Re: Filtering

[Jules Bean <jmlb2 hermes cam ac uk>]

On Tue, 25 Jan 2000, Jeffrey Stedfast wrote:

> 
> I would personally rather see Balsa not depend on procmail for filtering
> while it may be the "easy way" I don't think it'd be the "best way"

Why not?

> having to "shell out" costs more in resources than it would having it's own
> filtering capabilities. 

Absolute rubbish.

> However, being able to read procmail config options
> might be a good idea as many people do use procmail and are already
> familiar with it's setup.

True.

Now, excuse me for being antagonistic, but those were not informed
arguments:-)

One program, one job, is the unix way.  And not without reason.  For
example: if everyone who wants to filter mail --- not just balsa users ---
uses procmail, then procmail will become enhanced with all the features
people want.

Having to 'shell out' costs virtually nothing. Also, procmail does the
filtering at the 'logical' time - at mail delivery time, not at MUA load
time.  If, for example, you haven't checked your email in a few days and
have 1000 messages in your inbox to filter, that'll take a while.  With
procmail, it's already filtered.

All that having been said, there are a few arguments for filtering
built-in to balsa:

Procmail's config files are genuinely unnecessarily opaque in design.  It
is possible to have power without being that opaque :-)

Having the filtering in-balsa is more flexible for the case that your
messages are physically distributed on a variety of systems -- in the
procmail case, you'd need procmailrc's in every place

Having the filtering in-balsa allows better integration with balsa's other
facilities, and would allow for some quite cool 'wizards' watching your
normal mail-moving habits and guessing filtering rules.


*however*

it's going to be hard to put a GUI onto a properly powerful filtering
engine.  Intuitive GUIs for what are essentially procedural tasks are not
properly understood.

Camel is on its way, and camel's vfolder stuff will sort-of supercede
filtering, and camel will have some filtering capability built-in.


All of which having been said: if someone wants to code filtering, do it.
Just think about the above issues first!

Jules
 
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