Re: [imapext] [ietf-smtp] Fwd: Request to form a new WG: JMAP

[Ned Freed <[e-mail]>]

> I agree with almost everything you said here, Ned, except for the idea that
> offline isn't important. For those of us who travel internationally, being
> able to look up travel info on your phone before you have your
> international SIM is crucial, and this is just one example of a situation
> where this is important.

There's a difference between being able to operate offline and a protocol
specifically designed to support offline operation.

As you note, the former is still useful, but is, as Doug notes, mostly a matter
of client support. (Unfortunately, I suspect that as a practical matter you're
going to have ever-increasing difficulty getting client developers to
prioritize it.)

To the extent it's a protocol issue, it's mostly a subset of the mobile
sync problem.

Or, to put it another way, it seems the mobile sync problem has more
requirements and is more constrained than the offline sync problem. And for
better or worse, the design focus of IMAP was and is on the offline sync
problem.

All that said, it's not entirely clear to me that the design focus of the
current crop of JMAP proposals is geared towards the mobile client sync problem
either. At least some of what I've seen seems more oriented towards support of
business workflows, which is a very different (and IMO much simpler) problem.

				Ned