Re: [Evolution] Sieve support

[Philip Van Hoof <spamfrommailing freax org>]

On Mon, 2003-07-28 at 16:18, Dan Winship wrote:

> No. There is a bug filed about it (16959), which is marked as depending
> on a generic server-side-filtering bug (21381), which discusses possible

The only remark I have on the comments in the bugreport that claims
sieve is not (yet) used a lot in the real world, is that this is because
clients are not (yet) supporting it. One client I know off that supports
such sieve scripts, is Mulberry. 

For their GUI they use filters (very much like the "Edit rule"-window in
Evolution). Those filter will eventually get written to a script that
can be set as _the active script_. A Sieve-script (C/Perl-style syntax)
can contain multiple rules (if-statements).

This generally means that it's pretty hard to create a rule-based GUI
for it unless you add comments to the script that indicate that it's
generated code.

Example:

# <evolution:sieverule name="Apple Newslists">
if address :contains "From" "noreply adc apple com" {
        fileinto "INBOX.Newsletters";
        stop;
}
# </evolution:rule>


> UI changes to support that. We do plan to implement Exchange server-side
> rules at some point (which would resolve the issues in 21381), but it's
> not clear exactly when yet.

I think that I am going to wait for the Exchange server-side rules
support. 

> The filter code is designed to be extensible (the same basic
> infrastructure is used for the filter editor and the vfolder editor),
> but it's not actually possible to plug things into it right now;
> everything has to be compiled in together. But it would be possible to
> add in a Sieve rule editor.

> > If at this moment nobody is doing Sieve support, are there others
> > interested in developing this? Should we form a group or should I
> > perhaps better wait for the Ximian folks to get this sieve support
> > started?
>
> As I said, we're not likely to work on sieve support any time soon. We
> are likely to start working on Exchange rule support, and it would
> simplify things for you if you waited for that, but I don't know for
> sure that that's going to be sooner rather than later, so you might not
> want to wait.

It depends. If others are interested in getting this sieve support then
I will not wait. Else I am going to wait for Ximian to finish their
Exchange Rule support. Perhaps it might be a good idea to create the GUI
and code in such a way that adding yet another serverside-script
language is perfectly possible and will not bloat the core nor the GUI
(but, then again, that is up to you guys, of course).

> > If I am going to do this, what branch of evolution should I target?

> head


Whew, I finally got that 1.5 compiled from CVS. Is it actually possible
to install the gtkhtml-component like evo-db3 and evo-openldap in a
different location? Otherwise it conflicts with my Ximian Desktop 2.0
installation.

> I'd suggest that (assuming you start before we do), you implement it as
> a new FilterEditor subclass, with its own menu item in Tools, etc, and
> not worry about any of the larger integration issues from bug 21381. And
> then whatever we do end up deciding on there, it shouldn't be too hard
> to merge in your code as well.

Mulberry uses tab-pages to make the distinction between Server-scripts
and User-scripts (scripts on the client). 

IMHO, here, a Wizard-style GUI might be a better solution.

Page 1)
Choose for which account you want to edit filters
 - My local accounts
 - My Exchange account on xyz
 - My Imap account on xyz
 - My Exchange account on uit

Page 2) 
Choose the filter you want to edit
 - Filter on mailinglist xyz
 - Filter on mailinglist xyz
Add a new filter
 
Page 3) 
 - Rule editor

It would make it pretty straight-forward and easy for users. I mean ..
three menu items and then, again, a submenu which allows you to choose
on which server you want to edit serverside scripts or if the users
wants to edit the local filters ... heh, imho this is getting to complex
for both the end-user and the developer.

ps. <whining like="HIG people">Btw, perhaps I should file this as a bug
on bugzilla in stead of whining about it here but .. to me it's not
clear what the difference between a Rule and a Filter is in Evolution.
Are they the same? If so, the Rule editor should say : "Filter name:" in
stead of "Rule name:". Also if one filter can contain multiple rules it
should be like this.</whining>



-- 
Philip Van Hoof, Software Developer @ Cronos
home: me at freax dot org
work: Philip dot VanHoof at cronos dot be
http://www.freax.be, http://www.freax.eu.org