Re: [Jmap] Draft messages - mutability

[Neil Jenkins <[e-mail]>]

On Tue, 25 Apr 2017, at 12:18 PM, Chris Newman wrote:
> Why is it important to keep the same ID when modifying a draft?
>  The approach draft-brandt-imap-replace uses is to include the new
>  ID in the> response to the modification operation.

That's great if you're only using one client to edit the draft. But
consider the following scenario:
1. I start a draft on my laptop. I'm not finished, it's still open on
   the screen and I just put the laptop to sleep.2. I continue editing on my phone. Maybe I finish and send it or
   maybe I don't.3. I go back to my laptop, which immediately resyncs with the server to
   find out what's changed.
Now with immutable messages, all my laptop MUA can see is that the draft
has been deleted from the server, but this might just mean there's a
newer version of the draft. I can see the newer draft but can't know for
sure it's an update to the one I have open or not. So I can either
resave the draft that's open (which could cause a duplicate old draft to
"reappear" in the Drafts mailbox), or I can just delete it and hope for
the best (and the user can reopen the new draft if they still hadn't
finished sending).
With mutable messages, I would see there's an update to the current
message I have open. If I know the user's last changes were saved to the
server I would just fetch the update and immediately show this instead.
If the user has made other changes then I know we have a split and I can
prompt the user what they want to do. It's a much better user
experience.
Neil.