IMAP Support for UTF-8
RFC 5738

[Ballot comment]
Nit at the level of an observation:
Would be bice if the first section in the document was the Introduction, and if the Introduction was a little less terse.

[Ballot comment]
Nit at the level of an observation:
Would be bice if the first seciton in the document was the Introduction, and if the Introduction was a little less terse.

[Ballot comment]
David Black suggested in GenArt review:

While not strictly a security consideration, it would be useful for
section 11 to point out the potential for user confusion caused by
SEARCH command match strings that have different UTF-8 representations
but display identically or similarly (strings that look like they
should match don't).


Barry Leiba suggested:

  The UTF8=ONLY capability implies the UTF8 base capability, the
  UTF8=ALL capability and the UTF8=APPEND capability.  A server which
  advertises UTF8=ONLY need not advertise the three implicit
  capabilities.

Oy.  This makes parsing the capability string complicated, and should
be earlier in the document.  It'd be good to make this clear at the
beginning, when the UTF8 capability is first mentioned.

[Ballot discuss]
Most of the comments from the Gen-ART Review by David Black on
  31-Aug-2009 have been addressed.  However the WG is still discussing
  one:

    Section 2 ought to introduce what's being added to the protocol.
    Adaptations of the first two sentences in Section 10 (IANA
    Considerations) would suffice.

The date of this writeup is September 6, 2009.
This form version is dated September 17, 2008.

  (1.a) Who is the Document Shepherd for this document? Has the
        Document Shepherd personally reviewed this version of the
        document and, in particular, does he or she believe this
        version is ready for forwarding to the IESG for publication?

Harald Alvestand
Yes

  (1.b) Has the document had adequate review both from key WG members
        and from key non-WG members? Does the Document Shepherd have
        any concerns about the depth or breadth of the reviews that
        have been performed? 

The discussion during and after WG Last Call indicates a
depth of review that is completely adequate for this level.

  (1.c) Does the Document Shepherd have concerns that the document
        needs more review from a particular or broader perspective,
        e.g., security, operational complexity, someone familiar with
        AAA, internationalization or XML?

No. The principal need here was for IMAP expertise, and that
was adequately represented in the WG.

  (1.d) Does the Document Shepherd have any specific concerns or
        issues with this document that the Responsible Area Director
        and/or the IESG should be aware of? For example, perhaps he
        or she is uncomfortable with certain parts of the document, or
        has concerns whether there really is a need for it. In any
        event, if the WG has discussed those issues and has indicated
        that it still wishes to advance the document, detail those
        concerns here. Has an IPR disclosure related to this document
        been filed? If so, please include a reference to the
        disclosure and summarize the WG discussion and conclusion on
        this issue.

No issues.

  (1.e) How solid is the WG consensus behind this document? Does it
        represent the strong concurrence of a few individuals, with
        others being silent, or does the WG as a whole understand and
        agree with it? 

The WG's IMAP expertise understands this specification and
agrees with it. The rest of the WG supports its publication.

  (1.f) Has anyone threatened an appeal or otherwise indicated extreme
        discontent? If so, please summarise the areas of conflict in
        separate email messages to the Responsible Area Director. (It
        should be in a separate email because this questionnaire is
        entered into the ID Tracker.)

No.

  (1.g) Has the Document Shepherd personally verified that the
        document satisfies all ID nits? (See the Internet-Drafts Checklist
        and http://tools.ietf.org/tools/idnits/). Boilerplate checks are
        not enough; this check needs to be thorough. Has the document
        met all formal review criteria it needs to, such as the MIB
        Doctor, media type and URI type reviews?

Yes.

  (1.h) Has the document split its references into normative and
        informative? Are there normative references to documents that
        are not ready for advancement or are otherwise in an unclear
        state? If such normative references exist, what is the
        strategy for their completion? Are there normative references
        that are downward references, as described in [RFC3967]? If
        so, list these downward references to support the Area
        Director in the Last Call procedure for them [RFC3967].

