NOTES ===== JavaMail(TM) API 1.3 release ---------------------------- Welcome to the 1.3 release of the JavaMail API implementation. Please refer to CHANGES.txt for a list of the changes since the previous release. Please see the FAQ at http://java.sun.com/products/javamail/FAQ.html Protocol Providers ------------------ The JavaMail API jar file "mail.jar" includes the full JavaMail API implementation and *all* the Sun protocol providers - IMAP, SMTP, and POP3. The simplest way to use the JavaMail API is to just use the mail.jar file and ignore the other jar files in this package. In some cases it may be desirable to minimize the size of the JavaMail API code used by an application (e.g., when downloading with an applet). In this case you might want to include the "mailapi.jar" file, which includes *no* protocol providers, along with just the jar file for the protocol provider you need. For example, an applet that only needs to send mail could use the "mailapi.jar" file and the "smtp.jar" file. A few important notes when using the separate protocol provider jar files: 1. To use more than one protocol provider jar file, you should use J2SE 1.2 or newer. Or simply use "mail.jar". 2. You can't mix and match the Sun protocol providers between different releases of the JavaMail API. The Sun protocol providers depend on implementation-specific utility APIs within the mailapi.jar file. (Third party protocol providers that don't depend on these APIs should work fine.) NOTE: The Sun protocol provider documentation that was previously included in this file is now available in javadoc format, see docs/javadocs/index.html in the directory where you extracted the JavaMail API zip file. This documentation describes how to use features of the Sun protocol providers to directly access some features of the SMTP, IMAP, and POP3 protocols that are not otherwise supported by the standard JavaMail API. How to submit bug reports ------------------------- If you've found a bug, or if you just need help figuring out how to use the JavaMail API, please try to include the following information in your message to us: - a program or code snippet that shows the problem - the platform you are using - the mail server (vendor name, version number) you are using - your environment variable settings - a stack trace, if appropriate - a protocol trace, after turning on session debugging, if appropriate Most of the problems reported to us fail to include enough of the above information to allow us to diagnose your problem. It will save you and us time if you include this information in your first message to us. By far the most common problems we see are: Your problem: Something doesn't work right when talking to my mail server. Our response: Turn on session debugging and send us the protocol trace. See the demo program documentation for how to turn on session debugging for the demo programs. In your own program, call "session.setDebug(true);". Your problem: javax.mail or javax.activation classes not found when compiling. Our response: You didn't set CLASSPATH correctly to find mail.jar and activation.jar. See README.txt. Your problem: NoSuchProviderException - No such provider for rfc822. Our response: You unjar'ed mail.jar. Don't. Your problem: How do I create a message with an attachment? Our response: Create a message with a MimeMultipart content. See the sendfile.html and msgmultisendsample.java demo programs. Please check the FAQ at http://java.sun.com/products/javamail/FAQ.html before submitting bug reports. Send your bug reports to: javamail@sun.com A list of the known limitations, bugs, issues: ---------------------------------------------- 1. Unsigned applets that use this version of the JavaMail API *will* work under the Netscape 4 browser, but only in limited fashion, due to security restrictions that prevent the "provider" and "mailcap" related files from being loaded from mail.jar and activation.jar. The JavaMail API will use built-in versions of its configuration files in this case. Applets will work in the Netscape 6 browser and the Internet Explorer browser, with or without the Java(TM) Plug-in (http://java.sun.com/products/plugin). 2. Internationalization. Parameter encoding in MIME headers, as specified by RFC2231, hasn't yet been implemented. Note that this covers only certain special cases not covered by the MIME specification. MIME specifies encoding of text in the Subject and address headers, and JavaMail fully supports such encoding. Most mailers don't support RFC2231. 3. We've received reports of problems using the JavaMail API in servlets driven by Netscape web servers. The error is that the Netscape servlet implementation doesn't support the java.awt.datatransfer.Transferable class which is used by the JAF. We recommend that you submit a bug report with Netscape. 