Internet Draft R. Gellens Document: draft-gellens-acap-acnt-00.txt QUALCOMM, Incorporated Expires: 12 September 1998 12 March 1998 ACAP Email Account Dataset Class Status of this Memo: This document is an Internet Draft. Internet Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), its Areas, and its Working Groups. Note that other groups may also distribute working documents as Internet Drafts. Internet Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months. Internet Drafts may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is not appropriate to use Internet Drafts as reference material or to cite them other than as a "working draft" or "work in progress." To learn the current status of any Internet Draft, please check the "1id-abstracts.txt" listing contained in the Internet Drafts shadow directories on ftp.is.co.za (Africa), nic.nordu.net (Europe), munnari.oz.au (Pacific Rim), ds.internic.net (US East Coast), or ftp.isi.edu (US West Coast). A version of this draft document is intended for submission to the RFC editor as a Proposed Standard for the Internet Community. Discussion and suggestions for improvement are requested. Public comments can be sent to the IETF ACAP mailing list, . To subscribe, send a message containing SUBSCRIBE to . Private comments should be sent to the author. 1. Abstract It has become common for Internet mail users to have more than one account where mail is received, to access multiple accounts from the same machine, to access the same accounts from different machines, and to use multiple programs which require account configuration information. The Application Configuration Access Protocol [ACAP] provides an ideal mechanism for storage of email account data. This specification defines a standard ACAP dataset class for email accounts, and a common option for indicating a default. Gellens Expires September 1998 [Page 1] Internet Draft ACAP Email Account Dataset Class March 1998 2. Conventions Used in this Document The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", and "MAY" in this document are to be interpreted as defined in "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement Levels" [KEYWORDS]. 3. ACAP Standard Options This specification defines the MUA Default Account standard option. This is a scaler option in the ACAP Standard Option ("/option") dataset. The entry name is "mua.default.account". The "option.value" attribute contains the value, which is a URL. Generally, this will be an ACAP URL pointing to an entry in an Email Account dataset. The standard option dataset class is specified in [ACAP-OPTIONS]. ACAP URLs are defined in [ACAP]. 4. ACAP Email Account Dataset Class The ACAP Email Account dataset class defines a set of attributes which specify an email account; that is, configuration information used for access to email on a POP or IMAP server. 4.1. ACAP Email Account Dataset Class Prefix Datasets whose names begin with "/account" are assumed to contain email account entries as defined in this specification. 4.2. ACAP Email Account Dataset Hierarchy Each user may have a set of named email accounts. The default is pointed at by the "mua.default.account" standard option. (See section 3 for more information.) Inheritance is likely to be useful both for inheriting site or group defaults (for example, POP or IMAP servers, and initial client configuration in general) as well as for inheriting user-specific configuration when using different machines. 5. Recommended ACAP Email Account Dataset Attributes An email account entry MUST have an "entry" attribute. All other attributes are OPTIONAL. Gellens Expires September 1998 [Page 2] Internet Draft ACAP Email Account Dataset Class March 1998 Attributes are specified using Augmented Backus-Naur Form [ABNF]. All attributes are single-valued and textual unless otherwise stated. The BNF defines the content of the attribute values prior to their encoding as an ACAP string. Clients MUST conform to the syntax when generating these attributes, but MUST NOT assume that the attribute values will conform to this syntax on access. Servers MUST NOT enforce the syntax. 5.1. Basic Attributes These attributes are defined in ACAP [ACAP] and have meaning in all dataset classes. The section describes how they are used in an email account dataset. entry The "entry" attribute is used to hold a unique name for the account. This name is used for inheritance, so when customizing an account which has an entry in an inherited dataset, the entry name needs to remain the same. The name should also be descriptive. subdataset The "subdataset" attribute indicates there is another email account dataset underneath this entry. 