Re: [Jmap] simpler future release & unsend without outbox (was Re: Best vs Good enough - adoption of JMAP)

[Ted Lemon <[e-mail]>]

On May 3, 2017, at 3:57 AM, Neil Jenkins <[e-mail]> wrote:
> I agree, although I don't think the client-side outbox is particularly relevant to this discussion, as it should not affect the API design. I'm sorry I brought this up as it side-tracked the discussion somewhat. My main point was that many existing systems assign submitted "future release" messages to a separate mailbox on the server, and clients present them to the user distinctly to those that have been released.

The problem with a client-side outbox is not that it affects API design, but that it creates bad UX.  Any state that is not synchronized produces surprising results: I can see somethings in one MUA that I use, but not in another.

It may be that the problem being solved here needs to be solved in a way that doesn't use the outbox as a queue, but I felt the need to reiterate this point, which I have made before: having different outboxes on different clients is a bad idea.   If the submission mechanism winds up requiring an un-synchronized client-side outbox, either explicitly or implicitly, we have made a serious mistake.

> One proposal that might satisfy everyone: an "outbox" or "futurerelease" mailbox role is added (this is the IMAP SPECIAL-USE representation in JMAP). Servers can optionally have a mailbox with this role; if it does, clients SHOULD place future-release messages in here, but like "sent" can put the message in any mailbox(es). Servers that have this mailbox MUST move messages from this mailbox to the sent mailbox at future release time (which may just be based upon the future-release date, or may be actually based on releasing it to the mail queue).

This presumes that the semantics of the "sent" mailbox are that messages that have been queued but not yet left the local queue go in "sent," not in "outbox" or "futurerelease."   That's probably correct, but it doesn't quite match the semantics implied by the name "sent."

I realize that both of these observations are a bit nit-picky, but I felt a bit of unease with both of the above quotes, so I wanted to try to figure out and express what was behind it.