





IMAP Extensions Working Group                                 M. Crispin
INTERNET-DRAFT: IMAP SORT                                   K. Murchison
Document: internet-drafts/draft-ietf-imapext-sort-10.txt       June 2002


           INTERNET MESSAGE ACCESS PROTOCOL - SORT EXTENSION

Status of this Memo

   This document is an Internet-Draft and is in full conformance with
   all provisions of Section 10 of RFC 2026.

   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
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   time.  It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference
   material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."

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   http://www.ietf.org/ietf/1id-abstracts.txt

   To view the list Internet-Draft Shadow Directories, see
   http://www.ietf.org/shadow.html.

   A revised version of this document will be submitted to the RFC
   editor as an Informational Document for the Internet Community.

   A revised version of this draft document will be submitted to the RFC
   editor as a Proposed Standard for the Internet Community.  Discussion
   and suggestions for improvement are requested, and should be sent to
   ietf-imapext@IMC.ORG.  This document will expire before 22 December
   2002.  Distribution of this memo is unlimited.


Abstract

   This document describes an experimental server-based sorting
   extension to the IMAP4rev1 protocol, as implemented by the University
   of Washington's IMAP toolkit.  This extension provides substantial
   performance improvements for IMAP clients which offer sorted views.

   A server which supports this extension indicates this with a
   capability name of "SORT".  Client implementations SHOULD accept any
   capability name which begins with "SORT" as indicating support for



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   the extension described in this document.  This provides for future
   upwards-compatible extensions.

   At the time of this document was written, the IMAP Extensions Working
   Group (IETF-IMAPEXT) was considering upwards-compatible additions to
   the SORT extension described in this document, tentatively called the
   SORT2 extension.












































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Base Subject Text

   The "SUBJECT" SORT criteria the "base subject," which has specific
   subject artifacts of deployed Internet mail software removed.  Due to
   the complexity of these artifacts, the formal syntax for the subject
   extraction rules is ambiguous.  The following procedure is followed
   to determine the actual "base subject" which is used to sort by
   subject:

        (1) Convert any RFC 2047 encoded-words in the subject to
        UTF-8.  Convert all tabs and continuations to space.
        Convert all multiple spaces to a single space.

        (2) Remove all trailing text of the subject that matches
        the subj-trailer ABNF, repeat until no more matches are
        possible.

        (3) Remove all prefix text of the subject that matches the
        subj-leader ABNF.

        (4) If there is prefix text of the subject that matches the
        subj-blob ABNF, and removing that prefix leaves a non-empty
        subj-base, then remove the prefix text.

        (5) Repeat (3) and (4) until no matches remain.

   Note: it is possible to defer step (2) until step (6), but this
   requires checking for subj-trailer in step (4).

        (6) If the resulting text begins with the subj-fwd-hdr ABNF
        and ends with the subj-fwd-trl ABNF, remove the
        subj-fwd-hdr and subj-fwd-trl and repeat from step (2).

        (7) The resulting text is the "base subject" used in the
        SORT.

   All servers and disconnected clients MUST use exactly this algorithm
   when sorting by subject.  Otherwise there is potential for a user to
   get inconsistent results based on whether they are running in
   connected or disconnected IMAP mode.











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Additional Commands

   This command is an extension to the IMAP4rev1 base protocol.

   The section header is intended to correspond with where it would be
   located in the main document if it was part of the base
   specification.


6.3.SORT.       SORT Command

   Arguments:  sort program
               charset specification
               searching criteria (one or more)

   Data:       untagged responses: SORT

   Result:     OK - sort completed
               NO - sort error: can't sort that charset or
                    criteria
               BAD - command unknown or arguments invalid

      The SORT command is a variant of SEARCH with sorting semantics for
      the results.  Sort has two arguments before the searching criteria
      argument; a parenthesized list of sort criteria, and the searching
      charset.

      Note that unlike SEARCH, the searching charset argument is
      mandatory.  The US-ASCII and UTF-8 charsets MUST be implemented.
      All other charsets are optional.

      There is also a UID SORT command which corresponds to SORT the way
      that UID SEARCH corresponds to SEARCH.

