IMAP Namespace support

David Faure dfaure at klaralvdalens-datakonsult.se
Mon Jun 21 23:15:57 CEST 2004


On Monday 21 June 2004 18:58, Joon Radley wrote:
> Hi David,
> 
> > As part of the work to be done for the new XML storage 
> > format, Bo mentionned the need to support the IMAP namespace 
> > extension (RFC 2342).
> > 
> > While this would certainly be a useful addition to KDE, I 
> > came to wonder why we need it? It seems to be mostly for 
> > different shared folders prefixes in various IMAP server 
> > implementations, but Kolab is based on Cyrus only, and we 
> > already detect shared folders without problems. I cannot see 
> > the relation with the XML storage format.
> > 
> > Can I get more details about what we need it for?
> 
> Cyrus uses it by default and Kolab has been using it from the start. 
> 
> I need the namespace extension to avoid name collision between the Outlook
> Inbox and IMAP4 INBOX.

Can you elaborate on that? More precisely, the need for calling the namespace
command from the *client*.

From what RFC 2342 says, the only use of the 'namespace' command is to
automatically configure prefixes (to the various namespaces) so that users
don't have to do it manually.

I must be missing something, but I fail to understand how it can help avoiding
a name collision. Things are properly namespaced on the server, but the client
needs to use a different prefix for those two inboxes... simply issuing a 
"namespace" command doesn't help. So I guess what we need most is the ability 
to set a different prefix for different folders (mailboxes), instead of the 
current "one prefix per imap account" - the namespace command simply allows 
to automatically configure those prefixes. Do I get this right?

BTW in this particular case, what's up with Outlook's Inbox? In which namespace is it?

Thanks.

-- 
David Faure -- faure at kde.org, dfaure at klaralvdalens-datakonsult.se
Qt/KDE/KOffice developer
Klarälvdalens Datakonsult AB, Platform-independent software solutions




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