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JMAP for Calendars, Contacts and Files Now in Stalwart

(stalw.art)
309 points StalwartLabs | 1 comments | 22 Oct 25 17:26 UTC | HN request time: 0.2s | source
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9dev ◴[22 Oct 25 18:50 UTC] No.45673491[source]▶
While JMAP seems to scratch every itch of a sucker for proper web API design, I’m wondering if the design space for new protocols should really be constrained to layers on top of HTTP. Is there really any new-ish binary protocol these days? Stuff like file sharing or groupware, mail, calendars, and so on—these things could be a lot more efficient and don’t really need the overhead of JSON as the message interchange format, IMHO. Then again, a lot of solid thinking went into these things, so there probably are a lot of good reasons that I’m not aware of.

Still, it’s an interesting space, I think.

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1. zzo38computer ◴[22 Oct 25 21:55 UTC] No.45675659[source]▶
> I’m wondering if the design space for new protocols should really be constrained to layers on top of HTTP

It shouldn't. For some cases it helps, but other times it doesn't. Sometimes it helps but there would be better ways to do it, making it on a simpler protocol or making an entirely new protocol (which might or might not use TCP; sometimes it is better to use TCP and sometimes not) depending on the specific case.

> Stuff like file sharing or groupware, mail, calendars, and so on—these things could be a lot more efficient and don’t really need the overhead of JSON as the message interchange format, IMHO

I dislike JSON. I think it has many problems, and that DER is a better format.

(There are also the "small web" protocols such as Gemini and Scorpion and Spartan and Titan, which avoids some of the complexity of HTTP; I had considered using DER-over-Scorpion rather than JSON-over-HTTP. It is also possible to use SSH, although SSH does not have virtual hosting.)