SPECIAL-USE again

[Stephan Bosch]

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.