Subject: Re: [imap5] Where is IMAP5 ?

From: Randall Gellens <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 25 Jul 2011 18:42:13 -0700

At 11:32 AM +0200 7/20/11, Giovanni Panozzo wrote:

>   If the client program only asks "just give me
>   your email address and your passord", your client and your protocol will
>   gain a new user.

Eudora implemented exactly this (auto configuration) many years ago, 
using ACAP.  I honestly thought it would be greeted with joyous 
celebration and acclaim by users, help desk agents, administrators, 
and others, as ushering in a new era of ease-of-use and reduced 
support costs.

Wow, was I wrong.

--
Randall Gellens
Opinions are personal;    facts are suspect;    I speak for myself only
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Your analyst has you mixed up with another patient.  Don't believe a
thing he tells you.

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From: "Bron Gondwana" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 26 Jul 2011 10:22:37 +0200

On Tue, 26 Jul 2011 03:42:13 +0200, Randall Gellens <[email-masked]>  
wrote:

> celebration and acclaim by users, help desk agents, administrators, and  
> others, as ushering in a new era of ease-of-use and reduced support  
> costs.
>
> Wow, was I wrong.

http://dave.cridland.net/acap/eudora.html

"Note that those attributes don't have the required "vendor.eudora."  
prefix on them. You'll unfortunately need to put them all in twice, once  
with, and once without, that prefix.

The reason is that a bug in Eudora 4-5 means that "quoted" values only get  
read without the prefix, and {7}
  literal (*) values only get read with it. Infotrope ACAP Server does  
allow you to force attributes to be sent as literals, using the "hint"  
right of 0, but this is non-standard. To do it, just put in an ACL entry  
granting the "0" right to people. I do this by setting it in "dataset.acl"  
on every mentioned authzid there. It's an awful hack, but it solves the  
problem.

Sometimes, the settings won't work at all as a result. Oh, dear. "

and a little later.

"When configuring Eudora for the first time, tell it to use the ACAP  
server, with a suitable username and password. Eudora should find the  
settings, and display a précis of them. Don't accept them, there's another  
bug here. :-|

Instead, let Eudora quiz you about them all - you'll find they're all set  
correctly, and you can simply hit Next rather a lot."

Wow.  I'm feeling ushered into a new era of ease-of-use and reduced
support costs already.

I have a feeling this sort of nonsense is why it was easier to walk
people through setting up explicit settings.

Reading that page, I can see why it never caught on for the general
case.  The user experience was shit.

Bron.

-- 
Using Opera's revolutionary email client: http://www.opera.com/mail/

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From: Dave Cridland <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 26 Jul 2011 09:54:48 +0100

On Tue Jul 26 09:22:37 2011, Bron Gondwana wrote:
> The reason is that a bug in Eudora 4-5 means that "quoted" values  
> only get  read without the prefix, and {7}
>  literal (*) values only get read with it.

It's a cause of there not being any ACAP server to test against  
except for the WorldMail cut-down one for many years. With WorldMail,  
this would undoubtedly have worked without any fuss. (In no small  
part because WorldMail was also read-only, so there was no need to  
set specific attributes at all).

> "When configuring Eudora for the first time, tell it to use the  
> ACAP  server, with a suitable username and password. Eudora should  
> find the  settings, and display a précis of them. Don't accept  
> them, there's another  bug here. :-|
> 
> Instead, let Eudora quiz you about them all - you'll find they're  
> all set  correctly, and you can simply hit Next rather a lot."
> 
Right, but you fail to quote the next bits:

	On a running Eudora, you can simply go to the Autoconfiguration bit  
of
	the Settings dialog, fill in the details and let it update them all  
- it'll just "work".

	These bugs will hopefully be fixed in later versions - it's worth  
noting that
	they were never spotted since they don't, apparently, affect  
WorldMail's 	autoconfiguration ACAP-a-like server, and the absence of  
any real installed 	
	base of ACAP servers has prevented anyone from noticing them to date.

> case.  The user experience was shit.

Actually quite good if you had WorldMail, I'd imagine. Or  
CommuniGate, which had a similar cut-down ACAP server.

Of course, selective quoting from my page can make it look as if  
it'll support your argument.

On the other hand, if you try Polymer, it'll cheerfully do  
offline-cached ACAP, handle the full spec, and you can change the  
running config of one instance from another on a different machine.  
Then again, Polymer also does BURL et al, which you seem to be  
convinced is too hard, so maybe that discounts itself by dint of  
being opposed to your argument.

