Re: Filter

[Brian Stafford <brian stafford office-logic com>]

Procmail is a command line tool driven by a configuration file
containing regular expressions and using obscure syntax to
determine the filtering actions.  It is intended as a delivery
program for use by a mail transport agent, such as sendmail
(another program configured using an obscure syntax resembling
modem noise), and as such it is responsible for writing incoming
mail to the user's mailbox.

It cannot be used to filter mailboxes fetched from a POP server.

Mailbox filtering can be carried out pre-delivery or during delivery
from within a mail transport agent, or post delivery in a mail user
agent (such as Balsa).  Both have their uses and procmail definitely
does not operate post delivery.

Balsa should, IMO, offer mail box filtering and the filter operations
and the file format for storage of the filters should, I believe,
conform to the work being discussed on the ietf-mta-filters mailing
list. See http://www.imc.org/ietf-mta-filters/  This effort is to
design a syntax for specification of mail filters such that it can
easily be generated and parsed by both GUI and non-GUI applications
and the resulting filter specifications are transportable across
various mail systems and operating systems.  It is currently a work
in progress but nearing completion.  I believe the CMU Cyrus has
an implementation available (not sure about the licence).

It is crucial that filters are easy for punters to use otherwise they
will be ignored and the effort of implementing them is wasted.
Procmail is for evil geniuses who want to dominate the world by using
regular expressions. Punters want something simple and uncomplicated.


--
Brian Stafford