Subject: [httpmail] Query for two clarifications

From: Marcin Bazydło <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 31 Mar 2009 13:51:09 +0200

Dear all,

I am using this draft as a help for implementation of a little different 
mail service done restfully.
I see some assumptions made in this work which are not completly clear 
if anyone can present thei opinion on this issues I would be glad.

1. I have already prepared structure of uri's and planned to have 
directory like structure which is natural for most users. Important 
feature of directory like structure is that directory can contain both 
directories and messages.

As far as I understood this draft it proposes representations for both 
list of directories and list of messages but it is impossible to have 
single feed containing both. Is there any reason for such separation?

 From my point of view if I would like to be consistent with 
specification and check for changes in any directory it will need to 
queries from client - one for messages and other for directories. It 
will also request server to have two separate uri's for each.

2. Is access to message in rfc822 format really fitting this 
specification. As for finding mailboxes and listing directory contents 
sepcification leaves no option as to use atom protocol any client which 
is using this specification needs to implement parsing atom entries. 
Therefore it seems strange to leave for backwards compatibility access 
to old message format. I propose changing this format to recommended one 
not necessary.
Old format shall be recommended because I can imagine that there exists 
some code base prepared for parsing rfc822 format which may lead to 
easier implementation in some cases (like addons to mail clients), but 
still I think most thin clients will prefer sticking to atom.

Best regards,
Marcin Bazydło
Poznań University of Technology

---

From: Lisa Dusseault <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 31 Mar 2009 07:43:45 -0700

Hi Marcin,

Thanks for reviewing the draft.

2009/3/31 Marcin Bazydło <[email-masked]>:
> As far as I understood this draft it proposes representations for both list
> of directories and list of messages but it is impossible to have single feed
> containing both. Is there any reason for such separation?

One of the goals of the draft is to define something that an IMAP
server can support while still supporting IMAP clients.  But, to be
honest, I'm not sure if the separation of listing directories and
listing messages is necessary for that or not.

The next thing I'd consider would probably be use cases.  A lot of
clients display lists of directories in separate frames from lists of
messages, so it would make sense for those to be separate listings.
But there may be use cases that were overlooked.

>
> 2. Is access to message in rfc822 format really fitting this specification.
> As for finding mailboxes and listing directory contents sepcification leaves
> no option as to use atom protocol any client which is using this
> specification needs to implement parsing atom entries. Therefore it seems
> strange to leave for backwards compatibility access to old message format. I
> propose changing this format to recommended one not necessary.
> Old format shall be recommended because I can imagine that there exists some
> code base prepared for parsing rfc822 format which may lead to easier
> implementation in some cases (like addons to mail clients), but still I
> think most thin clients will prefer sticking to atom.
>

I am not aware of any other standard formats for the headers of a mail
message.  There would need to be a standard for converting a message
-- including MIME bodies, multipart, attachments and so on -- into a
more Atom-friendly format, and perhaps that's been done already, but
not to my knowledge.

Thanks!
Lisa