References are split.
All normative references are published as RFCs; one reference
to an obsoleted document is to a feature that was removed
when going to Draft Standard. This reference is intentional.
Downrefs are not a problem for Experimental.

  (1.i) Has the Document Shepherd verified that the document IANA
        consideration section exists and is consistent with the body
        of the document? If the document specifies protocol
        extensions, are reservations requested in appropriate IANA
        registries? Are the IANA registries clearly identified? If
        the document creates a new registry, does it define the
        proposed initial contents of the registry and an allocation
        procedure for future registrations? Does it suggest a
        reasonable name for the new registry? See [RFC5226]. If the
        document describes an Expert Review process has Shepherd
        conferred with the Responsible Area Director so that the IESG
        can appoint the needed Expert during the IESG Evaluation?

The document's IANA considerations fully describes the
actions required of IANA. No new registries are created.

  (1.j) Has the Document Shepherd verified that sections of the
        document that are written in a formal language, such as XML
        code, BNF rules, MIB definitions, etc., validate correctly in
        an automated checker?

The ABNF has been extracted and checked for parsability and
internal self-consistency.

  (1.k) The IESG approval announcement includes a Document
        Announcement Write-Up. Please provide such a Document
        Announcement Write-Up? Recent examples can be found in the
        "Action" announcements for approved documents. The approval
        announcement contains the following sections:

    Technical Summary
        Relevant content can frequently be found in the abstract
        and/or introduction of the document. If not, this may be
        an indication that there are deficiencies in the abstract
        or introduction.

  This specification extends the Internet Message Access Protocol
  version 4rev1 (IMAP4rev1) to support unencoded international
  characters in user names, mail addresses and message headers.

    Working Group Summary
        Was there anything in WG process that is worth noting? For
        example, was there controversy about particular points or
        were there decisions where the consensus was particularly
        rough?

The WG has consensus on the mechanisms described in this
document.

    Document Quality
        Are there existing implementations of the protocol? Have a
        significant number of vendors indicated their plan to
        implement the specification? Are there any reviewers that
        merit special mention as having done a thorough review,
        e.g., one that resulted in important changes or a
        conclusion that the document had no substantive issues? If
        there was a MIB Doctor, Media Type or other expert review,
        what was its course (briefly)? In the case of a Media Type
        review, on what date was the request posted?

        Alexey Melnikov has reviewed this document most carefully
        before becoming the responsible AD.
        There is one known implementation of the document.

[Ballot comment]
Why is this going for Experimental instead of PS?


Section 3.1., paragraph 7:
>    would be the same as if other syntacticly valid but semantically

  Nit: s/syntacticly/syntactically/


Section 3.4., paragraph 1:
>    "LIST-EXTENEDED" [RFC5258] capability, the server MUST support the

  Nit: s/"LIST-EXTENEDED"/"LIST-EXTENDED"/

[Note]: 'Harald Alvestrand <harald@alvestrand.no> has agreed to shepherd the document.
Note that the normative reference to obsolete RFC 1341 is intentional. The name parameter was defined in RFC 1341 across all media types. The subsequent version of MIME (2045/2046) deprecated it.' added by Alexey Melnikov

[Note]: 'Harald Alvestrand <harald@alvestrand.no> has agreed to shepherd the document.
Please note that SecDir and GenArt review comments are addressed via RFC Editor notes.
Also note that the reference to obsolete RFC 1341 is intentional. The name parameter was defined in RFC 1341 across all media types. The subsequent version of MIME (2045/2046) deprecated it.' added by Alexey Melnikov

[Ballot comment]
David Black suggested in GenArt review:

Section 2 ought to introduce what's being added to the protocol.
Adaptations of the first two sentences in Section 10 (IANA
Considerations) would suffice.

While not strictly a security consideration, it would be useful for
section 11 to point out the potential for user confusion caused by
SEARCH command match strings that have different UTF-8 representations
but display identically or similarly (strings that look like they
should match don't).


