Re: [Evolution] Feature Request: filter priorities?

[Not Zed <notzed ximian com>]

Filters *are* prioritised ; by their order.

They are executed in order, until something tells it to stop, which you
can do explicitly, or you can have messages processed further, for
ultimate flexibility (e.g. you could get mail from your 'work' go into
one folder, but messages from your boss could also be coloured red, and
moved to a specific folder, for example).

I dont see how adding a specific priority would do anything other than
move the sorting to a different stage.

e.g. now you have

 filter 1
 filter 2
 filter 3

what happens with priorities?

well you might have
  filter 1   priority 1
  filter 3   priority 3
  filter 2   priority 2

in the end they just get processed exactly as exists now, in some
(hopefully deterministic) order.  You still have to only process 1 at a
time, then goto the next one.  I'm not ssure how adding another field to
enter can change this ...

You can already do what you're saying, infact i dont know how you can
write filters without knowing this ... you just have to do it yourself. 
e.g. adding 'stop' actions here and there, when you've finished with
mail really (the 'move' should probably 'stop', but well it doesn't).

e.g. i have a junk filter for people i dont want to hear from first;
instant death.   then filters from people i do want to hear from
specifically, then a bunch of mailing lists, and finally a catch-all for
anything else from ximian (i.e. work), just to keep it it out of my
inbox, which ends up with most of the spam and random or directly mailed
items.


On Thu, 2002-05-30 at 17:58, Steve Chaney wrote:
> This is why I think it should be done.
>
> If I put up email filters to wipe out spam terms like teen sex, viagra,
> etc., and a friend sends me a joke about viagra, his/her email will be
> deleted, stone cold gone.
>
> I made 2 filters tonight just to make sure I know what I am talking
> about. One DELETES email which has the word 'pookiehead' in it. One
> saves any email sent by me to me. I put the latter up at the top of the
> filter list, and the other at the bottom. Then I mailed myself an email
> with the subject line POOKIEHEAD. Evolution deleted it. With priorities,
> it would save the email, "flag" it as saved, and the delete filter would
> be superceded. If I want 2 things done with it, I will make it do 2
> things in the same filter. That is already built in. So I'd say the
> simple change is, never filter the same message twice. The higher
> priority filter gets the task, and if 2 filters manage to handle the
> same email with equal priority, the first one in the list gets it.
>
> AFAIK MS Outlook doesn't even have this feature. Forte' Agent, the
> usenet post/read client of the gods (until Pan matures, LOL), actually,
> does this.
>
> Since I think I read Evo's 2.0 (2.1?) code is frozen, is it possible to
> tweak this into a future version?
>
> Since I CANNOT CODE in C (and if I could, I would submit this myself as
> a patch, as I could easily write this code in Perl), I offer that I'd
> write the user manual addendum for filter priorities, with all the
> necessary caveats. :)
>
> Would this be worthy to put in a non feature frozen version..?
>
>
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