Re: [imapext] AD review of draft-ietf-imapapnd-appendlimit-extension-06

[Barry Leiba <[e-mail]>]

> Please find the proposed text for conveying  that there no limit for mailboxes.
>
> NEW
> 3.  Mailbox specific APPENDLIMIT
>
>    IMAP server can have mailbox specific APPENDLIMIT value, which will
>    not be advertised as part of CAPABILITY response. The IMAP server can
>    publish a huge limit for a mailbox to convey that there is no APPENDLIMIT
>    for a mailbox. The following  subsections describe the changes to the
>    STATUS and LIST commands in  support of this situation.
> END

I am not happy with using "a huge limit", nor any particular number
for this.  Sure, the IMAP grammar limits the length of a literal to
"number", which is defined thus in RFC 3501:

      number          = 1*DIGIT
                    ; Unsigned 32-bit integer
                    ; (0 <= n < 4,294,967,296)

So, yes, we *could* say (rather than the vague "a huge limit") that
4294967296 is what you use if you want to say that there's no limit.
But I don't like overloading things that way: this *is* advertising a
limit, rather than saying that there isn't one.

Why do we think there's anything wrong with using, say, the word
"NONE" (either case-insensitive or case-sensitive; I don't care)?
What's wrong with this?:

C: t1 STATUS INBOX (APPENDLIMIT)
S: * STATUS INBOX (APPENDLIMIT NONE)
S: t1 OK STATUS completed

Why is that not acceptable?

Barry