Re: I-D ACTION:draft-neystadt-imap-status-counters-00.txt

On Thu, 25 Apr 2002 15:18:01 +0200, Arnt Gulbrandsen wrote:
> "Neystadt, John" <[email protected]>
> > Until now I did not get a comments regarding matter of the draft.
> >
> > Does it makes sense? What do you think about it?
>
> It seems unjustified. You mention one application for it, and it sounds as
> if the code belongs in that IMAP client. If you think that code really
> belongs in IMAP servers, I suggest showing more uses in the draft.

It certainly does seem to be very much specialized for VPIM, and doesn't seem
to make adequate attempt to leverage existing mechanisms.  For example, why
not use IMAP keyword flags in association with delivery mechanisms that set
those flags, and then just extend STATUS to count other flags besides \Recent
and (not) \Seen.

Regardless of whether this extension is intended for general implementation,
or only for implementation in special VPIM boxes, I think that greater
leveraging of existing IMAP mechanisms is desirable.  In the general
implementation case, it is to create a reason for it to be implemented; in the
VPIM-only cases, it is because there's no harm in doing so.

On the other hand, the intended implementation audience may make a difference
on, for example, whether or not \Flagged can be used to implement "Important".
But that's a minor issue in the overall scope of things.

To summarize: you may have a good case to expand STATUS to return other data;
but you have not (yet) made a good case to create new classes of data since it
is conjectured that the desired information can be represented with existing
data.  In particular, please give strong consideration to using keyword flags.

> In draft-1, could you the non-ascii junk? I see various | and F
> characters.

I have to echo this comment; I don't know what produced that junk but it is
there and it is annoying.

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