Questions about SPECIAL-USE IMAP extension
I'd like to configure my dovecot service to use the IMAP SPECIAL-USE extension, but have a few questions for those who have used them, or are knowledgable about its use. Using this configuration as an example,
namespace {
...
mailbox xxx {
special_use = \Sent
}
}Q1) Am I correct that mail client that don't understand SPECIAL-USE extentions will behave the same way with repect to outgoing mailbox storage?
Q2) Will SPECIAL-USE enabled mail clients switch the mailbox used for outgoing mail from whatever it was using (e.g. "Sent Mail") to the (new) special-use mailbox "xxx"?
Q3) Will SPECIAL-USE enabled mail clients connecting for the first time use "xxx" for outgoing mail, auto-creating it if necessary? Or will "xxx" be used only if the user does not manually configure a mailbox for this purpose?
Q4) If I have an additional configuration
mailbox yyy {
special_use = \Sent
}how does it affect Q2, Q3?
Thanks to any who can provide clarity on this.
Joseph Tam <jtam.home@gmail.com>
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On Thu, 11 Jan 2018, Joseph Tam wrote:
I'd like to configure my dovecot service to use the IMAP SPECIAL-USE
well, in my experience SPECIAL-USE is just a suggestions to clients. Check RFC 6154 for MUSTs, you'll find only few. Hence, how the client (or the server) behaves in a special case is implementor-defined.
I do expect that any client supporting SPECIAL-USE honors the server setting (first time it connects to the server or everytime, but at least once) and creates the mailboxes it uses itself.
Otherwise, Dovecot can autocreate the mailboxes regardless of its use: https://wiki2.dovecot.org/MailboxSettings
Steffen Kaiser -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1
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On Fri Jan 12 2018 01:29:37 GMT-0500 (Eastern Standard Time), Steffen Kaiser <skdovecot@inf.h-brs.de> wrote:
On Thu, 11 Jan 2018, Joseph Tam wrote:
I'd like to configure my dovecot service to use the IMAP SPECIAL-USE
well, in my experience SPECIAL-USE is just a suggestions to clients. Check RFC 6154 for MUSTs, you'll find only few. Hence, how the client (or the server) behaves in a special case is implementor-defined.
I do expect that any client supporting SPECIAL-USE honors the server setting (first time it connects to the server or everytime, but at least once) and creates the mailboxes it uses itself.
Otherwise, Dovecot can autocreate the mailboxes regardless of its use: https://wiki2.dovecot.org/MailboxSettings
There was a similar discussion about this on list some time ago, about whether or not Dovecot could utilize special use 'aliases' that your clients may want to use by default, and Dovecot would automatically map those requests to a single mailbox.
E.g.:
Outlook clients would see/use 'Sent Items'
Thunderbird would see/use 'Sent'
But both would be mapped to a single mailbox 'Sent' (or whatever you had defined as the actual mailbox).
Personally I would love to see this implemented.
Is this what you are looking for?
https://wiki2.dovecot.org/Plugins/MailboxAlias
It seems already be implemented...
regards.
On 2018/01/12 14:25, Tanstaafl wrote:
On Fri Jan 12 2018 01:29:37 GMT-0500 (Eastern Standard Time), Steffen Kaiser <skdovecot@inf.h-brs.de> wrote:
On Thu, 11 Jan 2018, Joseph Tam wrote:
I'd like to configure my dovecot service to use the IMAP SPECIAL-USE well, in my experience SPECIAL-USE is just a suggestions to clients. Check RFC 6154 for MUSTs, you'll find only few. Hence, how the client (or the server) behaves in a special case is implementor-defined.
I do expect that any client supporting SPECIAL-USE honors the server setting (first time it connects to the server or everytime, but at least once) and creates the mailboxes it uses itself.
Otherwise, Dovecot can autocreate the mailboxes regardless of its use: https://wiki2.dovecot.org/MailboxSettings There was a similar discussion about this on list some time ago, about whether or not Dovecot could utilize special use 'aliases' that your clients may want to use by default, and Dovecot would automatically map those requests to a single mailbox.
E.g.:
Outlook clients would see/use 'Sent Items'
Thunderbird would see/use 'Sent'
But both would be mapped to a single mailbox 'Sent' (or whatever you had defined as the actual mailbox).
Personally I would love to see this implemented.
-- Best regards,
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Pedro Ribeiro IPLNet, Redes de dados e comunicações Departamento de Sistemas de Informação e Comunicações Instituto Politécnico de Lisboa Telefone: +351 210 464 701 VoIP: sip:80101@voip.ipl.pt
On Fri Jan 12 2018 15:58:06 GMT-0500 (Eastern Standard Time), Pedro Ribeiro <pribeiro@net.ipl.pt> wrote:
Is this what you are looking for?
https://wiki2.dovecot.org/Plugins/MailboxAlias
It seems already be implemented...
A first step maybe, but no, not quite.
On Thu, 11 Jan 2018, Joseph Tam wrote:
I'd like to configure my dovecot service to use the IMAP SPECIAL-USE extension, but have a few questions for those who have used them, or are knowledgable about its use.
Thanks to all who contributed, even if the answer was "it depends". After configuring it, so far, so good. One of my users did experience some confusion, which answered my question ...
Q2) Will SPECIAL-USE enabled mail clients switch the mailbox used for outgoing mail from whatever it was using (e.g. "Sent Mail") to the (new) special-use mailbox "xxx"?
The answer to this is an emphatic "yes" for some clients (e.g. Mac OS X Mail 11.2). This client will also relabel the actual mailbox "xxx" with its special-use name "Sent", which can cause confusion when discussing which mailbox you're referring to.
One thing I didn't take into account was namespace aliasing: I aliased the former UW imapd namespace (mail/), to conform to the current default namespace (''). However, the special-use configuration did not apply to the aliased namespaces. Will I have to copy all the special-use configuration to all my aliased namespaces, or is there some syntax magic I can use?
By the way, this is the IMAP incantations one can use to test special-use:
C: x2 LIST (SPECIAL-USE) "" %
S: * LIST (\NoInferiors \UnMarked \Drafts) "/" Drafts
S: * LIST (\NoInferiors \UnMarked \Sent) "/" xxx
S: x2 OK List completed (0.005 + 0.000 + 0.004 secs).
C: x3 LIST (SPECIAL-USE) "mail/" %
S: x3 OK List completed (0.011 + 0.000 + 0.010 secs).Joseph Tam <jtam.home@gmail.com>
participants (4)
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Joseph Tam
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Pedro Ribeiro
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Steffen Kaiser
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Tanstaafl