On 24.2.2010, at 22.08, WJCarpenter wrote: >> This use of subscriptions is a terrible abuse of IMAP. Like most terrible >> abuses, it's a-ok to choose for yourself if you're an advanced user, but >> anyone who has done support for a broad user base knows that a client should >> *NEVER* act like this as the default. Subscriptions are brittle and >> non-portable and hiding mailboxes based on them leads only to floods of >> "Where is all my mail you screwed up my life!!!!" interactions. > > I'm genuinely confused by this come-back. Could you elaborate? > > Why is having subscriptions (and, specifically, some folders to which you are > not subscribed) a terrible abuse of IMAP? What is non-portable about > subscriptions? The IMAP protocol supports them directly.
I don't think it's abuse, but the I don't like the clients' UI for them. http://imapwiki.org/ClientImplementation/MailboxList#Subscriptions and the next chapter explains how I'd like them to work.
