Protocol Action: IMAP4 to Proposed Standard

[IESG Secretary <[e-mail]>]

The IESG has approved the Internet-Drafts:

    o "INTERNET MESSAGE ACCESS PROTOCOL - VERSION 4"
      <draft-ietf-imap-imap4-07.txt>

    o "IMAP4 Authentication mechanisms" <draft-ietf-imap-auth-02.txt>

as Proposed Standards.  The IESG also recommends to the RFC Editor
that the Internet-Drafts:

    o "IMAP4 COMPATIBILITY WITH IMAP2 AND IMAP2BIS"
      <draft-ietf-imap-compat-00.txt>

    o "DISTRIBUTED ELECTRONIC MAIL MODELS IN IMAP4"
      <draft-ietf-imap-model-00.txt>

be published as Informational RFCs.

These documents are the product of the Internet Message Access Protocol
Working Group.  The IESG contact person is John Klensin.

Protocol Write-Up

The Internet Message Access Protocol, Version 4 (IMAP4) allows a client
to access and manipulate electronic mail messages on a server.  IMAP4
permits manipulation of remote message folders, called "mailboxes", in
a way that is functionally equivalent to local mailboxes.  IMAP4 also
provides the capability for an offline client to resynchronize with the
server.

IMAP4 includes operations for creating, deleting, and renaming
mailboxes; checking for new messages; permanently removing messages;
setting and clearing flags; RFC 822 and MIME parsing; searching; and
selective fetching of message attributes, texts, and portions thereof.
Messages in IMAP4 are accessed by a set of either sequence numbers
(relative position from 1 to the number of messages in the mailbox) or
immutable unique identifiers.

IMAP4 is designed to be upwards compatible from the protocol.

This set of documents specifies the IMAP4 protocol and authentication
mechanisms for use with it, and provides information about
compatibility with earlier versions and suggestions about disconnected
use.

The working group reached consensus on all significant issues.  The
protocol was reviewed for IESG by the Area Director, John Klensin.