Re: [Jmap] Submission

[Ted Lemon <[e-mail]>]

On Apr 20, 2017, at 11:06 PM, Ned Freed <[e-mail]> wrote:
> More generally, the only difference between a JMAP capability tied to, say,
> a magic header and a SUBMIT extension is syntax. But if you specify things
> in a way that makes it difficult to map from one to the other, you'll pay
> the price for that as long as either protocols continue to evolve - and that's
> going to be a long time.

I think the distinction comes from whether you actually think that the SMTP submission protocol is always going to be what's behind a message submitted via JMAP.   If you think that, then it's going to look really weird to not just replicate that exact paradigm with the JMAP submission process.

However, it's not at all clear to me that that makes any general sense.   I'm sure it makes sense in some implementations, but if we were to go that route, we would essentially be nailing JMAP to SMTP submission.   There's some value to doing this in that it avoids reinventing the wheel, but there is also damage, in that the SMTP submission paradigm really isn't particularly congruent to the general paradigm of JMAP.

The point is that whichever choice we make, we are going to pay a price for it.   It's worth asking what that price is, and also asking what the advantages are to the choices we have, and then deciding on that basis.   The fact that we would pay a price for not replicating SMTP submission can definitely be taken as a given.