[Dovecot] Encoding dovecot keywords

[Michael M Slusarz]

Quoting Timo Sirainen <tss at iki.fi>:

>> Keywords are *not* meant to be
>> directly viewable by an end-user.  Converting between a keyword and
>> the representation displayed to the user is the job of the MUA.
>
> I don't really agree with that though. It's kind of stupid to have  
> server-side keywords if user still has to configure each client to  
> specify what they mean. It would have been nice if keywords had been  
> strings instead of atoms.

I totally agree with this statement.  It's just that there isn't any  
IMAP standard in place to do this kind of thing.  Theoretically you  
could do some mapping via the METADATA extension but this won't work  
cross-MUA due to the lack of a standard.

Example: in the recently released IMP 5 (shameless plug), we ignore  
all non-standard flags or non-known keywords by default since much of  
the time the bare keywords aren't all that useful (e.g. $Label1).   
There's an option for advanced users to show these raw keywords, but  
determination of what keywords go with what label necessarily needs to  
be done by the user.

> I've been thinking about some day maybe trying to create some kind  
> of a standard for keywordUTF7 <-> UTF8 translation.

I am all for this.  I would be more than willing to help you draft the  
standard.

michael