Small extension to the annotate proposal

[Stuart K. Bingë]

On Monday, 12 July 2004 15:33, Martin Konold wrote:
> > If that is the case, then is the annotation even necessary? You could
> > potentially ignore it, write whatever data you want, and still be
> > considered "compliant"
>
> Yes, you are correct but the annotation is indeed the hint to the client
> which format it shall use for writing. You may write other messages to the
> folder syntactically but you most probably run into trouble semantically if
> you choose to ignoe the hint.

I wouldn't think so - if it's just a hint then there is no obligation for a 
client to adhere to it. We've also said that any data a client doesn't 
understand must be preserved/ignored, so it may happen that a irresponsible 
client can start writing bogus data to a folder, and all other clients that 
access said folder must be able to properly side-step the invalid messages.

> Last but not least the annotation is very important that we dont have to
> guess the name of the default groupware folders (think about localization)

Is that not the job of the .default flag of the /folder-type annotation?

> > Maybe something like "/recommended-storage-format" would be more
> > appropriate?
>
> IMHO this would sound a little bit too weak.

I think we can agree that we will always have to handle the case of bogus data 
within a folder (e.g. even if a once-valid message somehow gets corrupted), 
and consequently the case of malicious clients writing whatever they please 
into a folder - so practically this annotation cannot really be more than a 
hint.

To me, /storage-format would be appropriate if we're saying what explicitly 
*has* to go in the folder, but as I've said with the very nature of IMAP one 
client cannot control what another is actually storing in each mailbox - all 
we can really do is give a recommendation to responsible clients as to what 
to write into a folder.

This is a trivial matter in any case - I think we've proved that it would be A 
Good Thing to include.

-- 
Stuart Bingë
Code Fusion cc.

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