Technical Summary
The Internet Message Access Protocol, Version 4rev2 (IMAP4rev2)
allows a client to access and manipulate electronic mail messages on
a server. IMAP4rev2 permits manipulation of mailboxes (remote
message folders) in a way that is functionally equivalent to local
folders. IMAP4rev2 also provides the capability for an offline
client to resynchronize with the server.
IMAP4rev2 includes operations for creating, deleting, and renaming
mailboxes, checking for new messages, permanently removing messages,
setting and clearing flags, RFC 5322, RFC 2045 and RFC 2231 parsing,
searching, and selective fetching of message attributes, texts, and
portions thereof. Messages in IMAP4rev2 are accessed by the use of
numbers. These numbers are either message sequence numbers or unique
identifiers.
IMAP4rev2 does not specify a means of posting mail; this function is
handled by a mail submission protocol such as the one specified in
RFC 6409.
Working Group Summary
This document is very long and complex and there was a lot of discussion
about specific points. The discussion involved developers from many of
the largest IMAP4 servers, as well as client authors.
While there are tradeoffs that had to be made, there's nobody in the
working group who has expressed unhappiness or concerns about the
content of this document.
Document Quality
IMAP is a widely deployed email client protocol. This document
presents a revision based on a consensus of extensions and clarifications
that have become common since the previous revision was posted as
RFC 3501 in 2003.
The document has been closely reviewed by many expert IMAP server
implementers. No particular directorate or expert reviews beyond the current
contributors and reviewers are mandated.
Personnel
Bron Gondwana is the Document Shepherd for this document.
Murray Kucherawy is the Responsible Area Director.