Subject: Re: Three new drafts and a question

From: [email-masked]
Date: Sat, 03 May 2003 15:10:54 -0700 (PDT)

> On Wednesday 30 April 2003 01:22, [email-masked] wrote:
> <snip>
> > That's not an excuse for turning sieve so heavy that many if not most
> > service providers will be unwilling to provide support for it.
> <snip>

> Not every ISP will want to support all Sieve extensions. They don't need
> to. Many ISP will probably refrain from allowing regex use, of
> variables, for that matter. I think it's perfectly OK to create Sieve
> extensions that are explicitely not suitable for all Sieve use cases.
> E.g. the envelope extension can't be used in MUAs since that
> information in general is lost on final delivery. OTOH, people will
> want to have execute command/play sound actions (the latter could be
> added to notify) on the client.

If it were only this simple... If an extension is defined that proves to be
wildely popular ISPs will have to choose between supporting a dialect of
sieve that presents as an ongoing series of support isses and not supporting
sieve at all. I deal with these people on a daily basis, and I can assure
you that given such a choice they will go with the latter. And given their
economic reality I'd probably make the same choice.

Like it or not, there's real cost associated with expanding sieve into a
full-fledged language. And that cost may end up being irrelevance.

> I agree, though, that the I-Ds currently floating around should first be
> advanced to RFCs before proposing even more extensions. It's a bit too
> much currently ;-)

It certainly is.

				Ned