Re: Filter

[Jules Bean <jules jellybean co uk>]

On Wed, Dec 13, 2000 at 03:35:06PM +0000, Brian Stafford wrote:
> It cannot be used to filter mailboxes fetched from a POP server.

Many people happily and succesfully use a fetchmail/procmail
combination to satisfy all their multiple email account filtering
needs.

Not to say that I don't broadly agree with most of the rest of
Brian's comments. Although experience has showed that flexible GUIs
for flexible filters are rare and necessarily complex, compared with
using command-line tools.  As Brian points out, during delivery mail
filtering is different from post-delivery.

Personally, I like 'during-delivery' mail filtering.  In particular, I 
don't need sophisticated mail-filtering in my MUA, because I don't
want my MUA to do that job.  If my MUA becomes my filterer, then I am 
forced to keep using that MUA.  I prefer to be able to use different
MUAs in different locations (e.g. at sites without my favourite MUA
installed). For that reason, I use a form of 'during-delivery' mail
filtering, and exim filter file. Then I use IMAP to access mail from
any host.

I am very aware that the above isn't the dominant style of mail
access. It is a useful one for me, and must be useful for others in a
similar situation. I'd like an IMAP client which nicely caches data
locally for disconnected operation (I'm vaguely hoping balsa might
become that some day).

I think the dominant paradigm is store-mail-locally,
access-new-mail-with-POP.  IMO, there is currently an elegant solution
to that problem with fetchmail and procmail. If those are too hard to
configure, the right approach might be to implement nice front-ends to
fetchmail and procmail, and let the MUA deal with the things it's good
at.

Jules