Barry Leiba suggested:

  The UTF8=ONLY capability implies the UTF8 base capability, the
  UTF8=ALL capability and the UTF8=APPEND capability.  A server which
  advertises UTF8=ONLY need not advertise the three implicit
  capabilities.

Oy.  This makes parsing the capability string complicated, and should
be earlier in the document.  It'd be good to make this clear at the
beginning, when the UTF8 capability is first mentioned.

[Ballot comment]
Davi Black suggested in GenArt review:

Section 2 ought to introduce what's being added to the protocol.
Adaptations of the first two sentences in Section 10 (IANA
Considerations) would suffice.

While not strictly a security consideration, it would be useful for
section 11 to point out the potential for user confusion caused by
SEARCH command match strings that have different UTF-8 representations
but display identically or similarly (strings that look like they
should match don't).

[Note]: 'Harald Alvestrand <harald@alvestrand.no> has agreed to shepherd the document.
Please note that SecDir review comments are addressed via RFC Editor notes.
Also note that the reference to obsolete RFC 1341 is intentional. The name parameter was defined in RFC 1341 across all media types. The subsequent version of MIME (2045/2046) deprecated it.' added by Alexey Melnikov

[Note]: 'Harald Alvestrand <harald@alvestrand.no> has agreed to shepherd the document.
Please note that SecDir review comments are addressed via RFC Editor notes.
' added by Alexey Melnikov

IANA comments:

Upon approval of this document, the IANA create the following:

===================================
New assignments in the "Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP) 4
Capabilities Registry" registry located at
http://www.iana.org/assignments/imap4-capabilities

Capability Name Reference
---------------- ------------------
UTF8 [RFC-ietf-eai-imap-utf8-07]
UTF8=USER [RFC-ietf-eai-imap-utf8-07]
UTF8=APPEND [RFC-ietf-eai-imap-utf8-07]
UTF8=ALL [RFC-ietf-eai-imap-utf8-07]
UTF8=ONLY [RFC-ietf-eai-imap-utf8-07]


===================================
New assignments in the "LIST-EXTENDED options" registry at
http://www.iana.org/assignments/imap4-list-extended

LIST-EXTENDED option name: UTF8
LIST-EXTENDED option type: SELECTION
Implied return options(s): UTF8
LIST-EXTENDED option description: Causes the LIST response to
include mailboxes which mandate the UTF8 SELECT/EXAMINE
parameter.
Published specification: [RFC-ietf-eai-imap-utf8-07], Section 3.4.1
Security considerations: [RFC-ietf-eai-imap-utf8-07], Section 11
Intended usage: COMMON
Person and email address to contact for further information:
Pete Resnick, presnick@qualcomm.com
Chris Newman, chris.newman@sun.com
Owner/Change controller: iesg@ietf.org

LIST-EXTENDED option name: UTF8ONLY
LIST-EXTENDED option type: SELECTION
Implied return options(s): UTF8
LIST-EXTENDED option description: Causes the LIST response to
include mailboxes which mandate the UTF8 SELECT/EXAMINE parameter
and exclude mailboxes which do not support the UTF8 SELECT/
EXAMINE parameter.
Published specification: [RFC-ietf-eai-imap-utf8-07], Section 3.4.1
Security considerations: [RFC-ietf-eai-imap-utf8-07], Section 11
Intended usage: COMMON
Person and email address to contact for further information:
Pete Resnick, presnick@qualcomm.com
Chris Newman, chris.newman@sun.com
Owner/Change controller: iesg@ietf.org

LIST-EXTENDED option name: UTF8
LIST-EXTENDED option type: RETURN
Implied return options(s): none
LIST-EXTENDED option description: Causes the LIST response to
include \NoUTF8 and \UTF8Only mailbox attributes.
Published specification: [RFC-ietf-eai-imap-utf8-07], Section 3.4.1
Security considerations: [RFC-ietf-eai-imap-utf8-07], Section 11
Intended usage: COMMON
Person and email address to contact for further information:
Pete Resnick, presnick@qualcomm.com
Chris Newman, chris.newman@sun.com
Owner/Change controller: iesg@ietf.org