Re: what is the benefit of imap? Another meta-question.
> RfC1939 explicitely states that the maildrop ("mailbox") needs to be
> locked once a client is authenticated, see section 4. It doesn't say
> what exactly the lock means, though. At least I read it like that.
This is drifting pretty far away from mutt, and I doubt any of us are
writing new POP client code, so I'll keep this shortish. :) I imagine
that I understand why the draft suggests a mailbox lock, but I think
it's wrong to interpret that as a real requirement of POP. RFC 1939
predates BCP-14 (RFC 2119) and no MUST/SHOULD is present. Absent such
terminology (and reasons for using it) I think that a protocol RFC
doesn't get to prescribe the exact behavior of the server as long as the
interface goals are met, and this can be done without an exclusive lock
on the whole mailbox. What 1939 describes may be necessary for some
server implementations, but not for all.
--
-D. dgc@xxxxxxxxxxxx NSIT University of Chicago
Just to clear the deck, I own no monkeys.