text.
    
      The per-body-part annotations could be removed to further simplify 
    ANNOTATE.  Further discussion is needed in Lemonade to determine their 
    need for this feature.  Chairs will follow up with Lemonade.
    
    IMAP ABNF
    
      This is going through last call and people should review.
    
    COLLATOR
    
      Philip brought  a seemingly minor octet/character issue  which turned 
    out to be a white rabbit hole.  Does collator operate on character or on 
    octet?  After 20 minutes discussion we concluded to operate on octet but 
    explain how this ought to be functionally equivalent for character data.
    

    Slides

    Agenda and annotation draft topics