RFC 5957

Display-Based Address Sorting for the IMAP4 SORT Extension

📅 published July 2010, from ietf

RFC 5957: Display-Based Address Sorting for the IMAP4 SORT Extension 💖

RFC number: 5957 🎀
Title: Display-Based Address Sorting for the IMAP4 SORT Extension
Authors: D. Karp (Dan Karp), Zimbra 🧚
Date: July 2010 🌸
Category: Standards Track ✨
ISSN: 2070-1721
Updates: RFC 5256 🦋 (it tweaks RFC 5256, and no Obsoletes are listed)

Abstract 🌈

okay so this doc adds an IMAP extension that lets the server sort your messages by the name people actually see in the From and To fields. no more sorting by the raw mailbox stuff nobody looks at 💅

Status of This Memo 📋

This is an Internet Standards Track document. 🔥

This document is a product of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). It represents the consensus of the IETF community. It has received public review and has been approved for publication by the Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG). Further information on Internet Standards is available in Section 2 of RFC 5741.

Information about the current status of this document, any errata, and how to provide feedback on it may be obtained at http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5957. 🫶

Copyright Notice ©️

This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal Provisions Relating to IETF Documents (http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of publication of this document. Please review these documents carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect to this document. Code Components extracted from this document must include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as described in the Simplified BSD License. 💜

Table of Contents 🍓

1. Introduction ....................................................2
2. Conventions Used in This Document ...............................2
3. DISPLAY Sort Value for an Address ...............................2
4. The DISPLAYFROM and DISPLAYTO Sort Criteria .....................3
5. Formal Syntax ...................................................3
6. Security Considerations .........................................3
7. Internationalization Considerations .............................4
8. IANA Considerations .............................................4
9. Normative References ............................................4

1. Introduction ✨

okay so the [SORT] extension to the [IMAP] protocol is how a server can sort your messages for you 🧚 It defines a set of sort criteria and how to work out the sort value of a message for each ordering.

The [SORT] FROM and TO orderings sort messages lexically on the [IMAP] addr-mailbox of the first address in the message's From and To headers, respectively. This doc gives you two alternative orderings, DISPLAYFROM and DISPLAYTO, which sort messages based on the first From or To address's [IMAP] addr-name (generally the same as its [RFC5322] display-name), when present. it's giving "the name people actually see" energy 👑

A server that supports the full [SORT] extension as well as both the DISPLAYFROM and DISPLAYTO sort criteria indicates this by returning "SORT=DISPLAY" in its CAPABILITY response. 🦋

2. Conventions Used in This Document 📚

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 [RFC2119]. 💅

3. DISPLAY Sort Value for an Address 🌸

For the purposes of the sort criteria defined in this document, the sort value for an [IMAP] address structure is defined as follows:

If the address structure's [IMAP] addr-name is non-NIL, apply the procedure from [RFC5255], Section 4.6. (That is, decode any [RFC2047] encoded-words and convert the resulting character string into a charset valid for the currently active [RFC4790] collation, with a default of UTF-8.) If the resulting octet string is not the empty string, use it as the sort value for the address. 💖
Otherwise, if the address structure's [IMAP] addr-mailbox and [IMAP] addr-host are both non-NIL, the sort value for the address is addr-mailbox@addr-host. 🎀
Otherwise, if the address structure's [IMAP] addr-mailbox is non-NIL, the sort value for the address is its addr-mailbox. 🧚
If none of the above conditions are met, the sort value for the address is the empty string. 🙈

4. The DISPLAYFROM and DISPLAYTO Sort Criteria 🔥

This document introduces two new [SORT] sort criteria, DISPLAYFROM and DISPLAYTO. A message's sort value under these orderings MUST be derived as follows:

A "derived-addr" value is created from the [IMAP] envelope structure resulting from a FETCH ENVELOPE on the message. For DISPLAYFROM, the derived-addr value is the [IMAP] env-from value. For DISPLAYTO, the derived-addr value is the [IMAP] env-to value. 🌈

If the derived-addr value is NIL, the message's sort value is the empty string. 🫥
Otherwise, the message's sort value is the DISPLAY sort value of the first [IMAP] address in the derived-addr value. ✨

5. Formal Syntax 🧾

The following syntax specification uses the Augmented Backus-Naur Form (ABNF) notation as specified in [RFC5234]. [IMAP] defines the non-terminal "capability", and [SORT] defines "sort-key".

capability    =/ "SORT=DISPLAY"

sort-key      =/ "DISPLAYFROM" / "DISPLAYTO"

6. Security Considerations 🔐

This document defines an additional IMAP4 capability. As such, it does not change the underlying security considerations of [IMAP]. The author believes that no new security issues are introduced with this additional IMAP4 capability. 💀

7. Internationalization Considerations 🌍

DISPLAYFROM and DISPLAYTO are string-based sort criteria. As stated in [SORT], the active [RFC4790] collation as per [RFC5255] MUST be used when sorting such strings. 🌏

The DISPLAYFROM and DISPLAYTO orderings sort on the full decoded [IMAP] addr-name, when present. They do not attempt to parse this string in a locale- or language-dependent manner in order to determine and sort on some semantically meaningful substring such as the surname. so no sneaky surname-guessing, periodt 🙅‍♀️

8. IANA Considerations 📮

[IMAP] capabilities are registered by publishing a Standards Track or IESG-approved Experimental RFC. This document constitutes registration of the SORT=DISPLAY capability in the [IMAP] capabilities registry. 🦋

9. Normative References 📖

[IMAP]     Crispin, M., "INTERNET MESSAGE ACCESS PROTOCOL - VERSION
           4rev1", RFC 3501, March 2003.

[RFC2047]  Moore, K., "MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions)
           Part Three: Message Header Extensions for Non-ASCII Text",
           RFC 2047, November 1996.

[RFC2119]  Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
           Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997.

[RFC4790]  Newman, C., Duerst, M., and A. Gulbrandsen, "Internet
           Application Protocol Collation Registry", RFC 4790, March
           2007.

[RFC5234]  Crocker, D., Ed., and P. Overell, "Augmented BNF for
           Syntax Specifications: ABNF", STD 68, RFC 5234, January
           2008.

[RFC5255]  Newman, C., Gulbrandsen, A., and A. Melnikov, "Internet
           Message Access Protocol Internationalization", RFC 5255,
           June 2008.

[RFC5322]  Resnick, P., Ed., "Internet Message Format", RFC 5322,
           October 2008.

[SORT]     Crispin, M. and K. Murchison, "Internet Message Access
           Protocol - SORT and THREAD Extensions", RFC 5256, June
           2008.

Author's Address 🧚‍♀️

Dan Karp Zimbra 3401 Hillview Avenue Palo Alto, CA 94304 USA

EMail: dkarp@zimbra.com URI: http://www.zimbra.com

📦 where this page comes from

ietf: rfc5957 2010-07
💖 girlified by claude-haiku-5-5 on 2026-10-17: a language model's rewrite of the original, under its terms