CURRENT_MEETING_REPORT_
Reported by Terry Gray/University of Washington
Minutes of the Interactive Mail Access Protocol Working Group (IMAP)
Agenda
o Introductions
o IMAP overview
o Comments on the charter
o Status of implementations
o Status of protocol specification
o Comments on Columbus BOF notes
o Additional IMAP change requests
o Seattle meeting
References: /imap/imap* on ftp.cac.washington.edu
Summary
There were 20 people in attendance. For several, it was their first
exposure to IMAP, so a few minutes was spent summarizing what IMAP is,
how it compares/relates to other alternatives, and what the working
group is chartered to do. The working group charter and notes from the
Columbus BOF were reviewed and questions were answered. The status of
the protocol specification and known IMAP implementations was reviewed.
(An Internet-Draft is being composed that integrates and updates RFC
1176 and the imap2bis extensions.) Existing practice on the use of IMAP
for news, archive, and document access (in addition to mail) was
covered. Discussion on possible IMAP extensions followed. Finally, the
next working group meeting (in Seattle, August 30-31) was announced.
Discussion Points
o Disconnected operation support, ala DMSP, continues to be widely
desired.
o There is considerable interest in using IMAP to access message
archives.
o Several people asked about extensions to support binary message
part access, without Base64 or QP encoding:
- Is it Possible?
- What would be the Impact on s-expression model?
- Can unencoded binary attachments be transferred without charset
concerns?
o The question of signaling when large blocks of data are being
transferred was discussed: congestion of pipe; need to have
multiple channels or out-of-band signals.
o Can we have an IMAP server capabilities command, ala new SMTP?
o Be sure to look at URL/I work before settling on unique message ID
scheme.
o Is IMAP a distribution list alternative: shared but limited access
mailbox?
o Can IMAP ``integrate'' two mailboxes (remote mail archive plus
local subset)?
o Should IMAP become ``Interactive Message Access Protocol''?
Action Items
Terry Gray needs to maintain (or cause to be maintained) an IMAP
enhancement/request list, sorted into the following categories:
o Protocol bug fixes
o Upward compatible extensions
- high priority
- lower priority
o Non-upward compatible changes
- high priority
- lower priority
o Bad, or not clearly good, ideas
A subset of that list must then be defined as the target for the
immediate standardization effort, with other ideas being deferred for
future consideration. Given the desire to preserve compatibility with
the installed base, and move ahead promptly in getting a base IMAP
standard defined, extensions will be necessarily limited to those deemed
to have an extremely high priority.
Mark Crispin needs to integrate RFC 1176 text with IMAP2BIS text and
submit it as an Internet-Draft no later than August 15th.
IMAP implementors/interested parties are encouraged to come to the next
meeting in Seattle, August 30-31.
Attendees
Matti Aarnio mea@nic.nordu.net
Chris Adie C.J.Adie@edinburgh.ac.uk
James Allard jallard@microsoft.com
Luc Boulianne lucb@cs.mcgill.ca
J. Nevil Brownlee nevil@ccu1.aukuni.ac.nz
Al Costanzo al@akc.com
Maria Dimou-Zacharova dimou@dxcern.cern.ch
Christoph Graf graf@switch.ch
Terry Gray gray@cac.washington.edu
Jari Hamalainen jah@rctre.nokia.com
Xander Jansen xander.jansen@surfnet.nl
Scott Kaplan scott@wco.ftp.com
Jim Knowles jknowles@binky.arc.nasa.gov
Keith Moore moore@cs.utk.edu
Mel Pleasant pleasant@hardees.rutgers.edu
Robert Reschly reschly@brl.mil
Kenneth Rossen kenr@shl.com
David Sitman a79vm.tau.ac.il
Peter Svanberg psv@nada.kth.se
Gregory Vaudreuil gvaudre@cnri.reston.va.us