tomas@tuxteam.de put forth on 6/26/2010 11:52 PM:
The references are spot-on. The IDLE command is just designed to notify changes to the *selected* mailbox. And a client can have just one selected mailbox (per-connection, that is). That's simply a limitation of the protocol. Clients may work around this by opening several connections and selecting one mailbox per connection.
None of this is laid out in RFC2177.
And refusing to read 130 lines of RFC (the first one, describing IDLE is really that short) to just say "meh, I don't believe you" doesn't sound really appropriate.
None of the relevant things we're discussing are in RFC2177 anyway. They're in RFC3501, which is rather lengthy.
Regardless, my point is valid and stands: there is no (good) reason for the protocol to require multiple socket connections when everything can be accomplished more efficiently (in terms of resources consumed) over a single socket. I'm sure many people more qualified than me have pointed this out WRT the IMAP protocol over the years.
-- Stan