Re: [imap5] Where is IMAP5 ?

[Bron Gondwana <[e-mail]>]

On Wed, Jul 20, 2011 at 04:04:51AM +0200, Gilles LAMIRAL wrote:
> Easy: just use a well written webmail and forget everything else, the car
> is there too if you have imagination, just go where postmen are already 
> nice to you.

That's nice is everyone has a car, sure.

> Breaking the current postmen/mailboxes model just to save bandwidth that 
> is doubling every 6 months is intense thinking, congratulations!

Here in Norway, many "post offices" are actually a counter at a
grocery store.  This means that you can access the full range of
postal services until 11pm.  Coming from Australia where the
post offices kept bank hours, it's quite a cultural difference.
It makes sense - here's somewhere that's already open and that
has similar basic skills and money handling facilities
available, why not use it.

Sure in some ideologically pure world you wouldn't even have
supermarkets - you would drive to the farmer's gate to buy
milk, and then drive off to a butcher to get meat and a
greengrocer for vegetables.  Funnily enough, people like
supermarkets where they can go do most of their jobs in one
place.

> How it was when bandwidth was 33.6 kbps? already a no problem since
> the solution has been doubling bandwidth every 6 months.

It was shit - it's still shit.  I'm really surprised that nobody
actually came up with a solution that wasn't so annoying to
implement that nobody did it.

> The other issue is that IMAP is not alone, there is POP to change too.

Whatever.  POP doesn't have any way to upload email, so it doesn't
matter anywhere near as much for POP, because you're already not
saving the email back to the server.  You probably need a different
solution there.

> 50 IMAP current server softwares implementations to be changed and learn 
> them how to post locally while every email client software know currently
> how to post anywhere. How good it will be, you deserve a poster!

The saving will be purely bandwidth, and simplicity for those who
are building both ends and hence can rely on the IMAP software
having this facility.  The point is - you don't have to use it,
but there are benefits large enough to be worth using it.  You
can still use regular SMTP for delivery instead if you need anything
more complex, or you don't want to make an IMAP append at the same
time.

But - in a crazily common case where you want to store an email to
your sent folder and also send it, this can halve the bandwidth use
and delay to the user.  Sure they could use webmail instead, that's
just a layer of middleware.  You could also implement this as a
piece of middleware that wrapped IMAP and SMTP in some custom XML
protocol and sent that to the client.  Hmm, I think we've already
done that except we used JSON.  It kinda sucks too.

> We should merge all protocols into only one that will solve 
> every past and future needs, how about [e-mail]?
> 
> 42 == https?

Er, OK.  Hi strawman.  Perhaps we should merge every single shop
into one giant Walmart.  Except we don't.  Specialist shops
still exist for when you have specialist needs - or if you just
have a few everyday basics to get and the supermarket stocks the
things you need, you go to the supermarket and buy the whole lot
in one go.  I'm arguing for the the IMAP store to stock a basic
delivery method.

Bron.