Re: Tim Polk's DISCUSS on draft-ietf-imapext-i18n-15.txt

[Alexey Melnikov <alexey.melnikov@xxxxxxxxx>]

Pete Resnick wrote:

> On 3/4/08 at 9:41 AM -0800, Ned Freed wrote:
>
> > > Tim Polk have noticed the following issue with the COMPARATOR response:
> > >
> > > >     A LANGUAGE response with a list containing a single language tag
> > > >     indicates that the server is now using that language.  A LANGUAGE
> > > >     response with a list containing multiple language tags 
> > > > indicates the
> > > >     server is communicating a list of available languages to the 
> > > > client,
> > > >     and no change in the active language has been made.
> > Maybe I'm not reading the draft properly, but I'm not convinced this 
> > corner
> > case exists. There are two cases: A LANGUAGE command with an argument 
> > and a
> > LANGUAGE command without an arugment. The former always gets a response
> > consisting of the single language that was selected (or an error) 
> > while the
> > latter always gets a response specifying what languages are available.
> >
> > In particular, I don't see a way for the LANGUAGE command with an 
> > argument
> > to return the available language list.
>
> No, I think Tim's concern is different, but I still think there is 
> nothing (besides perhaps a little wordsmithing) that needs to be done: 
> Tim's concern is that if you get back a LANGUAGE response with only 1 
> language tag, you don't know (without saving some context about what 
> command you issued) whether that means the server is sending back its 
> list of available languages (which only contains 1 item) or is telling 
> you that it is now using the language it just sent back. But I think 
> this is a distinction without a difference: If the server only 
> supports i-default, it is *always* using i-default and will *always* 
> return a single language tag (of i-default).
>
> I'm open for additional text at the end of the paragraph to clarify.

I think section 3.3 is good as is. I suggest adding a new sentence at 
the end of the following paragraph in Section 3.1 (LANGUAGE Extension 
Requirements):

  A server that advertises this extension MUST use the language "i-
  default" as described in [RFC2277] as its default language until
  another supported language is negotiated by the client. A server
  MUST include "i-default" as one of its supported languages.

The new sentence is:

  IMAP servers that support this extension MUST support
  at least one language in addition to "i-default".