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List:       imap
Subject:    Re: RE: Internationalization of IMAP servers/clients
From:       Mark Crispin <MRC () CAC ! Washington ! EDU>
Date:       1996-05-31 7:26:54
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On Thu, 30 May 1996 13:06:10 -0400, carson@lehman.com wrote:
> Well, isn't that special - "This mail folder is currently unavailable"
> - how useful. Now "Unable to lock maildrop" I understand, and can
> possibly do something about (remove stale lock files that pop3 servers
> are too stupid to figure out are stale). "This mail folder is
> currently unavailable" tells me that something nebulous went wrong.
>
> If this is an example of an MUA "helping" by making the error messages
> easier for users, please don't help.

I agree completely with your sentiments.  I detest software which carefully
shields the user from any useful information to determine what is wrong.

Curiously, "unable to lock maildrop" is not one of the messages in *my* POP3
implementation, but it *IS* a message that is specifically defined in RFC-1939
which is the POP3 Full Standard.

If an MUA really wants to limit its output to "this mail folder is currently
unavailable", then IMAP already provides quite enough to do this with the
status that it returns.

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