Subject: [Medup] Concept of "technical messages" not intended for the user

From: Bernie Hoeneisen <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 29 May 2019 20:59:29 +0200 (CEST)

Hi all

We see the need for (let's call them) "technical messages", i.e. messages 
that are meant to be used by the client (in email the MUA), but not the 
user. Such messages could carry e.g. public key, key revokations, client 
data synchronization among clients (such as contact data or public keys), 
and alike.

One MUA I know that does something similar is pine/alpine. Every 
mail folder has a "technical message" for internal use by the MUA shared 
among all MUAs that understand it. It looks like:

   From MAILER-DAEMON Wed May 29 16:48:44 2019
   Date: 29 May 2019 16:48:44 +0200
   From: Mail System Internal Data <[email-masked]>
   Subject: DON'T DELETE THIS MESSAGE -- FOLDER INTERNAL DATA
   Message-ID: <[email-masked]>
   X-IMAP: 1546617481 0000000341
   Status: RO

   This text is part of the internal format of your mail folder, and is not
   a real message.  It is created automatically by the mail system
   software. If deleted, important folder data will be lost, and it will be
   re-created with the data reset to initial values.

The main idea is to allow for hiding stuff from the average user does not 
want to be bothered with and/or to not to confuse the average user.

Is anybody aware of whether there been any standardization effort in this 
field (in the IETF or elsewhere)?

Looking forward to your answers!

cheers,
  Bernie

--

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