Open Bug 337330 Opened 18 years ago Updated 2 years ago

IMAP METADATA extension rfc5464 - allow metadata at a server or mailbox/folder level

Categories

(MailNews Core :: Networking: IMAP, enhancement)

enhancement

Tracking

(Not tracked)

People

(Reporter: kael, Unassigned)

References

(Blocks 2 open bugs, )

Details

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.0.3) Gecko/20060426 Firefox/1.5.0.3 XPCOMViewer/0.8.1.2
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.0.3) Gecko/20060426 Firefox/1.5.0.3 XPCOMViewer/0.8.1.2

This is a feature request to implement the IMAP METADATA extension (formerly named ANNOTATEMORE). This extension allows to set different metadata at a mailbox level, like comments e.g.

The METADATA extension is defined by the current internet-draft http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-daboo-imap-annotatemore-09.txt and is already implemented in the Cyrus server.

For instance, see FastMail's server :

$ telnet fastmail.fm 143
Trying 66.111.4.56...
Connected to fastmail.fm.
Escape character is '^]'.
* OK IMAP4 ready
01 capability
* CAPABILITY IMAP4 IMAP4rev1 ACL QUOTA LITERAL+ MAILBOX-REFERRALS NAMESPACE UIDPLUS ID NO_ATOMIC_RENAME UNSELECT CHILDREN MULTIAPPEND BINARY SORT THREAD=ORDEREDSUBJECT THREAD=REFERENCES ANNOTATEMORE IDLE AUTH=OTP SASL-IR
01 OK completed

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. NA
2.
3.
Actual Results:  
NA

Expected Results:  
NA

Users could set different metadata like comments that could be shared.

Kolab uses this extension to set mailbox types (address book, calendars, etc) http://wiki.kolab.org/index.php/IMAP_Annotations and Cyrus uses it for different purposes http://asg.web.cmu.edu/cyrus/download/imapd/install-netnews.html with the following annotations : /vendor/cmu/cyrus-imapd/news2mail, /vendor/cmu/cyrus-imapd/expire and /vendor/cmu/cyrus-imapd/sieve
Confirming.
Assignee: mscott → bienvenu
Status: UNCONFIRMED → NEW
Component: General → Networking: IMAP
Ever confirmed: true
Product: Thunderbird → Core
QA Contact: general → grylchan
Version: unspecified → Trunk
There's a new Internet-Draft based on this extension that allows to store IMAP SEARCHes (aka VIEWs) on server-side.

For example (a view for all mailboxes) :

C: a SETMETADATA "" "/filters/on-the-road" (value.priv "OR SMALLER 5000 FROM \"boss@example.com\"")
S: a OK SETMETADATA complete

http://ietfreport.isoc.org/idref/draft-melnikov-imapext-filters/

With this extension, users wouldn't have to reconfigure VIEWs each time they use another Thunderbird or another compatible MUA.
Product: Core → MailNews Core
QA Contact: grylchan → networking.imap
Blocks: 479134
I'm sure we want the actual RFC now. :-)
Summary: IMAP METADATA extension → IMAP METADATA extension rfc5464
What's the status on this one? Is anyone actively working on this?
Blocks: RFC6154
> What's the status on this one? Is anyone actively working on this?

Nope. You would see it here.
No longer blocks: RFC6154
Assignee: mozilla → nobody
At the very least, it would be nice if Thunderbird would "ignore" folders that contain metadata.  As an example, Kolab provides contacts and calendar using this RFC, and RoundCube and other mail clients consume these folders.  Unfortunately, Thunderbird displays them as actual mail folders, with rather useless information on each item:

"This is a Kolab Groupware object. To view this object you will need an email client that understands the Kolab Groupware format. For a list of such email clients please visit http://www.kolab.org/"

Source is available on request, but it's basically a bunch of XML.

While it would be spectacular if Thunderbird could understand this RFC and directly leverage the contacts into the addressbook (or the calendar into Lightning), in the interim it would be great if Thunderbird would not subscribe to these folders by default.

In other words, when connecting to an IMAP server with the metadata capabilities as per the RFC:
https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5464

Any folders that contain said metadata should not be subscribed to by default.
Magnus Melin, could you please tell me, why you think this is a duplicate of Bug: 288514? As I understand, annotate messages and annotate mailbox / server are different things.

"ANNOTATE Extension" http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5257
"METADATA Extension" https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5464
Flags: needinfo?
Magnus Melin, could you please tell me, why you think this is a duplicate of Bug: 288514? As I understand, annotate messages and annotate mailbox / server are different things.

"ANNOTATE Extension" http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5257
"METADATA Extension" https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5464
Ah, unduped.
Flags: needinfo?
Blocks: 439047
Blocks: 116945
See Also: → 288514
Summary: IMAP METADATA extension rfc5464 → IMAP METADATA extension rfc5464 - allow metadata at a server or mailbox/folder level
Severity: normal → S3
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