Re: [apps-discuss] Mail client configuration via WebFinger

Dave Cridland <dave@cridland.net> Mon, 08 February 2016 08:16 UTC

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Date: Mon, 08 Feb 2016 08:16:02 +0000
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From: Dave Cridland <dave@cridland.net>
To: John Levine <johnl@taugh.com>
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Subject: Re: [apps-discuss] Mail client configuration via WebFinger
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On 8 February 2016 at 03:00, John Levine <johnl@taugh.com> wrote:

> >Paul, I wonder whether it is time to revisit ACAP.
>
> I see your point, but I think the answer is no.  The only ACAP
> implementation I can find is one that Dave Cridland put on github in
> 2014, with a note saying it's work he did a decade earlier and it was
> extremely difficult to implement.


There's also two CMU implementations, one in OCAML I think, and the other
in C++. The former one works, but has issues; the latter one never did I
think. I like to describe my implementation as the first working one.

FWIW, much of the difficulty in implementation was my lack of experience in
implementing publish/subscribe systems; I saw ACAP at the time as a kind of
hierarchical database with these weird CONTEXT things; these days I think
I'd implement it as a pub-sub system with a search function and probably
get along better.

In any case, ACAP has serious shortcomings - none of which are based on its
syntax or essential capability.

The primary issue is that the user on-boarding path has to start with an
ACAP username and hostname. This derails everything else.


> There might be one in the
> commercial Communigate MTA which wouldn't surprise me because Mr.
> Communigate is the kind of guy who implements everything just to be
> complete, but if it exists, it's proprietary.  I don't see any ACAP
> client libraries other than one that looks like an abandoned Java
> implementation from 2007.
>

The Communigate server is very limited in various interesting ways.

As for libraries, I wrote one (and an entire MUA) in Python some time back.


>
> >> The idea is basically this:
> >>   * User enters paulej@example.com into the email client and email
> password
> >>   * Email client queries
> >>
> https://example.com/.well-known/webfinger?resource=acct%3Apaulej%40example.com
>
> Looking at the success of RDAP, it seems to be a good idea to put
> together pieces that people already have implemented.  RDAP is easy
> because we already have https query libraries and JSON decoding
> libraries, and I'd say this would be too.
>
> For this application, I'd put in an extra level of indirection with an
> SRV or URI lookup, since many (most?) domains have their mail servers
> far away from the web servers, and the SRV or URI would give you some
> confidence that the server you were talking to would understand the
> question you were asking.
>
> I think the security issues are manageable.  An https request with
> some sort of verification of the server certificate is more secure
> than what nearly all MUAs do to verify their imap and pop servers now.
>
> R's,
> John
>
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