      The SORT command first searches the mailbox for messages that
      match the given searching criteria using the charset argument for
      the interpretation of strings in the searching criteria.  It then
      returns the matching messages in an untagged SORT response, sorted
      according to one or more sort criteria.

      Sorting is in ascending order.  Earlier dates sort before later
      dates; smaller sizes sort before larger sizes; and strings are
      sorted according to ascending values established by their
      collation algorithm (see under "Internationalization
      Considerations").

      If two or more messages exactly match according to the sorting
      criteria, these messages are sorted according to the order in



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      which they appear in the mailbox.  In other words, there is an
      implicit sort criterion of "sequence number".

      When multiple sort criteria are specified, the result is sorted in
      the priority order that the criteria appear.  For example,
      (SUBJECT DATE) will sort messages in order by their base subject
      text; and for messages with the same base subject text will sort
      by their sent date.

      Untagged EXPUNGE responses are not permitted while the server is
      responding to a SORT command, but are permitted during a UID SORT
      command.

      The defined sort criteria are as follows.  Refer to the Formal
      Syntax section for the precise syntactic definitions of the
      arguments.  If the associated RFC-822 header for a particular
      criterion is absent, it is treated as the empty string.  The empty
      string always collates before non-empty strings.

      ARRIVAL
         Internal date and time of the message.  This differs from the
         ON criteria in SEARCH, which uses just the internal date.

      CC
         RFC-822 local-part of the first "cc" address.

      DATE
         Sent date and time from the Date: header, adjusted by time
         zone.  This differs from the SENTON criteria in SEARCH, which
         uses just the date and not the time, nor adjusts by time zone.

      FROM
         RFC-822 local-part of the first "From" address.

      REVERSE
         Followed by another sort criterion, has the effect of that
         criterion but in reverse (descending) order.
            Note: REVERSE only reverses a single criterion, and does not
            affect the implicit "sequence number" sort criterion if all
            other criteria are identicial.  Consequently, a sort of
            REVERSE SUBJECT is not the same as a reverse ordering of a
            SUBJECT sort.
            This can be avoided by use of additional criteria, e.g.
            SUBJECT DATE vs. REVERSE SUBJECT REVERSE DATE.  In general,
            however, it's better (and faster, if the client has a
            "reverse current ordering" command) to reverse the results
            in the client instead of issuing a new SORT.




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      SIZE
         Size of the message in octets.

      SUBJECT
         Base subject text.

      TO
         RFC-822 local-part of the first "To" address.


   Example:    C: A282 SORT (SUBJECT) UTF-8 SINCE 1-Feb-1994
               S: * SORT 2 84 882
               S: A282 OK SORT completed
               C: A283 SORT (SUBJECT REVERSE DATE) UTF-8 ALL
               S: * SORT 5 3 4 1 2
               S: A283 OK SORT completed
               C: A284 SORT (SUBJECT) US-ASCII TEXT "not in mailbox"
               S: * SORT
               S: A284 OK SORT completed
































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Additional Responses

   This response is an extension to the IMAP4rev1 base protocol.

   The section heading of this response is intended to correspond with
   where it would be located in the main document.


7.2.SORT.       SORT Response

   Data:       zero or more numbers

      The SORT response occurs as a result of a SORT or UID SORT
      command.  The number(s) refer to those messages that match the
      search criteria.  For SORT, these are message sequence numbers;
      for UID SORT, these are unique identifiers.  Each number is
      delimited by a space.

   Example:    S: * SORT 2 3 6
































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Formal Syntax of SORT commands and Responses

   sort-data       = "SORT" *(SP nz-number)

   sort            = ["UID" SP] "SORT" SP
                     "(" sort-criterion *(SP sort-criterion) ")"
                     SP search-charset 1*(SP search-key)

   sort-criterion  = ["REVERSE" SP] sort-key

   sort-key        = "ARRIVAL" / "CC" / "DATE" / "FROM" / "SIZE" /
                     "SUBJECT" / "TO"


