Subject: [sieve] Sieve counterpart of IMAP SPECIAL-USE (RFC 6154) ?

From: Stephan Bosch <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 12 Dec 2011 13:10:52 +0100

Hi,

On an IMAP server mailing list I participated in a discussion about the 
new the IMAP LIST Extension for Special-Use Mailboxes (RFC 6154). In a 
nutshell, this extension allows identifying special-use mailboxes to an 
IMAP client. Special-use can for instance be a junk, trash, drafts, or 
archive folder. This way clients can easily identify such folders and 
use them without explicit user configuration.

At some point, the idea was raised to extend the Sieve language with 
similar means. It could for instance be useful to have a special version 
of the fileinto command that files the message into the default folder 
for a particular special-use, e.g. `fileinto :special_use "\\Junk";'. 
This can be particularly useful for global scripts outside the user's 
control. Through metadata support it is already possible to find out 
whether a folder has a special-use tag, but conversely it is not 
possible to find out which folders have a particular tag or what folder 
would be the default choice for that tag (note that the notion of a 
default folder for a particular special-use is missing in RFC 6154, 
which may be a problem).

My question is: do you think it is useful to have a Sieve SPECIAL-USE 
counterpart? And in what form?

Regards,

Stephan.

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 12 Dec 2011 11:13:33 -0800 (PST)

> counterpart? And in what form?

I asked around here at Oracle; everyone things this is a great idea and the
:special_use approach seems fine.

RFC 5228 already allows lots of flexibility in handling fileinto error
conditions, I suggest continuing that approach in handling special
use name failures. FWIW, our implementation fall back to INBOX delivery
when presented with a fileinto that's found to be problematic for some case.

				Ned

---

From: Alexey Melnikov <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 13 Dec 2011 11:54:24 +0000

> Hi,
Hi Stephan,
> On an IMAP server mailing list I participated in a discussion about 
> the new the IMAP LIST Extension for Special-Use Mailboxes (RFC 6154). 
> In a nutshell, this extension allows identifying special-use mailboxes 
> to an IMAP client. Special-use can for instance be a junk, trash, 
> drafts, or archive folder. This way clients can easily identify such 
> folders and use them without explicit user configuration.
>
> similar means. It could for instance be useful to have a special 
> version of the fileinto command that files the message into the 
> default folder for a particular special-use, e.g. `fileinto 
> :special_use "\\Junk";'. This can be particularly useful for global 
> scripts outside the user's control. Through metadata support it is 
> already possible to find out whether a folder has a special-use tag, 
> but conversely it is not possible to find out which folders have a 
> particular tag or what folder would be the default choice for that tag 
> (note that the notion of a default folder for a particular special-use 
> is missing in RFC 6154, which may be a problem).
>
This looks interesting to me. Your proposal above looks fine to me.

---

From: Cyrus Daboo <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 13 Dec 2011 10:12:52 -0500

Hi,

> This looks interesting to me. Your proposal above looks fine to me.

Individual Hat: +1. There might be one awkward part to this: RFC 6154 
introduces the concept of a "virtual mailbox", e.g., special use \Trash 
could be an aggregate of all messages in all mailboxes that have the 
\Deleted flag set. In that case a fileinto a virtual mailbox is not 
meaningful per se, but instead we would have to allow the sieve/imap system 
some latitude to do the right thing (i.e., for this example, apply the 
deleted flag and put the message somewhere appropriate - perhaps defaulting 
to inbox).

Chair Hat: Since SIEVE WG is not taking on any new work at this point, 
please make this an individual submission.

-- 
Cyrus Daboo

---

From: Aaron Stone <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 19 Dec 2011 11:23:05 -0800

No kidding, I remember arguing to do exactly this kind of IMAP extension
years ago! As I recall, everyone said things to the effect of "You don't
want special folders, Mark doesn't like that idea much."

... though I might have been arguing for both special folders, "\Trash" as
well as magic folders, "\Outbox"... :)

Personal hat: I generally like but don't love the idea. If I were the
implementor, I'd already have a set of magic folder names, and fileinto
"Magic Name" would do as you're suggesting.

Anyhow, as Cyrus points out, an individual submission would be best, since
the WG is running slow lately and we should be wrapping it up.

Cheers,
Aaron

On Mon, Dec 12, 2011 at 4:10 AM, Stephan Bosch <[email-masked]> wrote:

> archive folder. This way clients can easily identify such folders and use
> them without explicit user configuration.
>
> similar means. It could for instance be useful to have a special version of
> the fileinto command that files the message into the default folder for a
> particular special-use, e.g. `fileinto :special_use "\\Junk";'. This can be
> particularly useful for global scripts outside the user's control. Through
> metadata support it is already possible to find out whether a folder has a
> special-use tag, but conversely it is not possible to find out which
> folders have a particular tag or what folder would be the default choice
> for that tag (note that the notion of a default folder for a particular
> special-use is missing in RFC 6154, which may be a problem).
>
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