Re: IMAP URLs

On Mon, 18 Nov 1996, Martin J Duerst wrote:
> The second problem is somewhat more basic: If you want to change
> a list of parameters, how do you indicate the absence of a parameter?
> One possibility would be to indicate the parameter again, with an
> empty value, but in some cases, an empty parameter value and the
> complete absence of the parameter will not mean the same.

That is a problem.

> Therefore, it looks very much like the specification for not
> partially inheriting parameters as in RFC 1808 makes a lot of
> sence, and is definitely not a bug, even if in some cases,
> it may not exactly be optimal.

Where the problem comes with IMAP URLs is the ;AUTH= parameter used to
specify an authentication mechanism.  This would almost always need to be
copied to relative URLs, whereas the ;UIDVALIDITY= and the ;UID=
parameters would be much less likely to be copied to a relative URL.

Now if there were some way for me to put the AUTH= in with the <login>
part of the URL, it would be a lot cleaner, but I can't think of a good
syntax.  I'd also say that as we move away from cleartext passwords, it
may become more important to specify authentication mechanisms in URLs in
general.

Received on Monday, 18 November 1996 15:36:49 UTC