kehres@lance.tis.llnl.gov (Tim Kehres) (01/13/90)
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I am in the middle of implementing an mail server that communicates
with the outside world (clients) via the IMAP 2 protocol as specified
in RFC 1064. In the protocol specification, it makes reference in several
places to a Lisp-like S-expression format. Not being a Lisp programmer,
and not finding any other references to this in the RFC, I am not sure what
such an expression format is to look like. There are some examples in the
RFC, but it would be nice if I could find a more formal description prior
to the final coding. Does anyone know of a more formal description of
what this format looks like?
In addition, there are a few areas that I am concerned with regarding
this protocol. They are:
o No support in the protocol for the sending of messages. We will
probably get around this by extending the protocol to allow a
"pass-through" SMTP mode and/or having the server handle the
queueing of the messages.
o There does not seem to be any way for the client to request a list
of mailbox names that it has access to. Perhaps I am just missing
something here?
o The IMAP 2 SEARCH command only operates on the currently selected
mailbox. Since many mailbox searches will be across multiple mailboxes,
this ability to perform multiple mailbox searches should probably be
present in the server instead of requiring the client to perform the
multiple identical searches across many mailboxes. In addition, if the
client does not know the names of the mailboxes it has access to (see
previous item), this might not even be possible.
By my comments here, please don't think that I am overly critical. I believe
that it is probably the best of the current internet mailbox protocols. I
do believe that there are some extentions that may be necessary in order to
produce robust clients and servers. If there was just some way that we
could make it look like the X.400 P7 protocol. :-) :-)
Has anyone else had any experience implementing either clients or servers
for this protocol? Did you experience any similiar concerns, and did you
need to provide for any extentions?
Regards,
Tim Kehres
kehres@tis.llnl.gov