[Imap-protocol] Re: Should IMAP APPEND create a sent or unsent message?

[Abhijit Menon-Sen]

At 2008-01-31 01:13:51 -0500, JohnD at cciu.org wrote:

>

> Is this something that the IMAP protocol can be expected to define, or

> has it been purposefully left open to interpretation, and this kind of

> disagreement between vendors is thus expected?


IMAP does not distinguish between sent and unsent messages; it cannot,
because it has no way to send messages; nor are messages sent under its
supervision.

APPEND just creates a message. Whether that message has been sent to its
intended recipient already, and is being archived; or is a draft to be
sent later, depends on who does the sending and who is doing the APPEND.

Clients may APPEND to different folders ("sent mail" vs. "drafts") or
set flags on a message (e.g. \Draft) to indicate one or the other, but
you're right, IMAP says nothing about this, and different clients do
things differently.

-- ams