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Appendix A. Simple Mail Access Protocol, Version
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<h2 class="title"><a id="smap1" shape="rect" name="smap1"> </a>Appendix A. Simple Mail Access
Protocol, Version 1</h2>
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<div class="note" style="margin-left: 0.5in; margin-right: 0.5in;">
<h3 class="title">Note</h3>
<p>This document is a work-in-progress.</p>
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<h3 class="title"><a id="id689691" shape="rect" name="id689691"> </a>Introduction</h3>
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<p>Simple Mail Access Protocol (SMAP, or SMAP1 if referring
specifically to this version) enables programs (referred in
this document as "clients") to use a network connection to a
server process for reading and manage MIME E-mail messages in
a mailbox.</p>
<p>SMAP is an experimental protocol for testing new mail
client/server functionality that's not possible with existing
mail access protocols. SMAP is sufficient for implementing
traditional mail access functionality: a hierarchical
arrangement of folders; random access to messages in a
folder; access individual MIME sections of messages;
per-message metadata such as various flags, and a datestamp.
Beyond that, SMAP's primary focus is to serve as an
experimental implementation of advanced mail client/server
functionality.</p>
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<h4 class="title"><a id="id689705" shape="rect" name="id689705"> </a>Summary</h4>
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<li>
<p>SMAP tries to provide powerful mail access service
using a structurally-simple, line oriented syntax.
Client commands and server replies are
newline-delimited lines of text consisting of
whitespace-delimited tokens. SMAP syntax's complexity
is closer to POP3's and SMTP's, rather than to
IMAP's.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>SMAP's design allows it to coexist with IMAP. Both
IMAP and SMAP can be implemented by the same server.
An SMAP client has the ability to fall back to IMAP
if the server does not have SMAP capabilities.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>SMAP decodes MIME-encoded attachments, and sends
the raw data to the SMAP client. <code class="literal">base64</code>-encoded MIME attachments
enjoy a 25% reduction in bandwidth needed to download
the attachment...</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>A single SMAP transaction saves a new message to a
folder, and sends the message to its designated
recipients. This essentially halfes the bandwidth
required to send a new message. Without SMAP, a mail
client has to transmit the message twice: once to
save a file-copy of the sent message in a folder, and
a second time to send the message using <code class="literal">SMTP</code>. With SMAP, the mail client
only needs to send the message once. The server saves
the message in the folder, the sends the message to
its listed recipients.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>An SMAP client does not need to download the
entire index of folder's contents when reopening a
previously seen folder. When reopening a folder, the
client receives a much shorter list of changes to the
folder's contents since the last time the client had
the folder opened.</p>
<p>This is done by the client and server saving an
index of folder's contents. After reopening the
folder the server only needs to send the delta of
changes between the saved folder index, and the
current folder index.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>SMAP provides a hierarchical collection of mail
folders. Folder names use the UTF-8 character set. A
<span class="command"><strong>telnet</strong></span>
connection from an UTF-8 terminal will be able to
fully navigate and manage the folders. Names of SMAP
folders may contain any UTF-8 character (excluding
the control character range U+0000 through U+001F).
SMAP does not reserve a folder hierarchy delimiter
character.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>SMAP specifies a clearly defined process for
synchronizing multiple SMAP clients that have the
same folder opened concurrently.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>SMAP uses simple unique identifiers that are
similar to the POP3's model.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>SMAP provides two ways for removing messages from
a folder. Messages may be removed directly, or using
a “<span class="quote">mark as deleted, then
expunge</span>” paradigm.</p>
<p>Similarly, messages are moved between folders
using a single “<span class="quote">move</span>” process, instead of
“<span class="quote">copy, delete,
expunge</span>” (which is also available). This
allows for greater efficiency with quota-limited mail
accounts, since moving messages between folders will
not require reserving quota-limited space equivalent
to the sum total of the messages that are moved.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Additional facilities, that are useful in
internationalized environments, include specifying
native languages for error messages, and
internationalized folder names.</p>
</li>
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<h4 class="title"><a id="id690156" shape="rect" name="id690156"> </a>Roadmap</h4>
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<p>SMAP is a work-in-progress. Additional advanced mail
handling protocols are expected to be defined in the
future. At this time, the following additions are
planned:</p>
<div class="itemizedlist">
<ul type="disc">
<li>
<p>Advanced mechanism for uploading new messages to
the server. Individual attachments are uploaded as
binary data. The server selects and applies the
appropriate encoding. The server creates the
appropriate MIME headers.</p>
</li>
</ul>
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<h4 class="title"><a id="id690179" shape="rect" name="id690179"> </a>Conventions used in this document</h4>
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<p>This document uses “<span class="quote">U+<em class="replaceable"><code>hhhh</code></em></span>”, where
<em class="replaceable"><code>hhhh</code></em> is a
hexadecimal number, to refer to a specific
Unicode/ISO-10646 character. In examples,
“<span class="quote"><code class="literal">C:</code></span>” indicates a command sent
by the SMAP client to the server, and “<span class="quote"><code class="literal">S:</code></span>”
indicates the server's response.</p>
<p>Some examples have long commands or replies line-wrapped
for readability purposes. The actual commands and replies
are generally a single line of text, terminated by the LF
character (U+000A).</p>
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