Re: IDLEPLUS extension

[Dave Cridland <dave@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Tue Nov 21 00:30:27 2006, Martin Konold wrote:
> I expect that clients decide to open a second permanent imap 
> connection in order to never miss any notification.

Clients won't miss a notification even on one channel - the server 
merely might not send them unless the client is IDLE, but the client 
will get them almost immediately anyway. As C-style strings, the 
exchange might look something like:

C: "A01 IDLE\r\n"
// 0.5 RTT during which events are buffered.
S: "+ Idling\r\n"
// Time passes. Events happen. Client reacts:
C: "DONE\r\nA02 COMMAND\r\nA03 IDLE\r\n"
// Server can still send events immediately, because a command is in 
progress.
S: "A01 OK Completed\r\n* DATA\r\nA02 OK Command completed\r\n+ 
Idling\r\n"
// Server can still send events immediately.

Even if the client doesn't pipeline the A03 IDLE, no events get 
missed, merely delayed for a few seconds.

> http://www.erfrakon.de/konold/draft-konold-imap-idleplus-01.txt
>
> Is anyone else working on something similar?
As Mark says, the Lemonade WG is examining this kind of work at the 
moment. New people are always welcome and valuable, and while your 
draft is largely addressed by, for example, NOTIFY, I'm quite certain 
that you'll have very useful input, having obviously thought about 
this in some detail.


> Any hints to a novice internet draft author?
Implement it. No protocol or extension will ever get worse because 
someone implements it, the vast majority improve dramatically on 
their first implementation attempts.

Dave.
--
Dave Cridland - mailto:dave@xxxxxxxxxxxx - xmpp:dwd@xxxxxxxxxx
 - acap://acap.dave.cridland.net/byowner/user/dwd/bookmarks/
 - http://dave.cridland.net/
Infotrope Polymer - ACAP, IMAP, ESMTP, and Lemonade