Date: Wed, 13 Jan 2010 18:52:41 +1300
From: martin f krafft <madduck@madduck.net>
To: mailtags discussion list <mailtags@lists.madduck.net>,
	notmuch discussion list <notmuch@notmuchmail.org>
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Subject: Re: [notmuch] Idea for storing tags
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also sprach Scott Morrison <smorr@indev.ca> [2010.01.13.1752 +1300]:
> The problem with anything that is not universally supported is
> that for a package that is to appeal to a wide userbase, most
> don't know and don't care about the particulars of this IMAP
> server vs that IMAP server.  all they know it that for some reason
> it doesn't work with account X -- which leads to support head
> aches.
[...]
> Call it Googles problem as you like -- but when I have a product
> that doesn't work with GMAIL IMAP there are a lot of potential
> users that don't care about server peculiarities and rather just
> have it work.

Well, the way I see it: you cannot change all IMAP servers at once,
and you certainly cannot change Google. If it's possible to
implement tagging for email (dare say semantic e-mail) with standard
means (where standard means sub-standard, as exemplified by your
previous GMail IMAP example), then that's the best way, but if that
can't happen then we ought to try a better way. Should we find
a solution then, by the rate of standardisation on the 'Net, maybe
my grandchildren will finally be able to do proper e-mail. ;)

> I agree that conceptually duplicates should be buried but end
> users do have "peculiar" organization systems.

I think tags should help abstract e-mail away from underlying
storage and I'd love that to be a goal.

> From my reading, uidplus doesn't allow a delta modification of
> a message on a server -- just to write a portion of a message back
> -- you still have to write the whole thing back and that can mean
> real bandwidth issues for some messages.

Absolutely. It would indeed be better if you could just send
changes.

I just sent a blank mail to
imap-protocol-subscribe@mailman.u.washington.edu
and have started browsing the archives. So far, there's not really
anything relevant.

Anyway, looking back at the RFC on keywords, it's not exactly
encouraging:

  A keyword is defined by the server implementation. Keywords do not
  begin with "\". Servers MAY permit the client to define new
  keywords in the mailbox (see the description of the PERMANENTFLAGS
  response code for more information).

Anyway, I'll try to untangle the various issues re:IMAP we've been
seeing, write mails for each, and hopefully get to the point where
I can enquire about IMAPv5. ;)

--=20
martin | http://madduck.net/ | http://two.sentenc.es/
=20
the unix philosophy basically involves
giving you enough rope to hang yourself.
and then some more, just to be sure.
=20
spamtraps: madduck.bogus@madduck.net

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