Re: Configuration

[Lyndon Drake <lyndon kcbbs gen nz>]

On Wed, Mar 03, 1999 at 12:46:06PM -0600, Brady Hegberg wrote:
> I just want to mention one advantage of filtering in the mail program.
> Eudora has a function (that I haven't used) where you can just tell it off
> the cuff "send email messages like this one to mailbox x" and it will
> create a filter automatically.  I'm a professional programmer but I have no
> interest in spending hours learning how to use procmail just so I can
> filter email while I'm out of the office (for a couple of days) then turn
> it off again.
> 
> A nice feature might be to allow an add-in/plug-in that would allow
> configuration of procmail (or other similar programs) from within Balsa.
> This could be as simple as running an external configuration program by
> hitting a button or as sophisticated as some hacker wants to make it.
> 

Doesn't this sort of configuration belong in the control panel?  If it
was done well (ie a really good capplet for fetchmail and a really good
capplet for procmail), people could use the Gnome GUI configuration for
their mail in an MUA independent fashion.  After all, your mail is not
delivered to a particular MUA like Balsa, but to a user.  I will
probably continue to use Mutt for a long time, because I can run it over
a telnet session (possible with Balsa too, but very slow over a dialup
connection).

Also, some people actually find text MUA's easy to use, but very few
people find procmail easy to setup (in my experience, anyway).

There are some things that would be difficult to do if procmail was
configured in a capplet.  For example, I can't think of a way for a user
to select a message in Balsa, and (in the same way you can in Eudora)
create a filter based on that message.  Secondly, I don't think that
procmail can be used to filter into remote mailboxes (eg IMAP
mailboxes).  However, it might be cleaner to implement that capability
in procmail than to build everything into Balsa.

I think that GUI configuration is very important, but I also think that
it more of a Gnome thing than a Balsa thing.

Lyndon

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