Re: Some feature suggestions

[Jules Bean <jmlb2 hermes cam ac uk>]

Mike Bond wrote:
> 
> Was kind of curious as to the progress of balsa so decided to read the
> balsa-list archives.
> 
> I would like to say there is only one thing that has kept me from using
> balsa to date, that is the lack of filtering capabilities. Jules, you
> refer to fetchmail and procmail, even claimed they were "plugins" for
> balsa, which is slightly incorrect. They are standalone programs that
> have existed for many years, nearly as long as SMTP itself, and
> certainly far longer than balsa. For a mail client to meet the needs of
> the shell-impaired, which includes the vast majority of computer users
> today, a mail client interface really should have integrated into it's
> interface the ability to filter mail. This is not to say that the mail
> client has to do the filtering itself, it may just pass the filter rules
> to something like procmail. Mail filtering can even be useful for those
> with IMAP accounts, it usefulness is not  limited to the admittedly
> "archaic" POP services out there.

Yes.  When I described procmail as a plugin for balsa, that was a joke
:-)#

It was an attempt to remind people of the unix philosophy - lots of
small tools, each doing their own job, interoperating.  Rather than the
microsoft philosophy - two or three super-applications, trying to do
everything.

I take your point about the 'shell-impaired'.  I'm not so impaired, and
neither are you, I would guess from your email.  I'm not, I'm afraid,
particularly interested in writing applications designed for the
shell-impaired - not until somebody can demonstrate a framework that has
anything *like* the power of the pipe, and doesn't involve shells. Then
I might give them up too.

Of course, what I think doesn't matter, because someone will code
mail-filtering for balsa (probably the gnome-mailer people), and that
will be Good. (tm).

> 
> You say you are not interested in "marketshare" or "userbase",
> unfortunately other mail clients currently in development, such as
> gtkmail, gmail, mahogany, and mutt (non-graphical, not for the
> shell-impaired though very nice for a shell based mailreader), are
> farther from being "full-featured" and useful to a broad base of users
> at this point than balsa, thus balsa gets a certain amount of attention.
> As for empath, this is a new one that until now I'd not heard of and
> will be looking at as soon as I'm done here.
> 
> I would offer my time in doing some of the work on balsa that I would
> like to see done but I've allocated my free time for the forseeable
> future in another project so all I can offer is merely suggestions and
> bugfixes if balsa at least starts to get that one feature that I find to
> be a requirement for myself.

Excellent.  I look forward to your suggestions.

Jules

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|  Jelibean aka  | jules@jellybean.co.uk         |  6 Evelyn Rd        |
|  Jules aka     |                               |  Richmond, Surrey   |
|  Julian Bean   | jmlb2@hermes.cam.ac.uk        |  TW9 2TF *UK*       |
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