Subject: [lemonade] Lack of text after resp-text-code

From: Timo Sirainen <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 06 Sep 2009 17:13:53 -0400

From RFC 3501:

resp-text       = ["[" resp-text-code "]" SP] text
text            = 1*TEXT-CHAR

So there should always be some text if resp-text-code is used. But when
looking at examples in CONDSTORE and QRESYNC RFCs you can see that there
is no text:

S: * OK [HIGHESTMODSEQ 715194045007]
S: * OK [CLOSED]

I guess these examples are violating RFC 3501 and should be changed?

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From: Dave Cridland <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 07 Sep 2009 13:49:00 +0100

> I guess these examples are violating RFC 3501 and should be changed?
Hmmm. I'd say that RFC 3501 was broken, then.

There's no reason to require text, there, after all, and (as far as I  
can tell) all implementations deal with missing text.

Dave.
-- 
Dave Cridland - mailto:[email-masked] - xmpp:[email-masked]
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Infotrope Polymer - ACAP, IMAP, ESMTP, and Lemonade

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From: Barry Leiba <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 7 Sep 2009 11:23:09 -0400

> Hmmm. I'd say that RFC 3501 was broken, then.

You might say that, but it's come up before.  If it's broken, it's
broken as designed.

> There's no reason to require text, there, after all, and (as far as I can
> tell) all implementations deal with missing text.

There's no reason to require it, but the spec DOES require it.  Unless
we can get consensus to change that in a rev of 3501, we need to be
consistent with it.  We can't assume that all implementations ignore a
requirement of the spec, and, as Dan says, there's at least one that
doesn't.

Barry

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From: Mark Crispin <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 7 Sep 2009 09:55:49 -0700 (PDT)

On Mon, 7 Sep 2009, Barry Leiba wrote:
> There's no reason to require it,

In your opinion.  Contrary opinions exist.

> but the spec DOES require it.

Correct

> Unless
> consistent with it.

Let me guess.  [...] will write up yet another IMAP extension -- that 
nobody will ever implement -- to have an ENABLE option to quell the text.

> We can't assume that all implementations ignore a

More than one.

-- Mark --

http://panda.com/mrc
Democracy is two wolves and a sheep deciding what to eat for lunch.
Liberty is a well-armed sheep contesting the vote.

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From: Curtis King <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 7 Sep 2009 14:20:07 -0700

> I guess these examples are violating RFC 3501 and should be changed?

You can't see the text which is a single SP ;-) So, the examples are  
correct just not obvious.

ck

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From: Timo Sirainen <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 7 Sep 2009 17:25:27 -0400

> correct just not obvious.

No, there also should have been at least one TEXT-CHAR after the space.

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From: Curtis King <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 7 Sep 2009 14:47:48 -0700

On 2009-09-07, at 2:25 PM, Timo Sirainen wrote:

>> You can't see the text which is a single SP ;-) So, the examples  
>> are correct just not obvious.
>

I might be wrong as I'm no ABNF expert but I'm sure SP is a valid  
CHAR, so

TEXT-CHAR       = <any CHAR except CR and LF>

from RFC 5234

  CHAR           =  %x01-7F

So sending SP SP CRLF is valid protocol according to the ABNF. The  
example would look like,

* OK [CLOSED]  \r\n

cheers,

ck

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From: Arnt Gulbrandsen <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 9 Sep 2009 15:19:31 +0200

1. I strongly suspect that there are clients that require text to be 
there. When the INN NNTP server appeared and sent a single ASCII space 
as text, a good few NNTP clients were surprised. I doubt IMAP client 
authors are more careful.

2. When compression is used, that text turns to just a few bits anyway 
since each particular server usually uses just a few stock phrases. 
Compression seems to be deployed fairly quickly (more via TLS than the 
Lemonade document, fine with me) so the text matters less and less.

Arnt

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From: Curtis King <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 9 Sep 2009 09:30:08 -0700

On 2009-09-09, at 6:19 AM, Arnt Gulbrandsen wrote:

> there. When the INN NNTP server appeared and sent a single ASCII  
> space as text, a good few NNTP clients were surprised. I doubt IMAP  
> client authors are more careful.

It's allowed by the ABNF and this whole topic was covered a few years  
ago.

ck