4. We've received reports of IMAP authentication failures on the Microsoft Exchange Server 5.5, enterprise edition. This is due to a bug in the Microsoft server and the "Service Pack 1 for Exchange Server 5.5" apparently fixes this server bug. The service pack can be downloaded from the Microsoft website. 5. Due to a problem in the Microsoft Exchange IMAP server, insufficient number of bytes may be retrieved when reading big messages. There are two ways to workaround this Exchange bug: (a) The Exchange IMAP server provides a configuration option called "fast message retrieval" to the UI. Simply go to the site, server or recipient, click on the "IMAP4" tab, and one of the check boxes is "enable fast message retrieval". Turn it off and the octet counts will be exact. This is fully described at http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;Q191504 (b) Set the "mail.imap.partialfetch" property to false. You'll have to set this property in the Properties object that you provide to your Session. 6. Certain IMAP servers do not implement the IMAP Partial FETCH functionality properly. This problem typically manifests as corrupt email attachments when downloading large messages from the IMAP server. To workaround this server bug, set the "mail.imap.partialfetch" property to false. You'll have to set this property in the Properties object that you provide to your Session. Servers tested with: -------------------- The IMAP implementation works with IMAP4 and IMAP4rev1 servers. The current release has been tested with: iPlanet Messaging Server version 5.2 Sun Internet Mail Server version 2.0 UW IMAP4 server version 2001.315 Cyrus IMAP4 server version 1.6.19 Previous releases have been tested with: Sun Internet Mail Server version 3.2 and 4.0 Netscape Messaging Server version 3.01 and 4.1 Microsoft Exchange Microsoft MCIS Mail Server Lotus Notes Software.com IMAP server Qualcomm Worldmail The current release of the SMTP implementation has been tested with: Sendmail version 8.9.1 iPlanet Messaging Server version 5.2 Previous releases have been tested with: Sendmail 8.6 Sun Internet Mail Server version 3.2 and 4.0 Netscape Messaging Server version 3.01 and 4.1 Microsoft Exchange Microsoft MCIS Mail Server Qualcomm Worldmail JavaMail API Y2K compliance --------------------------- Summary: JavaMail API is Option-3 compliant. Sun's JavaMail API implementation uses the java.util.Date class to store Date objects internally. Dates can be introduced into the JavaMail API in the following ways: 1) When reading a MIME message from a MIME input stream. The MimeMessage constructor parses the MIME stream. One of the RFC822 headers is the "Date" field. As per the RFC, this date field must have 4-digit years. However, older or non-compliant software may generate 2-digit years. The JavaMail API follows the recommendations from the IETF-DRUMS draft (http://www.imc.org/draft-ietf-drums-msg-fmt) to parse such date strings: 00 through 49 represents 2000 through 2049; 50 through 99 represents 1950 through 1999 2) The IMAP provider deals with two kinds of dates: Received Date & Sent Date The Recieved Date is an IMAP data item (INTERNALDATE) and can contain only 4-digit years. The Sent Date is actually the "Date" RFC822 header. The IMAP provider follows the logic listed in the previous section to parse this header, thus it is compliant with the IETF-DRUMS draft. 3) Dates can be set externally by the client when creating a MimeMessage using the MimeMessage.setSentDate(java.util.Date) method. The Date class is defined in the java.util package; the JavaMail API has nothing to do with the interpretation of date strings by the Date class. The Y2K compliance of this class is defined by the particular JDK implementation. (Note that JDK1.1.6 is Option-3 compliant) From (1) and (2), we can conclude that Sun's implementation of the JavaMail API is Option-3 compliant. For more information on compliance levels, refer: http://www.sun.com/y2000 JavaMail API 100% Pure Java Certification ----------------------------------------- Sun's JavaMail API implementation is 100% pure Java. Earlier versions have been certified by KeyLabs. (See http://java.sun.com/100percent) How to give feedback -------------------- Please send your feedback to this email-address: javamail@sun.com Check out our website at http://java.sun.com/products/javamail You can subscribe to our open discussion-list: javamail-interest@java.sun.com. Or you can subscribe to our low-volume mailing-list (where we announce product updates and other relevant information): javamail-announce@java.sun.com. Instructions on how to subscribe are on our website. ------------------------------------------------------------------