Dave.
-- 
Dave Cridland - mailto:[email-masked] - xmpp:[email-masked]
  - acap://acap.dave.cridland.net/byowner/user/dwd/bookmarks/
  - http://dave.cridland.net/
Infotrope Polymer - ACAP, IMAP, ESMTP, and Lemonade

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From: "Bron Gondwana" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 26 Jul 2011 11:23:13 +0200

On Tue, 26 Jul 2011 10:54:48 +0200, Dave Cridland <[email-masked]>  
wrote:

>> settings, and display a précis of them. Don't accept them, there's  
>> another  bug here. :-|
>> Instead, let Eudora quiz you about them all - you'll find they're all  
>> set  correctly, and you can simply hit Next rather a lot."

They're not the initial user experience though.

> 	On a running Eudora, you can simply go to the Autoconfiguration bit of
> 	the Settings dialog, fill in the details and let it update them all -  
> it'll just "work".

Yep - but most people don't have a "running Eudora" unless they've
already got everything configured, in which case there's no work
required, so why bother with ACAP?

> 	base of ACAP servers has prevented anyone from noticing them to date.

Yes, the lack of ACAP servers certainly didn't help.  That was probably
also a reason why more people weren't jumping up to support ACAP.

> Actually quite good if you had WorldMail, I'd imagine. Or CommuniGate,  
> which had a similar cut-down ACAP server.

> running config of one instance from another on a different machine. Then  
> again, Polymer also does BURL et al, which you seem to be convinced is  
> too hard, so maybe that discounts itself by dint of being opposed to  
> your argument.

OK - fair enough.  I'll pull a copy of polymer and have a look.

I'm convinced that BURL is too hard, mostly by the fact that the number
of authenticated channels is too high.  It's not just two channels, it's
three.

Client -> IMAP server
Client -> ESMTP server
ESMTP server -> IMAP server

Whereas a theoretical IMAP submit has one:

Client -> IMAP server

All sorts of fun complications with maximum sizes, rate limits, per-IP
connection limits make a general BURL hard.  And it's tricky for a client
in the general case to check that it will all work.

So I'm struggling to get polymer to work.  Without an ACAP server it was
a mess.  Throwing up failure dialogs all over, and not asking for a
password for my IMAP server.  With ACAP (default settings) it has  
disappeared,
no window visable any more.

tcp6       0      0 2001:4c28:20:21:::46729 2001:470:1f09:882:2:674  
ESTABLISHED 13749/python

It's sitting trying to read on that, and has been for a couple of minutes
now.

Bron.

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From: Dave Cridland <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 26 Jul 2011 10:48:59 +0100

On Tue Jul 26 10:23:13 2011, Bron Gondwana wrote:
> On Tue, 26 Jul 2011 10:54:48 +0200, Dave Cridland  
> <[email-masked]>  wrote:
> 
>>> ACAP   server, with a suitable username and password. Eudora  
>>> should find the   settings, and display a précis of them. Don't  
>>> accept them, there's  another  bug here. :-|

Nor is placing the settings manually into an ACAP server.

>> 	the Settings dialog, fill in the details and let it update them  
>> all -  it'll just "work".
> 

No, it's evidence that we're talking about a (fairly simple) bug. As  
I recall, they were also all fixed.

>> WorldMail's 	autoconfiguration ACAP-a-like server, and the absence  
>> of  any real installed 	
A far more pressing reason, I'd imagine.

> ESMTP server -> IMAP server
Right, but the first two exist anyway, and the third is not only very  
simple (and in my experience, it either works all the time or is  
misconfigured and fails to work at all), but it's sometimes even  
elided.

The interesting thing is that the status quo is exactly the same  
number of authentications and channels for the client as this.

> Whereas a theoretical IMAP submit has one:

That's very theoretical. You're dealing with at least two:

Client -> IMAP server ; IMAP server -> ESMTP server.

> in the general case to check that it will all work.

All sorts of fun complications with maximum sizes, DSN and other  
unforseen extensions make a general SUBMIT hard. And it's tricky for  
a client in the general case to check it all worked.

When things work, they're simple. The problem is when they don't.

> It's sitting trying to read on that, and has been for a couple of  

Sure. I didn't claim it'll work well *without* an ACAP server, and I  
no longer run a public one. It's been about 5 years since anyone  
tried it, after all...

Dave.

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From: Randall Gellens <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 26 Jul 2011 07:14:17 -0700

>  case.  The user experience was shit.

In fairness, I think if people had tried to use it and reported these 
bugs, they would have been fixed.  The fact that they weren't to me 
indicates that people weren't even trying to use auto-config, I 
suppose because they just didn't care.

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