Re: Backend

[Jim Bowen <jimb zereau net>]

On 16-Jun-99 Sarel Botha wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 16, 1999 at 06:48:44AM -0600, Mathieu Fenniak wrote:
>> The balsa backend question is a really good one. :) I think the most ideal
>> way
>> to run things is to concentrate on having balsa use a local mailbox file,
>> such
>> as reading from /var/spool/mail/whatever, and that will be enough of a basis
>> for any frontend work, including filtering. Then I believe we should use
> 
> But if you provide filtering you have to read the mails from /var/spool/mail,
> filter and then write to different folders in $HOME/mail or whatever...
> UNLESS
> you use a system like the one described on the gnome-mailer list: Mail is
> kept
> in one folder and filtered into different folders as you view them -- they
> still stay in one folder.

The problem with pretty much all the vfolder implementations I have seen so far
is that they are not at all good on large mail stores.

I have had occasions in the past where my mail store in tens or hundreds of
megabytes in size, with tens of thousands of messages in it. Sticking them all
in one physical folder, and then parsing through either a directory with 20,000
files in it, or a 30Mb textfile can take quite some time. Indexes help, but by
the time you index ever field you need for the filters, you are talking about
adding 10-20% of the size - which leaves you with a 3Mb index and STILL a huge
parsing problem.

 
>> Don't you agree that the reuse of existing programs is the best way?
> 
> yup, but they have to link with each other seamlessly, don't know how
> seamlessly you can make Balsa work with fetchmail though. Balsa tells
> fetchmail to fetch mail, if fetchmail times out, Balsa has to wait for it and
> just display whatever error message fetchmail displayed. Can't display
> progress bar etc.
> 
> As for procmail, I don't think windows users know what regex's are :)
> 
> I think it would be great to reuse the code, but not the interface, that's
> why
> I like the libprocmail and libfetchmail idea.

You don't need a libprocmail, just a GUI configurator, lebfetchmail (or some
such) would be good, because feedback on progress can be rather essential for
dialup users.




Yet another humble opinion to be laughed at,
brought to you by 
Jim
---
jimb@zereau.net