Network Working Group M. Crispin Internet Draft: IMAP4 Compatibility University of Washington Document: internet-drafts/draft-crispin-imap-compat-00.txt March 1996 IMAP4 COMPATIBILITY WITH IMAP2BIS Status of this Memo This document is an Internet-Draft. Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), its areas, and its working groups. Note that other groups may also distribute working documents as Internet-Drafts. Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference material or to cite them other than as "work in progress." To learn the current status of any Internet-Draft, please check the "1id-abstracts.txt" listing contained in the Internet-Drafts Shadow Directories on ds.internic.net (US East Coast), nic.nordu.net (Europe), ftp.isi.edu (US West Coast), or munnari.oz.au (Pacific Rim). A revised version of this draft document will be submitted to the RFC editor as an Informational RFC for the Internet Community. Discussion and suggestions for improvement are requested, and should be sent to imap@CAC.Washington.EDU. This document will expire before 30 September 1996. Distribution of this memo is unlimited. This document is based upon RFC 1732, but with a focus toward interoperability with IMAP2bis and not with other, extremely rare, variants of IMAP. Introduction The Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP) has been through several revisions and variants in its 10-year history. Many of these are either extinct or extremely rare; in particular, several undocumented variants and the variants described in RFC 1064, RFC 1176, and RFC 1203 fall into this category. One variant, IMAP2bis, is at the time of this writing very common and Crispin [Page 1] INTERNET DRAFT IMAP4 - Compatibility March 1996 has been widely distributed with the Pine mailer. Unfortunately, there is no definite document describing IMAP2bis. This document is intended to be read along with RFC 1176 and the most recent IMAP4 specification (currently an Internet Draft) to assist implementors in creating an IMAP4 implementation to interoperate with implementations that conform to earlier specifications. Nothing in this document is required by the IMAP4 specification; implementors must decide for themselves whether they want their implementation to fail if it encounters old software. At the time of this writing, IMAP4 is being updated from the version described in RFC 1730. An implementor who wishes to interoperate with both RFC 1730 and the updated version should refer to both documents. This information is not complete; it reflects current knowledge of server and client implementations as well as "folklore" acquired in the evolution of the protocol. It is NOT a description of how to interoperate with all variants of IMAP, but rather with the old variant that is most likely to be encountered. For detailed information on interoperating with other old variants, refer to RFC 1732. Crispin [Page 2] INTERNET DRAFT IMAP4 - Compatibility March 1996 IMAP4 client interoperability with IMAP2bis servers A quick way to check whether a server implementation supports the IMAP4 specification is to try the CAPABILITY command. An OK response will indicate which variant(s) of IMAP4 are supported by the server. If the client does not find any of its known variant in the response, it should treat the server as IMAP2bis. A BAD response indicates an IMAP2bis or older server. Most IMAP4 facilities are in IMAP2bis. The following exceptions exist: CAPABILITY command The absense of this command indicates IMAP2bis (or older). AUTHENTICATE command. Use the LOGIN command. LSUB, SUBSCRIBE, and UNSUBSCRIBE commands No direct functional equivalent. IMAP2bis had a concept called "bboards" which is not in IMAP4. RFC 1176 supported these with the BBOARD and FIND BBOARDS commands. IMAP2bis augmented these with the FIND ALL.BBOARDS, SUBSCRIBE BBOARD, and UNSUBSCRIBE BBOARD commands. It is recommended that none of these commands be implemented in new software, including servers that support old clients. LIST command Use the command FIND ALL.MAILBOXES, which has a similar syn- tax and response to the FIND MAILBOXES command described in RFC 1176. The FIND MAILBOXES command is unlikely to produce useful information. * in a sequence Use the number of messages in the mailbox from the EXISTS unsolicited response. SEARCH extensions (character set, additional criteria) Reformulate the search request using only the RFC 1176 syn- tax. This may entail doing multiple searches to achieve the desired results. BODYSTRUCTURE fetch data item Use the non-extensible BODY data item. body sections HEADER, TEXT, MIME, HEADER.FIELDS, HEADER.FIELDS.NOT Use body section numbers only. Crispin [Page 3] INTERNET DRAFT IMAP4 - Compatibility March 1996 BODY.PEEK[section] Use BODY[section] and manually clear the \Seen flag as necessary. FLAGS.SILENT, +FLAGS.SILENT, and -FLAGS.SILENT store data items Use the corresponding non-SILENT versions and ignore the untagged FETCH responses which come back. UID fetch data item and the UID commands No functional equivalent. CLOSE command No functional equivalent. In IMAP2bis, the TRYCREATE special information token is sent as a separate unsolicited OK response instead of inside the NO response. IMAP2bis is ambiguous about whether or not flags or internal dates are preserved on COPY. It is impossible to know what behavior is supported by the server. Crispin [Page 4] INTERNET DRAFT IMAP4 - Compatibility March 1996 IMAP4 server interoperability with IMAP2bis clients The only interoperability problem between an IMAP4 server and a well-written IMAP2bis client is an incompatibility with the use of "\" in quoted strings. This is best avoided by using literals instead of quoted strings if "\" or <"> is embedded in the string. Security Considerations Security issues are not discussed in this memo. Author's Address: Mark R. Crispin Networks and Distributed Computing University of Washington 4545 15th Aveneue NE Seattle, WA 98105-4527 Phone: (206) 543-5762 EMail: MRC@CAC.Washington.EDU Crispin [Page 5]