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List:       imap
Subject:    Re: Namespace proposal
From:       "Mike Gahrns (Exchange)" <mikega () exchange ! microsoft ! com>
Date:       1997-06-01 16:19:25
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I think Chris's proposal is a fair compromise that gets us past the
#personal vs. ~/ user vs. $/ issue that bogged us down the last week or
so.

If things remain fairly quiet on this proposal on the list, I will aim
to get draft 2 of the namespace doc to the list around the end of the
week.  [Yeah right, fat chance of this list staying quiet I hear
everyone mumbling ;-)]

I think point (G) is the most important point.  Our goal with the
namespace draft was to solve the personal namespace issue, as we know
that trying to define a global default namespace that everyone can agree
on is a losing proposition.  Let's not try to steer the draft in that
direction or it will be doomed to failure.


----
From: Chris Newman <Chris.Newman@Innosoft.COM>
To: IMAP Discusson List <imap@cac.washington.edu>
Date: Friday, May 30, 1997 10:10 AM
Subject: Namespace proposal

>Ok, I've got a new concrete proposal:
>
>(A) We deprecate use of the "#" character in mailbox names and
>replace it's functionality directly with the "$" character.
>
>(B) We use $personal/ and $personal(user)/  which are neither
URL-friendly
>nor URL-hostle.  To make the Cyrus server happy, servers are only
required
>to accept the lower case form.
>
>(C) I believe we need to discourage per-user namespaces other than
>$personal/ since they are not URL-friendly.
>
>(D) Require that all names beginning with "$" use "/" as the hierarchy
>delimiter.  This means that $news/ is either a flat namespace (as in
news
>URLs) or uses "/" as the delimiter (we should probably pick one -- I
>suggest the latter as it will scale better as news grows).
>
>(E) Implementors are encouraged (but not required) to make ~/ and
~user/
>be the same as $personal/ and $personal(user)/.  This way, we'll see if
>the compatibility problems with the UW server ~ namespace can be
overcome
>with time, but it's not a show stopper.  If this succeeds, I expect
users
>will be happier with this naming format in URLs and we might be able to
>deprecate the $personal forms.
>
>(F) Whether or not resposes are returned to LIST "" $personal(%)/ or to
>LIST "" ~%/ is an implementation/security-policy decision.
>
>(G) We ignore the default namespace for now, since I'm skeptical we'll
>agree on what it should look like.  The best we could do, I suspect is
>agree that "/" SHOULD be used as the hierarchy delimiter.
>
>
>I'm not fond of this proposal aestheticly speaking, but I believe it's
>technically sound and addresses all the points raised.
>

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