Managing IMAP

IMAP-Related Standards and Documents

All the standards and related documents in this section are Request For Comment (RFCs) documents. There is a plethora of IMAP-related Internet Drafts (would-be standards that are still working their way through the approval process), but they change so rapidly that they won’t be mentioned here. Everyone has favorite RFC archives. Here are ours. Each of the sites lets you choose the geographically closest archive from which to retrieve your documents:

• Internet RFC documents (http://www.nexor.com/info/rfc/index/rfc.htm)

• Internet Drafts (http://www.nexor.com/info/internet-drafts/id.html  )

A word about these documents—they’re the epitome of “hit the ground running” docs. They’re meant to be terse and narrow, much like their Unix manpage cousins. Despite their laissez-faire name, RFCs are the canonical standards documents of the Internet. If you have a bet with someone and need an indisputable source to settle the argument, turn to the RFC.

Table 2-2 is a snapshot of the current RFC standards related to IMAP. For a more comprehensive list, you can do a database search on “IMAP” at one of the previously mentioned URLs. In Table 2-2, the most important document is the Internet Message Access Protocol Version 4rev1, RFC 2060, by Mark Crispin. Consider it the defining document of the core features of IMAP. Second behind it would be RFC 2683 (IMAP4 Implementation Recommendations), which is necessary to read to understand the IMAP “folklore.” ...