Re: Generalizing subaddress

Alexey Melnikov <alexey.melnikov@isode.com> Thu, 13 April 2006 11:33 UTC

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Date: Wed, 12 Apr 2006 23:06:58 +0100
From: Alexey Melnikov <alexey.melnikov@isode.com>
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To: Aaron Stone <aaron@serendipity.cx>
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Subject: Re: Generalizing subaddress
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Aaron Stone wrote:

>On Thu, 2006-04-06 at 18:48 +0100, Alexey Melnikov wrote:
>  
>
>>Aaron Stone wrote:
>>    
>>
>>>Now then, there's the more and more complex patterns... my suggestion is
>>>to accept a new fact:
>>>
>>>1.  There is always a "user" part, which refers to an account
>>>   in the email system.
>>>2.  There might be a "detail" part.
>>>3.  There might be a couple of detail parts.
>>>      
>>>
>># 3 is an interesting idea, but I think it is taking the idea of 
>>flexibility of this extension way too far.
>>The current document implies that all parts which are not "user" are in 
>>"detail".
>>A particular implementation can threat "detail" as a structured field, 
>>Sieve variables can be used to extract parts of it.
>>    
>>
>
>The problem I see with the current approach is that it violates the
>"first normal form" from database theory -- which says each field should
>be a single data type and not internally formatted -- thus requiring
>that the script must have intimate knowledge of how the implementation
>will format the "detail" part, and requiring other extensions to extract
>that format into more readily usable parts.
>  
>
Can you give an example of email address with detail1 and detail2?

>Although my suggestion does require that the script knows the difference
>between what's in "detail2" vs. "detail3", it's at least a little bit
>abstract and can be more easily documented in the mail system's script
>guidelines than a series of regex extractions into variables.
>  
>
I personally think that in order for detail2, detail3, etc. to be useful 
the WG needs to document what they mean. It is very very unlikely that 
we can agree on their semantics.

>Is there an extension for arrays perhaps? (or is it part of variables? I
>haven't looked recently...).
>  
>
There was no WG consensus to have arrays in the variables extension, but 
they can be added as a separate extension, if there is enough interest.