Re: question about shared and private flags in IMAP

[Alexey Melnikov]

Sumeet Agarwal wrote:

Hi ALL,
    I'd like to seek some clarification about  "shared" vs. "private"
metadata (specifically system flags) as defined by CONDSTORE and
ANNOTATE .
   * How can a server let clients know which flags he is treating as
     shared and which ones as private?
CONDSTORE extension used to have a new SHAREDFLAGS response code for 
this particular purpose.
But it got dropped, as I couldn't find enough justification for it and I 
didn't want to write a separate extension just for this response code.

          Is it a normal practice for severs to have some flags as
          shared and some private?
Yes, this is quite common. However, even for the system flags different 
servers use different defaults.
Also note, that different mailboxes on the same server may have 
different defaults.

   * ANNOTATE let us specify values for system flags as both shared and
     private, which of these values (private or shared ?) should be
     returned by "FETCH * FLAGS" command.
Each server decides which flags are shared and which are private for a 
mailbox. For example, if \Seen flag is private for the mailbox, fetch  * 
FLAGS should return
"value.priv" for "/flags/\seen".

Alexey