Subject: Subscription management and ambiguous names

From: John Gardiner Myers <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 16 Feb 1993 23:05:43 -0500 (EST)

When subscribing to an ambiguous name, the bezerk driver in c-client
2.3 converts it into an unambiguous name before adding it to the
subscription database.  Also, bezerk_find_all() given an ambiguous
pattern will return unambiguous names.

In my opinion, this is incorrect.  In many cases, it will cause imapd
to behave contrary to the protocol spec.  It also exposes
implementation information that should remain hidden from the user.
For example, I gave imapd a "tag subscribe INBOX" command and a
subsequent "tag find mailboxes *" command returned 
"* MAILBOX /usr/spool/mail/jm36".  A "tag find all.mailboxes *"
command gave information as to where the user's mailboxes were stored
on the imap server.

-- 
_.John G. Myers		Internet: [email-masked]
			LoseNet:  ...!seismo!ihnp4!wiscvm.wisc.edu!give!up

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From: Mark Crispin <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 16 Feb 1993 20:24:25 -0800 (PST)

John (& the c-client list) -

     The idea was to have a constant frame of reference.  Home-directory
relative unambiguous names are supposed to be of the form ~/name, not
something like /u1/users/jm36 which is subject to change.

     The recording of the special name INBOX as an absolute /usr/spool/mail
pathname is probably a bug though.  It is certainly not intended.

     Anyway, this stuff is still under development, so expect to see more
changes in 2.4.

-- Mark --

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From: Laurence Lundblade <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 17 Feb 1993 09:46:58 -0500 (EST)

Here here!

I agree, but Mark and company already know that all to well.

LL