RFC 2342 (rfc2342) - Page 2 of 10
IMAP4 Namespace
Alternative Format: Original Text Document
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