OT again... is there an IMAP expert in the house?

[Donn Cave]

Quoth claird at starbase.neosoft.com (Cameron Laird):
| In article <mailman.1012224450.11377.python-list at python.org>,
| Chris Gonnerman <chris.gonnerman at newcenturycomputers.net> wrote:
|> Urrr... it doesn't solve my problem.  Maybe IMAP isn't the solution either.
|>
|> The customer(s) I am trying valiantly to support want to be able to share
|> a mailbox *concurrently*.  The Mercury and UW servers don't seem to work
|> that way.  I haven't studied the protocol so I don't know if it is even 
|> possible.
| 			.
| 			.
| Nope.  Both POP3 and IMAP4 specifically disallow concurrent access,
| I believe.  My belief is sufficiently certain, in this case, that
| I'll not invest the time to verify it in the standards.

Well, note that some level of concurrency is necessary to support
things like delivery.  I mean, an imapd process can hold a folder
open in a SELECT state, and yet new mail can be delivered to the
folder by a different process.

| I *really* like the idea of using TR or something comparable as an
| "issue tracker".  I think you're going to be far happier with that.

For sure.  One could predict misery even if the application isn't
explicitly ruled out by the protocol standard.  Clients like
Netscape and OE are going to do it their way, different from one
release to another, and they're barely acceptable in a mainstream
application.  IMAP4rev1 is a big protocol spec, lots of different
ways to do things, and lots of mistakes to make.

I seem to recall something along these lines appeared here recently 
that used NNTP for some internal communications, server having been
written in Python by a rather competent sounding Brazilian programmer
(so we're back on topic.)  Netscape & OE support that, I believe.

	Donn Cave, donn at u.washington.edu