[dev] Fwd: [horde] Fwd: Case insensitive unique key

[Michael M Slusarz]

Quoting Chuck Hagenbuch <chuck at horde.org>:

> Quoting Michael M Slusarz <slusarz at horde.org>:
>
>> Quoting Vilius ?umskas <vilius at lnk.lt>:
>>
>>> Sveiki,
>>>
>>> Monday, May 9, 2011, 7:57:40 PM, you wrote:
>>>
>>>> Quoting Vilius ?umskas <vilius at lnk.lt>:
>>>
>>>>>> I don't really care, except that this will break a fair number of
>>>>>> existing IMP installations.  So there needs to be a giant disclaimer
>>>>>> somewhere in IMP which pretty much says that you can't use hordeauth
>>>>>> with IMP anymore.
>>>>>
>>>>> That's  bad.  'hordeauth' is  used  extensively here. Any chance
>>>>> normalization
>>>>> could be done before authentication takes place?
>>>
>>>> AFAICT, this kind of defeats the whole purpose of making the change in
>>>> the first place.  In other words, converting Horde to normalized
>>>> usernames and then creating a system to un-normalize for certain
>>>> applications is no different/better than what we have right now.  In
>>>> fact, it would be a less desirable solution since it would involve
>>>> large code changes as opposed to the stable status quo code.
>>>
>>> I ment why it cannot be normalized for Horde *and* for IMP too?
>>
>> How would this work?  IMAP names are case sensitive.  The proposal  
>> is for Horde names to be case insensitive.  Obviously, these don't  
>> play well with each other.
>
> Except the whole point of surveying people was to see if anyone out  
> there actually *uses* the fact that IMAP usernames are case sensitive.

I guess I didn't make this clear then - count me in this group.  I  
have dealt with an installation within the last month that use  
case-sensitive user names.  So it does exist.

This particular installation doesn't care how the Horde usernames map  
to the IMAP usernames - the IMAP usernames are the canonical  
usernames.  But from what I can tell from this proposed change, this  
can no longer happen since the username will be passed to IMP in all  
lower case.  Which will prevent anyone from logging in.

And we have had people in the past report issues on the lists that  
turned out to be authentication errors due to case-sensitivity of  
usernames.  So this is not an isolated installation.

These IMAP servers thus become unusable with IMP.  The fact that an  
IMAP server *may* have some setting that turns off case-sensitivity,  
or ignores case in usernames in general, is irrelevant because it is  
not universal, and it can't be guaranteed.  All sorts of folks use  
IMAP servers that they don't control - this would foreclose using a  
bunch of these.

Not to mention that e-mail addresses are also case-sensitive (RFC 5322  
[3.4.1]; more accurately, they are "domain-dependent")  So  
auto-generating e-mail addresses from Horde usernames will also be  
broken.

michael

___________________________________
Michael Slusarz [slusarz at horde.org]