RFC 2342 (rfc2342) - Page 2 of 10

IMAP4 Namespace

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RFC 2342                    IMAP4 Namespace                     May 1998


   Personal Namespace: A namespace that the server considers within the
   personal scope of the authenticated user on a particular connection.
   Typically, only the authenticated user has access to mailboxes in
   their Personal Namespace. It is the part of the namespace that
   belongs to the user that is allocated for mailboxes. If an INBOX
   exists for a user, it MUST appear within the user's personal
   namespace.  In the typical case, there SHOULD be only one Personal
   Namespace on a server.

   Other Users' Namespace: A namespace that consists of mailboxes from
   the Personal Namespaces of other users.  To access mailboxes in the
   Other Users' Namespace, the currently authenticated user MUST be
   explicitly granted access rights.  For example, it is common for a
   manager to grant to their secretary access rights to their mailbox.
   In the typical case, there SHOULD be only one Other Users' Namespace
   on a server.

   Shared Namespace: A namespace that consists of mailboxes that are
   intended to be shared amongst users and do not exist within a user's
   Personal Namespace.

   The namespaces a server uses MAY differ on a per-user basis.

   The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
   "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED",  "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this
   document are to be interpreted as described in [RFC-2119].

3. Introduction and Overview

   Clients often attempt to create mailboxes for such purposes as
   maintaining a record of sent messages (e.g. "Sent Mail") or
   temporarily saving messages being composed (e.g. "Drafts").  For
   these clients to inter-operate correctly with the variety of IMAP4
   servers available, the user must enter the prefix of the Personal
   Namespace used by the server.  Using the NAMESPACE command, a client
   is able to automatically discover this prefix without manual user
   configuration.

   In addition, users are often required to manually enter the prefixes
   of various namespaces in order to view the mailboxes located there.
   For example, they might be required to enter the prefix of #shared to
   view the shared mailboxes namespace. The NAMESPACE command allows a
   client to automatically discover the namespaces that are available on
   a server. This allows a client to present the available namespaces to
   the user in what ever manner it deems appropriate.  For example, a






Gahrns & Newman             Standards Track
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