mail and URIs (was RE: FW: LC Comments: Web Method Feature)

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Amelia A Lewis [mailto:alewis@tibco.com] 


> 
> > So, from a URI point of view, a mailto URI isn't an 'action'. It 
> > identifies a resource that can be interacted with via SMTP, IMAP, 
> > POP3. You can talk
> 
> Yes, but.  You can identify the "resource" of a target 
> mailbox to send to (interaction via SMTP, mailto), a resource 
> (in a more comprehensible
> sense) of a mailbox to retrieve from (interaction via imap, 
> pop, mbox, maildir, or something proprietary; imap and pop 
> have official schemes and I've seen mbox used unofficially), 
> but there isn't a lot of sense in having a unification ... 

Why do you say that a unification wouldn't make a lot of sense?
I'm not deeply knowledgeable about SMTP/POP/IMAP, so I may be missing
something important here.

If I had a URI scheme that supported something like 
 email:mike@dataconcert.com/inbox
 email:mike@dataconcert.com/outbox
 email:mike@dataconcert.com/drafts
 email:mike@dataconcert.com/tech/XML-DISTAPP

and I defined operations that were read/write on any of these, why would
that not make sense?
The MTA reads from 'outbox' and writes to 'inbox'. 
The MDA (or maybe the MUA?) reads from the 'inbox' and writes to the
'outbox'.
Please help me understand...



> 
> Or, to try to bring this back around, the protocol, and 
> sometimes application limitations which are inherent in, but 
> not explicit in, a URI limit the useful actions that can be 
> taken with that URI.  Sure, you can GET a mailto, but it 
> isn't useful.  You can POST to mbox, but it isn't usual 
> (although perhaps that would be how an MDA populated it?). 
> Interesting ...
Let me paraphrase what you wrote & correct me if I'm wrong
"... the protocol limitations that are inherent in a URI limit the useful
actions..."
The mailto: URI scheme isn't a network protocol, but applications know what
network protocols are associated with that URI scheme. Would it be
technically possible - and allowed by the mailto: URI spec - for an
application to use POP/IMAP protocols to provide 'read' access to the
information identified by the URI?

Received on Tuesday, 9 July 2002 16:34:14 UTC