On 12/29/2014 11:22 AM, Peter Mogensen wrote:
Hi,
Great to see Thunderbird support SPECIAL-USE now.
I would like to hear the list about the intended use of SPECIAL-USE.
I get the impression from several earlier mails here that the intention is for the server to globally decide what the folder-name of a specific SPECIAL-USE folder is for all users. That's the way the documentation exemplifies it and what I get from posts like this: http://www.dovecot.org/list/dovecot/2013-February/088129.html
I get the point that if *all* clients ignored the real folder-name and only obeyed SPECIAL-USE, the clients could locally in the GUI decide language and name of the \Sent, \Drafts, \Trash folders. And the real folder name would become just an opaque identifier.
However that's not how the world is like. There are plenty of clients ignoring SPECIAL-USE and placing meaning in the actual folder name in a language of their own choice.
It seems natural for me to let the user configure their own individual SPECIAL-USE tagging according to their language and/or mix of IMAP clients.
- either by setting IMAP METADATA (RFC5464) or by having the userdb return entries like: "namespace/inbox/Papperskorg/specialuse=\Trash" (for a swede)
For creating a special use mailbox there is the CREATE-SPECIAL-USE capability (https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6154, Section 3). As you suggested, the special use attributes can also be changed using the METADATA capability (https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6154, Section 4). Unfortunately, both of these features are not yet supported by Dovecot.
I think it is already possible to return special use attributes from userdb, although I haven't verified that.
Regards,
Stephan.