Re: Configuration

[Walt Armour <walt blarg net>]

Let's see how deep we can make the indents.  :)

On Wed, 3 Mar 1999, Jules Bean wrote:

> On Wed, 3 Mar 1999, Walt Armour wrote:
> 
> > On Wed, 3 Mar 1999, Jules Bean wrote:
> > 
> > > On Tue, 2 Mar 1999 glennm@mediaone.net wrote:
> > 
> > [snip]
> > 
> > > 
> > > 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?
> > > 
> > 
> > I decided to start working on balsa for several reasons.  One of them is
> > long term and involves the "ease-of-use" facilities of Linux (or lack
> > thereof currently).  I want to see Linux go mainstream desktop and I
> > believe that to accomplish that we _have_ to win over Joe User to our
> > desktop.
> 
> I admit to being a different wavelength here.  I want Linux to be the
> best.  I'm not too bothered about whether Joe User uses it - it's his
> loss, not mine.  However, I do understand your points.
> 

Oh, I definitely want Linux to be the best (perhaps it is already?) but I
also want it to be the most widely used as a server and as a desktop.
This is probably mostly selfish because I want apps (that I don't have to
write myself) and I feel that we need a large critical mass user base to
accomplish that.  I see Joe User as the source of that critical mass.
Couple that with the joy of stealing user base from Microsoft and it's a
party all around.  :)


> > 
> > I like balsa and believe that it can help in the long-term effort by being
> > a kind of "all-in-one" mail tool.  I'm not talking about a complete
> > kitchen sink setup but something along the lines of the popular Win32
> > tools that people are used to today.  And please, don't start the windows
> > flames.
> > 
> > Given the choice which would you prefer to setup: a mailclient which does
> > what you need OR mailclient+fetchmail+procmail to get what you need.  I'm
> > pretty sure I know what Joe User will say.
> 
> Fair point.  I say the opposite :-)  One of the traditional strengths of
> Linux (indeed, anything on the un*x model) is the way that separate tools
> can easily interoperate to combine to do things the original authors
> hadn't thought of.  procmail is a very powerful filter tool - indeed, I
> suspect it's more or less turing complete, and can do anything!  So why
> reinvent the wheel (but please read on before replying...)
> 

I agree here too.  Reinventing the wheel is mostly a waste of time (but a
very frequent one in the software biz).  But IMO reinventing the wheel can
sometimes be outweighed by functionality and usablity.  It's a shame that
there isn't a libprocmail that we could use transparently.

> > 
> > Personally, I don't want to resort to three programs to properly receive
> > and filter my mail.  I want to be able to crank up one app, tell it where
> > to get my mail, and tell it what to do with my mail.
> > 
> > Besides, even if we do include some kind of filtering in balsa there is no
> > requirement that it be used.  You can still setup fetchmail+procmail and
> > go that route if you want.
> 
> Of course.  And that's the killer argument.  If you want to work on a
> superb filtering system, then I'm certainly not going to stand in your
> way!  I may not use it, though..
>

Ah, and here we have the final beauty of Linux and OSS. Use it if you
want. Don't if you want.  We're all happy.  :)

walt