On Feb 24, 2010, at 2:13 PM, Timo Sirainen wrote:
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.
Excellent thoughts.
