Re: [Evolution] Junk handling wishlist

[Patrick O'Callaghan <poc usb ve>]

On Fri, 2009-03-06 at 11:58 -0500, Sal Valente wrote:
> Recently, my ISP has been a little too aggressive at spam filtering
> (there have been false positives), so I decided to start doing it
> myself.
>
> After using Evolution 2.21.3.1 to do junk filtering (with bogofilter)

You realize 2.21 is pretty old, right? The current version is 2.24.5,
i.e. three releases and five updates later.

>  for a couple of weeks, here are the things that don't seem exactly
> right.  Can anyone help with any of these things?

Have you read
http://www.go-evolution.org/FAQ#Why_does_Evolution_not_automatically_filter_for_spam.3F ? 

> 1. In Mail Preferences, I have checked "Check incoming messages for
> junk".  However, new messages that show up in my Inbox (using IMAP)
> (on my non-Default account) are not automatically checked for junk.  I
> have to select the messages, go to the Message menu, and select "Check
> for Junk", and then most of the junk is moved to the Junk folder.

Evo only checks mail that the IMAP server has marked \Unseen (i.e. new
messages). As soon as any IMAP client looks at a message, the server
removes the mark, so if you have multiple clients (including some mail
notifiers) your filters may not work as expected, including Junk
filters.

> (I don't know if messages in my default account get automatically
> checked.  My default account is a small account that doesn't get any
> spam, or much else.)
>
> 2. It should be easy to make sure that I train my spam filter with
> every single email that I receive.

If it's being junk-filtered, the filter is being trained.

> There are a few things that could make this easier:
>
> 2a. For the messages outside of my Junk folder, can the user interface
> show the status - Not Junk or Unknown?

If it's not in the Junk folder, it's not Junk. Remember that Junk isn't
a physical folder, it's virtual (same as Trash), and just presents all
the messages marked as Junk, wherever they happen to be physically.

> (2b through 2e only make sense if 2a can be done.)
>
> 2b. When I manually move an Unknown message to a folder other than my
> Junk folder, can Evolution train the message as Not Junk while moving
> it?

If you mark it as Not Junk, it goes back to where it came from and the
filter is trained. I've never tried dragging a message out of the Junk
folder so I'm unsure of the effect (this might affect the validity of
the answer to 2a above).

> 2c. When I do "Check for Junk" (or the check happens automatically)
> and Evolution moves a message to the Junk folder, can it train the
> message as Junk while moving it?

That's what it does. Do you have an indication that that isn't
happening?

> 2d. When I do "Check for Junk" (or the check happens automatically)
> and Evolution decides that a message is almost certainly not junk, can
> it train the message as Not Junk?

See above.

> 2e. Can there be a single button or keyboard shortcut to quickly do
> "train as non-junk and delete"?

You could always ask for an Enhancement. The place for that is
http://bugzilla.gnome.org.

> 3. In the long run, I think it might be nice if bogofilter was
> integrated into Evolution (rather than run as a subprocesses) so that
> it could keep the database file open and do a little in-memory caching
> and basically optimize the process of checking a large batch of
> messages...?

Bogofilter is entirely independant of Evolution and is used for spam
filtering on lots of different mail clients (as is SpamAssassin). Wiring
it into Evo would meet with a lot of resistance. Besides, do you have
measurements to show this would be beneficial? I've not noticed junk
filtering slowing my machine down at all.

poc