On 09/11/2016 16:42, John C Klensin wrote:
My guestimate is that - and here I'm speaking only of the
message access space - that a HTTPS/JSON approach wins in
terms of effective implementation complexity, although it is
far from clear to me by how much.
But, unless we can get rid of IMAP (and some of the
functionality, like disconnected mode, that can't obviously be
supported over a purely HTTPS/JSON interface) entirely, it seems
to me that an HTTPS/JOSN approach is additive, requiring the
mail environment to support both it and IMAP for (at least) a
very long time. So, while I agree with your guess, I don't see
the need to support an additional as a net gain, especially in
the short to medium term.
I'm looking at this 'JMAP' idea and wondering - why? What is it trying
to solve that we can't already do.
'Making it more consistent' isn't a good enough reason IMHO. IMAP4 may
be a bit weird, but it's here, and widely used. So, I'm not entirely
sure what a 'JMAP' would achieve that we can't already do.
Is it so that people can write webmail apps in pure Javascript (without
needing PHP/Python/whatever running on the server). That's a possible
benefit of a HTTPS/JSON interface, but I'm not sure how important that
would be long term.
Is it so that mail backends which don't really fit into the IMAP4 way of
working (eg gmail) are easier to work with? That's a potential goal to
make a whole new protocol, but it seems odd to try to standardise a
whole new protocol just for that.
There may be something else; it may be that I'm underestimating the
benefits I've seen. But, so far all I seem to see is 'people don't like
IMAP4 so we want something new', which I'm not sure is a good enough reason.
So, what is 'JMAP' trying to give us that we can't already do? (Or that
well designed IMAP4 extensions couldn't give us)
Will it be such an amazing advantage that developers (of both servers
and clients) are willing to learn a whole new system and rewrite their
software to deal with it? Will it let users do things they're desperate
to do but can't do now, so they're clamouring at the doors of the
developers to force them to do it? If not, then it'll be yet another
protocol which may looks good but never gets widely implemented.
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