John C Klensin wrote:
--On Tuesday, January 05, 2010 18:49 +0000 Tony Finch
<dot(_at_)dotat(_dot_)at> wrote:
...
To step back a bit, perhaps it would be easier to solve all
these problems by defining a simple (XML?) configuration
document which an MUA could download. This suggestion is not a
million miles from the autodiscover support in Microsoft
Outlook 2007, except that its protocol is a disgusting series
of hacks which is best used as an example of how not to do it.
http://fanf.livejournal.com/95018.html
I wonder if NAPTR would be useful part of a clean autodiscover
protocol, instead of SRV.
There is, of course, always ACAP (or perhaps offspring-of-ACAP
that used an XML config file)... assuming you can figure out how
to find that server :-(.
Indeed. Or some XMPP extension, etc.
I think there is value in just being able to do easy MUA configuration
for an email address. Something based on DNS is going to be easy to
deploy. SRV RR are more widely deployed and supported, that is why
draft-daboo-srv-email is using them. NAPTR was mentioned in Lemonade WG
when the draft was discussed, but there were not enough momentum to
switch from SRV to NAPTR back then.
There are also use cases for a more complete account configuration.
Something like ACAP/XML in foo/... is useful for that. But I don't think
that requiring the former problem to be solved with such tool is going
to benefit the community in short or medium term, as it might take ages
to standardize, by which time major email clients deploy 10 different
and incompatible solutions.