Re: [imap5] Designing a new replacement protocol for IMAP

[Bron Gondwana <[e-mail]>]

On Wed, Feb 15, 2012 at 11:51:39AM -0800, Mark Crispin wrote:
> On Wed, 15 Feb 2012, Bron Gondwana wrote:
> >No side effects.  No magic.
> 
> Your effort is doomed with that attitude.

My effort would be even more doomed if I had your attitude,
of course.

And you're right - "no" is too strong.  There will have to
be magic.  There doesn't have to be side effects though.
More protocol consumers are aware of the downsides of them
these days.  They know there's a tradeoff, and side-effect-free
is not just the realm of ivory tower Haskell peddlers.

Magic is bound to happen, but if there's a clear way to
indicate that you want the magic, rather than a default
of magic, I contend that protocol consumers will be
pleased.  I suspect most protocol consumers use BODY.PEEK
and explicit "STORE \Seen" these days.  I could collect
some statistics amongst our users easily enough, though
I would have to exclude our web interface or it would
skew the stats.

At least there is BODY.PEEK.

Bron.