Re: Configuration

[Jules Bean <jmlb2 hermes cam ac uk>]

On Tue, 2 Mar 1999 glennm@mediaone.net wrote:
> Does anyone have any ideas of a configuration model that would fit in with
> Gnome, and give something comparable to mutt's flexibility?

The flexible gui config problem, I predict, is going to come up again and
again and again for gnome apps.

I suspect the answer for something like balsa is along these lines:

You can set up the configuration (almost all aspects of configuration) for
'groups' - arbitrary sets of mailboxes, or messages.

I'll take only the mailbox case, for illustration:

So, you have one set of configuration options (the 'default') which
applies to all mailboxes.  This can then be overridden by another set of
options which you've told balsa to apply to all mailboxes on host
imap.myplace.com with names matching 'gnome-*'.  This can in turn be
overriden by options which specifically apply to the mailbox
gnome-balsa-list.

The different sets of options have an order, and the procedure for working
out the resultant options on a particular mailbox is to go through the
list of option sets in that order, applying precisely those which apply to
this mailbox.

Something like this:

[Default]
from_address=jmlb2@hermes.cam.ac.uk
sig="Debian is cool, gnome rocks..."

[Debian-lists]
mailbox_name_match=debian-.*
from_address=jules@debian.org

[KDE-lists]
mailbox_name_match=kde-.*
sig="Debian is cool"
# Don't be rude to the KDE people by advocating gnome on their lists!

[Debian-devel]
mailbox_name_match=debian-devel
sig="Get your prerelease E debs from http://..."
# Evangelise my E debs to debian-devel people.


Then, debian-devel gets the options from 'Default', 'Debian-lists' and
'Debian-devel', applied in that order.

Now, this may not be the *easiest* thing in the world to write a GUI
configurator for, but it's certainly possible.

While I'm on my soapbox:

Message Filtering!

Does anyone apart from me think that balsa is the wrong place to do
message filtering?  Personally, I think message filtering is best done by
a special-purpose app, like procmail or exim, and is possibly done
'upstream' at the IMAP server.  Even if you use POP, it seems to me that
fetchmail+procmail is a neater filtering solution that balsa - why should
we reinvent the wheel?

Now, I'm all for a GUI filter configurator, but that could be a standalone
gnome capplet, which works with procmail and/or exim?

Jules  

/----------------+-------------------------------+---------------------\
|  Jelibean aka  | jules@jellybean.co.uk         |  6 Evelyn Rd	       |
|  Jules aka     | jules@debian.org              |  Richmond, Surrey   |
|  Julian Bean   | jmlb2@hermes.cam.ac.uk        |  TW9 2TF *UK*       |
+----------------+-------------------------------+---------------------+
|  War doesn't demonstrate who's right... just who's left.             |
|  When privacy is outlawed... only the outlaws have privacy.          |
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