Re: Some existing proposals for next-generation email

"Hallam-Baker, Phillip" <[email protected]> writes:
> Most significant fact on the ground here is RSS which is being used
> for distribution of mailing list type info.

RSS is interesting here but as it stands it's only suitable for
applications where missing an item is not disastrous, or where the
total number of items ever published is few.  This is because the
standard defines no way for a client to tell the server which items it
already knows about, so the server must either tell you about all
articles ever published, or decide an arbitrary rule of which ones to
include (the most recent twenty, or those no older than a week, or
suchlike).  In the first case publishing many articles would make
downloading the feed impractical; in the second clients may miss
articles without knowing about it.

IMAP and NNTP do not suffer from this problem, because the client can
maintain state on what it's already seen and relay this state to the
server.
-- 
  __  Paul Crowley
\/ o\ [email protected]
/\__/ http://www.ciphergoth.org/