Re: [Evolution] Applying filters automatically.

[Pete Biggs <pete biggs org uk>]

On Sat, 2008-02-02 at 09:17 -0500, Paul Smith wrote:
> On Fri, 2008-02-01 at 15:36 -0700, Steve Karmesin wrote:
>
> > Now that I think about it, I'm not sure that this 'new' flag is
> > crucial.  Whatever method Evo is using to say "give me the new mail"
> > is already doing a good job of getting the mail.  Even if some
> > notifier has tripped some flag about the mail, Evo still gets it.
>
> This is an excellent point.  I don't have this problem so I'm not
> familiar with Evo's behavior here.  Are you saying that Evo marks the
> messages as unread (by leaving the message summary lines bold, having
> them show up as unread in the folder summary window, etc.) but does not
> filter them?

The 'unread' status of a message is a flag held on the IMAP server.  I
can set a message as unread in Thunderbird, and that mail will be bold
the next time I open a copy of Evolution.  Conversely, if I read some
mail in Thunderbird or webmail, those messages will not be bold when I
next use Evolution (or anything else) - even though they are new to
Evolution.

Evolution knows which messages to download because it holds a list of
the message numbers that it has already got - it queries the imap server
for the list of messages and their status, then downloads the headers &
flags for those it doesn't already have.

> If so, I agree that doesn't make sense.  If Evo knows enough to realize
> that the messages are new and mark them as such in the message summary
> window etc., then why can't it also filter those messages?

No doubt it could filter messages that are new to that instance of Evo -
but it becomes very messy.  

It may well be that the filtering in Thunderbird is not as extensive as
in Evo, and running a filter multiple times on a message is no problem.
But if you have an Evo filter that is scoring a message, then running
the filters multiple times will not have the correct result.  

P.