Re: implementing multiple smtp servers...

[Brian Stafford <brian stafford uklinux net>]

On Tue, 14 August 13:06 christophe barbé wrote:
> Le mar, 14 aoû 2001 11:23:00, M . Thielker a écrit :

> > I would much prefer to have identities selected automatically based on
> > the
> > source adrress of the mail being replied to. That would just about fix it
> > for any and all reply tasks.
> > Balsa could auto-learn these associations and provide a dialog to
> > change/delete the ones not wanted.

In Mozilla, identities are associated with the mailbox subtree.  The subtree
you are in when replying to mails determines the default choice of sending
identity.  This works because incoming mail from different POP/IMAP servers
goes in different subtrees.  Perhaps balsa should work like this.

I worry about guessing the identity from the message sender because this seems
slightly too clever for my taste - I'd only get confused, I'm only a simple soul
and I resent computers which try to be cleverer than me.

> It's a little like reimplementing a MTA. 

Pardon?  An MTA participates in routing mail from source to destination.
Only the domain part of the destination mailbox is used for that.  The sender
identity plays no part in the process.

> What about a dialog box to enter a set of rules to select the ID.
> We can have rules like :
> 	Reply from mailbox : balsa -> ID=balsa-ml
> 	To: mybrother@familly.net -> ID=personnal

yes - so long are the rules are *explicitly* configured and are never guessed
automatically.  I think that would be a good approach.

> The advantage with rule based on mailbox is that you can set the ID during
> the compose window creation and then set the correct signature.
> But we can reavaluate the ID each time the To: field is modified.

Don't forget a message can have multiple mailboxes in the To: header.
Which one should select the identity? First? Most recent?

> > Also, I would like to have a prefs option where I can select to have _no_
> > default identity, so I would be forced to set it manually each time. That
> > way, I would get far less "moderator approval" mails....
> > That would of course then be overridden by the sender-address match on
> > reply....
> > Now that would be nice!
> > 
> > Melanie
> 
> This would be IMO the last step to a full featured multi-identity support. 

It should always be possible to turn off mechanisms that try to second guess
the user.

Brian Stafford