Re: [Evolution] Evolution - Dealing with groups

[Milan Crha <mcrha redhat com>]

        Hi,

On Thu, 2022-05-05 at 21:38 -0700, Ubuntu Shoto Dojo wrote:
> This is non-trivial (and perhaps a killer to use Evolution),

perhaps, but it really depends.

> as I currently have 17 folders into which I need to sort incoming
> emails, based on 50+ contact lists, ranging from 6 entries to 250+
> entries in the list. Trying to manually maintain individual email
> addresses in filters as things change is a complete no-go.

I do not know if I got your query right. Maybe the closes Evolution can
currently do is:
https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/evolution/-/issues/1639

It's also hard to say whether it's useful for you, because you did not
specify your Evolution version (for example from the Help->About). The
above landed for the 3.44 series.

> Is there any documentation for the mentioned Scheme language?

Scheme language? Ah, I see, it's in the user documentation. The
"Expression" is similar to the "Free Form Expression". It's as you
figured out, it's only a different way how to specify a filter
condition. Anything you can do with the Free Form Expression you can do
with the provided GUI elements, expect of advanced checking, for "and",
"or" and "not", and maybe some other really advanced things. There is
no documentation for the "Expression", there is only some text about
the "Free Form Expression".

> Is there any documentation for the storage format for
> 1)  Contacts and Contact Lists

https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc2426

> 2)  Filters

I guess you checked the online help from:
https://help.gnome.org/users/evolution/stable/
That was not updated for a long time due to infrastructure obstacles.
You get better results, more accurate help, when you either install the
help locally (check your distro how/if they provide it), or when you
open the following (temporary) site with a more recent content:
https://infrastructure.pages.gitlab.gnome.org/help.gnome.org/evolution/
The newer help has improved the documentation for the Free Form
Expression, it includes also examples:
https://infrastructure.pages.gitlab.gnome.org/help.gnome.org/evolution/mail-searching.html#free-form-expression

> because I could write (bash/awk/perl/whatever) scripts to update
> the filters based on the lists, if that is all that is available.

In that case I suggest to you to add a filter rule "Pipe To Program",
which will call your script and it'll modify the message by adding a
specific header, on which a next rule will decide where to store the
message. That means you can parse the incoming message in your script.
The Pipe To Program reads back what you write on the stdout and uses
that as a message for the following rules. The changes will be lost if
you do not copy/move the message to a different folder. Note there had
been some issues with the Pipe To Program, which you may or may not
have fixed in your distro.

        Bye,
        Milan