   The following syntax describes base subject extraction rules (2)-(6):

   subject         = *subj-leader [subj-middle] *subj-trailer

   subj-refwd      = ("re" / ("fw" ["d"])) *WSP [subj-blob] ":"

   subj-blob       = "[" *BLOBCHAR "]" *WSP

   subj-fwd        = subj-fwd-hdr subject subj-fwd-trl

   subj-fwd-hdr    = "[fwd:"

   subj-fwd-trl    = "]"

   subj-leader     = (*subj-blob subj-refwd) / WSP

   subj-middle     = *subj-blob (subj-base / subj-fwd)
                   ; last subj-blob is subj-base if subj-base would
                   ; otherwise be empty

   subj-trailer    = "(fwd)" / WSP

   subj-base       = NONWSP *([*WSP] NONWSP)
                   ; can be a subj-blob

   BLOBCHAR        = %x01-5a / %x5c / %x5e-7f
                   ; any CHAR except '[' and ']'

   NONWSP          = %x01-08 / %x0a-1f / %x21-7f
                   ; any CHAR other than WSP







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Security Considerations

   Security issues are not discussed in this memo.


Internationalization Considerations

   By default, strings are sorted according to the "minimum sorting
   collation algorithm".  All implementations of SORT MUST implement the
   minimum sorting collation algorithm.

   In the minimum sorting collation algorithm, the Basic Latin
   alphabetics (U+0041 to U+005A uppercase, U+0061 to U+007A lowercase)
   are sorted in a case-insensitive fashion; that is, "A" (U+0041) and
   "a" (U+0061) are treated as exact equals.  The characters U+005B to
   U+0060 are sorted after the Basic Latin alphabetics; for example,
   U+005E is sorted after U+005A and U+007A.  All other characters are
   sorted according to their octet values, as expressed in UTF-8.  No
   attempt is made to treat composed characters specially, or to do
   case-insensitive comparisons of composed characters.

        Note: this means, among other things, that the composed
        characters in the Latin-1 Supplement are not compared in
        what would be considered an ISO 8859-1 "case-insensitive"
        fashion.  Case comparison rules for characters with
        diacriticals differ between languages; the minimum sorting
        collation does not attempt to deal with this at all.  This
        is reserved for other sorting collations, which may be
        language-specific.

   ;;;   *** ITEM FOR DISCUSSION ***
   ;;; THERE IS SOME CONCERN THAT THIS MINIMUM COLLATION IS TOO MINIMAL,
   ;;; AND THAT THE "GENERIC UNICODE SORTING COLLATION" DISCUSSED BELOW
   ;;; NEEDS TO BE THE MINIMUM.  ONE SUGGESTION IS UNICODE TECHNICAL
   ;;; STANDARD 10 (TR-10).  IF THIS IS THE MINIMUM, THAT REQUIRES THAT
   ;;; ALL IMPLEMENTATIONS OF SORT AND THREAD BE UNICODE-SAVVY AT LEAST
   ;;; TO THE POINT OF IMPLEMENTATION TR-10.  IS THIS REALISTIC?  DOES
   ;;; THIS RAISE EXCESSIVE IMPLEMENTATION BARRIERS?
   Other sorting collations, and the ability to change the sorting
   collation, will be defined in a separate document dealing with IMAP
   internationalization.

   It is anticipated that there will be a generic Unicode sorting
   collation, which will provide generic case-insensitivity for
   alphabetic scripts, specification of composed character handling, and
   language-specific sorting collations.  A server which implements
   non-default sorting collations will modify its sorting behavior
   according to the selected sorting collation.



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   Non-English translations of "Re" or "Fw"/"Fwd" are not specified for
   removal in the base subject extraction process.  By specifying that
   only the English forms of the prefixes are used, it becomes a simple
   display time task to localize the prefix language for the user.  If,
   on the other hand, prefixes in multiple languages are permitted, the
   result is a geometrically complex, and ultimately unimplementable,
   task.  In order to improve the ability to support non-English display
   in Internet mail clients, only the English form of these prefixes
   should be transmitted in Internet mail messages.


Author's Address

   Mark R. Crispin
   Networks and Distributed Computing
   University of Washington
   4545 15th Avenue NE
   Seattle, WA  98105-4527

   Phone: (206) 543-5762

   EMail: MRC@CAC.Washington.EDU


   Kenneth Murchison
   Oceana Matrix Ltd.
   21 Princeton Place
   Orchard Park, NY 14127

   Phone: (716) 662-8973 x26

   EMail: ken@oceana.com



















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