From: Steve Hole <steve(_at_)execmail(_dot_)com>
Date: Thu, 28 Jan 1999 09:36:14 -0700
Yes. I have been meaning to talk about this for awhile and keep
forgetting. I claim that we *really* need a vacation extension or
direct support for vacation in this protocol from day one. I believe
this to be at least as important a feature as the fileinto action ...
perhaps more so because it is absolutely useful to any distributed mail
client.
The semantics of the original "reply" operation were half of what is
needed to provide vacation support, the other have being the reply policy
bits to meter automatic responses. Someone, somewhere had posted a
draft that I no longer have that described the functionality.
I really think that we need to address this issue.
I posted the original vacation extension and will be happy to revise
it. It is, however, very out of date, but won't have to be as complex.
The hitch is that in order to properly do vacation, you have to have the
user's email address(es) so that you can prevent them from sending mail
to mailing lists announcing their vacation.
The addition of optional arguments should make vacation much nicer.
Anyway, for curiosity's sake, I'll post a copy of the draft at the end
of this message. Please note that it needs a rewrite because of grammar
changes, some of which really help with this sort of thing.
Tim
--
Tim Showalter <tjs+(_at_)andrew(_dot_)cmu(_dot_)edu>
Network Working Group T. Showalter
Internet Draft: Sieve Vacation Carnegie Mellon
Document: draft-showalter-sieve-vacation-00beta.txt January 1998
Expire in six months (31 Jun 1998)
Sieve -- Vacation Extension
Status of this memo
This document is an Internet-Draft. Internet-Drafts are working
documents of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), its areas,
and its working groups. Note that other groups may also distribute
working documents as Internet-Drafts.
Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months
and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any
time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference
material or to cite them other than as ``work in progress.''
To learn the current status of any Internet-Draft, please check the
``1id-abstracts.txt'' listing contained in the Internet-Drafts Shadow
Directories on ftp.is.co.za (Africa), ftp.nordu.net (Europe),
munnari.oz.au (Pacific Rim), ds.internic.net (US East Coast), or
ftp.isi.edu (US West Coast).
The protocol discussed in this document is experimental and subject
to change. Persons planning on either implementing or using this
protocol are STRONGLY URGED to get in touch with the author before
embarking on such a project.
Copyright
Copyright (C) The Internet Society 1998. All Rights Reserved.
Abstract
This document describes an extension to the Sieve mail filtering
language for an autoresponder similar to that of the Unix "vacation"
command. The extension is offered in the hopes of making frequently
used commands availible (and discouraging users from implementing it
themselves).
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0. Meta-information on this draft
This information is intended to facilitate discussion. It will be
removed when this document leaves the Internet-Draft stage.
0.1. Discussion
This draft is intended to be compared with the Sieve mail filtering
language, an Internet-Draft being discussed on the MTA Filters
mailing list at <ietf-mta-filters(_at_)imc(_dot_)org>. Subscription requests
can be sent to <ietf-mta-filters-request(_at_)imc(_dot_)org> (send an email
message with the word "subscribe" in the body). More information on
the mailing list along with a WWW archive of back messages is
available at <http://www.imc.org/ietf-mta-filters/>.
1. Introduction
This is an extension to the Sieve language defined by [SIEVE] for
notification that messages will not be immediately answered.
Conventions for notations are as in [SIEVE] section 1.1, including
use of [KEYWORDS].
2. Capability Identifier
Sieve implementations that implement vacation have an identifier of
"VACATION" for use with the capability mechanism.
3. Vacation Action
Syntax: vacation <reason-string>
The "vacation" action implements a vacation autoresponder similar to
the vacation command availible under many versions of Unix. Its
purpose is to provide correspondants with notification that the user
is away for an extended period of time and that they should not
expect quick responses.
Vacation is similar to reply as defined in [SIEVE]. Like reply in
that document and Unix vacation, the reply goes to the address
specified by the return-path header (the envelope "MAIL FROM"
address), not to the addresses in the From header.
There are a few differences:
"Vacation" keeps track of all of the addresses that it has responded
to in the past seven (7) days and MUST NOT respond to them a second
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time within this period. The "vacation" action may send out
notifications less frequently, but should not send them out more
frequently.
Vacation is used like this:
Example:
if header ("to", "cc") contains
("tjs(_at_)andrew(_dot_)cmu(_dot_)edu") {
vacation
"I'm away until Octber 19.
If it's an emergency, call 911, I guess." ;
}
By mingling vacation with other rules, users can do something more
selective.
Example:
if header "from" contains "boss(_at_)frobnitzm(_dot_)edu" {
forward "pleeb(_at_)xanadu(_dot_)wv(_dot_)us";
} else {
if header ("to", "cc") contains
("tjs(_at_)andrew(_dot_)cmu(_dot_)edu") {
vacation "Sorry, I'm away, I'll read your message when
I get around to it.";
}
However, it is important that users check for their email address in
the To and CC lines of the input message so that the script only
responds to mail sent to them.
4. Interaction with Other Sieve Actions
Sieve actions sometimes prohibit each other in order to make
filtering scripts less likely to cause serious problems. Vacation
has exactly the same semantics as reply, as it is strictly less
likely to cause problems -- vacation sometimes sends out a message,
whereas reply always does.
5. Security Considerations
It is important that implementations correctly implement the seven-
day limit on messages and reply to the envelope from address, not the
From line address.
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6. Formal Grammar
The grammar used in this section is the same as the ABNF described in
[ABNF].
action =/ vacation ;; "vacation" is now a legal action
vacation = vacation WSP string
7. Author's Address
Tim Showalter
Carnegie Mellon University
5000 Forbes Avenue
Pittsburgh, PA 15213
E-Mail: tjs(_at_)andrew(_dot_)cmu(_dot_)edu
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Appendices
Appendix A. References
[ABNF] Crocker, D., "Augmented BNF for Syntax Specifications: ABNF",
Internet Mail Consortium, RFC 2234, November, 1997.
[KEYWORDS] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
Requirement Levels", RFC 2119, Harvard University, March 1997.
[SIEVE] Showalter, T., "Sieve: A Mail Filtering Language", Carenegie
Mellon, Work in Progress.
Appendix B. Full Copyright Statement
Copyright (C) The Internet Society 1997. All Rights Reserved.
This document and translations of it may be copied and furnished to
others, and derivative works that comment on or otherwise explain it
or assist in its implementation may be prepared, copied, published
and distributed, in whole or in part, without restriction of any
kind, provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph are
included on all such copies and derivative works. However, this
document itself may not be modified in any way, such as by removing
the copyright notice or references to the Internet Society or other
Internet organizations, except as needed for the purpose of
developing Internet standards in which case the procedures for
copyrights defined in the Internet Standards process must be
followed, or as required to translate it into languages other than
English.
The limited permissions granted above are perpetual and will not be
revoked by the Internet Society or its successors or assigns.
This document will expire before June 31, 1998.
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