Implementing drafts

[Alexey Melnikov <[e-mail]>]

[Sorry for cross-post, please limit your replies to IMAPEXT]

Rob Siemborski wrote:

> On Fri, 16 Jul 2004, Arnt Gulbrandsen wrote:
>
>> (I'll be happy with either, though. And I wish people would mention 
>> it on the list when they freeze a draft by releasing code widely.)
>
> (oh -- Squirrelmail [and I presume pine] have also deployed this on 
> the client side).
>
> The problem is often times the only way to fully vet a draft is to 
> implement and actually use code with it.  There are a few significant 
> problems in a number of IMAP extensions that weren't fully implemented 
> by anyone before they became RFCs.
>
> On the other hand, great progress was made on ANNOTATEMORE only after 
> Cyrus implemeted and deployed early drafts of it (and then had to go 
> back and fix it when the syntax was substantially improved after 
> problems were found).
>
> I don't think deployment of code by itself should freeze a draft -- if 
> there are substantial problems with it that appear after deployment, 
> these need to be addressed.  That doesn't appear to be the case here. 

I wrote a draft that tries to address this problem to some extend:
http://www.melnikov.ca/mel/Drafts/draft-melnikov-imap-transitional-capa-00.txt

(I've submitted it before July 12, but I am not sure if it gets 
published, as I forgot to add IPR disclosure text)

The draft suggests a new convention for transient IMAP capabilities, 
which should be used until the document discribing an IMAP extension 
becomes RFC. For example, the transient capability for SASL-IR extension 
as defined in draft-siemborski-imap-sasl-initial-response-03.txt would 
be X-DRAFT-I03-SASL-IR, where 03 is the draft revision, "I" stands for 
individual submission.

Alexey