Re: [Evolution] Modify incoming messages

[Eric Lambart <lambart got net>]

On Wed, 2001-09-05 at 05:01, Mark Neill wrote:
> Not really an Evolution thing - if Evo were to start altering mail that it
> handled, it would no longer be an MUA, but a pseudo-MDA, since mail
> readers shouldn't change the mail that they receive.  

He's not talking about Evo altering the mail -- he's talking about Evo
letting HIM alter the mail.

This is a feature I've really missed with my migration from Eudora.  Too
many people write unhelpful/unclear message subjects, or never change
the subject field on replies even when the actual subject of the message
content has changed.  Eudora would let you edit the subject to reflect
what the message actually means to YOU.  I can't tell you how helpful
this is for finding a particular message you've filed away last year.

And there are reasonable-sounding arguments against editing the body
(maintaining authenticity of the message, etc.) but since anyone who
REALLY wanted to hack the contents of the message could do so with VI
(etc.), that opinion would seem hard to defend.  Yet there is _such_
practical purpose to being able to edit a received message--as Cyril
said, it's nice to remove those 10-line footer/sigs--and more
importantly yet, it lets you remove those five pages of #$*%@ forwarding
headers from the top of that occasional hilarious e-mail, so you can
save it in your "humor" folder!

Mail pre-processors won't help with these issues at all.

But in any case, Evo is under feature freeze for 1.0 so it's almost
pointless to discuss at the moment.  Besides, I'd expect a majority of
people will dogmatically insist that it "just isn't right" for an e-mail
client to allow you to modify incoming mail, and the programmers will
justifiably argue they have plenty else to do...

--Eric

> That being said, you
> may want to look into using a combination of Fetchmail and Procmail as a
> pre-filter to do all the message 'surgery' that you want.  Procmail is
> significantly more powerful than what most people use it for (dropping
> spam and auto-forwarding things).
>
>
> > I have just a little question. I would like to change the subject and the
> > content of some messages are receive. Say to put a subject that will fit to my
> > mind and at least remove footer/signatures 10 lines long.