Re: [Off Topic] Need review for POP3 extension mechanism

At 7:37 AM -0700 7/10/98, Steve Hole wrote:

>I also wasn't sure about the AUTH capability support.    It is a wonderful
>idea -- one that I am certainly used to in IMAP, ACAP, and SMTP AUTH.   The
>only thing is that John's update to the POP3 AUTH extension defines a probe
>function (AUTH with no arguments) for listing available server mechanisms.
>Perhaps there has been discussion on removing the probe (going back to the
>RFC1734 behaviour) in favour of the capability response.   As it is, there
>are two ways to get the same information.   I'm not sure if this is a problem
>or not.    I'm not sure which to implement in my client.

This issue came up in discussions on John's draft, and the general
consensus (as I recall it) was that new clients should only implement
the CAPA mechanism, and new servers should implement both, so that they
support both new CAPA clients and any clients which have already
implemented the empty-AUTH mechanism.