5.2. Specific Attributes These attributes are specific to the Email Account dataset class. account.check-interval This specifies the interval, in seconds, between checks (polls) for new mail. acnt-check-int = 1*DIGIT account.connection-type This contains a token indicating the type of connection used for this account. Clients might use this information to modify their use of bandwidth. acnt-conn = "direct" / "cable-modem" / "phone-modem" account.leave-on-server.flag This specifies if the client should delete mail from the server after downloading. This is generally useful only with [POP3] servers which support this. acnt-lmos-flag = "0" / "1" Gellens Expires September 1998 [Page 3] Internet Draft ACAP Email Account Dataset Class March 1998 account.leave-on-server.days When account.leave-on-server.flag is set (value is "1"), this attribute specifies the number of days messages should remain on the server before being deleted by the client. This is generally useful only with [POP3] servers which support leaving mail on the server. acnt-lmos-days = 1*DIGIT account.maximum.download-size This contains the maximum size (in octets) of messages to be downloaded. This is most useful when accessing messages via [POP3]. acnt-max-dsize = 1*DIGIT account.personality This specifies the default personality to assign to messages received via this account. It is generally an ACAP URL to an entry in an Email Personality dataset. The ACAP Email Personality dataset class is specified in [ACAP-PERSONALITY]. ACAP-URLs are defined in [ACAP]. acnt-personality = url ;defined in [URL-BASIC] account.server.IMAP The indicates the default IMAP server to use with this account. It is generally an IMAP URL, as specified in [URL-IMAP]. acnt-imap = url ;defined in [URL-BASIC] account.server.POP This specifies the POP server associated with this account. It is generally a POP URL, as defined in [URL-POP]. acnt-pop = url ;defined in [URL-BASIC] account.sieve.script This specifies the text of a Sieve script which will be applied by the delivery agent (if supported) to mail arriving at this account. Sieve is specified in [SIEVE]. acnt-sieve = 1*UTF8-CHAR account.taboo-headers This multi-valued attribute is a list of header prefixes. If the client has a mode where it suppresses display of certain headers and/or properties of messages, headers which start with a prefix included in this attribute are candidates for suppression. Prefix strings should be converted to lower case to simplify searching. Gellens Expires September 1998 [Page 4] Internet Draft ACAP Email Account Dataset Class March 1998 acnt-taboo = 1*VCHAR 6. Examples entry home account.connection-type phone-modem account.personality home account.server.pop POP://jru;AUTH=APOP@pop.isp.com account.sieve.script IF SIZE OVER 100k DISCARD; entry work account.connection-type direct account.personality work account.server.imap IMAP://jru@mail.bigcorp.com account.sieve.script IF HEADER "FROM" IS "BOSS" FILEINTO "STUFF" 7. References [ABNF] Crocker, Overell, "Augmented BNF for Syntax Specifications: ABNF", RFC 2234, Internet Mail Consortium, Demon Internet Ltd., November 1997. [ACAP] Newman, Myers, "ACAP -- Application Configuration Access Protocol", RFC 2244, Innosoft, Netscape, November 1997. [ACAP-OPTIONS] Hole, "ACAP Application Options Dataset Class", The Esys Corporation, Work in Progress, February 1998. [ACAP-PERSONALITY] Gellens, "ACAP Email Personality Dataset Class", QUALCOMM, Incorporated, Work in Progress, March 1998. [KEYWORDS] Bradner, "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement Levels", RFC 2119, Harvard University, March 1997. [POP3] Myers, J., Rose, M., "Post Office Protocol -- Version 3", RFC 1939, Carnegie Mellon, Dover Beach Consulting, Inc., May 1996. [URL-BASIC] Berners-Lee, Masinter, McCahill, "Uniform Resource Locators (URL)", RFC 1738, CERN, Xerox Corporation, University of Minnesota, December 1994. Gellens Expires September 1998 [Page 5] Internet Draft ACAP Email Account Dataset Class March 1998 [URL-IMAP] Newman, "IMAP URL Scheme", RFC 2192, Innosoft, September 1997. [URL-POP] Gellens, "POP URL Scheme", QUALCOMM Incorporated, Work in Progress, February 1998. [UTF8] Yergeau, F. "UTF-8, a transformation format of ISO 10646", RFC 2279, Alis Technologies, January 1998. [SIEVE] Showalter, "Sieve -- a Mail Filtering Language", Carnegie Mellon, Work in Progress, January 1998. 8. Security Considerations As with ACAP datasets in general, it is important that access controls are set correctly on Email Account datasets. Besides the server URLs, the Sieve script may contain highly personal information which should not be disclosed except by explicit owner request. 9. Author's Address Randall Gellens +1 619 651 5115 QUALCOMM, Incorporated +1 619 651 5334 (fax) 6455 Lusk Blvd. Randy@Qualcomm.Com San Diego, CA 92121-2779 U.S.A. Gellens Expires September 1998 [Page 6]