Subject: Filter/procmail

From: David Brownlee <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 27 Mar 1994 16:42:49 +0100 (BST)

Would procmail be a better 'filter' program to recommend?

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From: "John Ladwig" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 27 Mar 94 15:16:20 CST

>>>>> On Sun, 27 Mar 1994 16:42:49 +0100 (BST), David Brownlee <[email-masked]> said:

    DB> Would procmail be a better 'filter' program to recommend?

Given that one of the maintainers of elm (home of filter) recommends
that folks use procmail or deliver, yes.

There are significant file locking and consistency issues that filter
doesn't do very well with, that procmail does better than almost
anything.

Procmail's syntax might be daunting for casual users, however.

    -jml

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From: David L Miller <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 27 Mar 1994 14:07:47 -0800 (PST)

What would be nice is a program that works like filter with some of the 
rough edges knocked off and that uses c-client for folder access....

Any volunteers?

|\ |  |\/|  David L. Miller    [email-masked]  (206) 685-6240
|/ |_ |  |  Software Engineer, Pine Development Team   (206) 685-4045 (FAX)
University of Washington, Networks & Distributed Computing, JE-20
4545 15th Ave NE, Seattle WA 98105, USA

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From: "Robert A. Hayden" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 27 Mar 1994 16:37:27 -0600 (CST)

> Procmail's syntax might be daunting for casual users, however.

That is what I consider to be a very serious drawback with procmail, and 
why I eventually abandoned it for filter.  It is just too much of a 
headache and pain in the rear to get the rules writeen and implemented, 
espicially if you are a very novice user.

Filter, with all of it's problems, does function as at least a low-level 
mail sorter.  If you want to do something more fancy than that, well, you 
probably also have the skill to move on to another program.

As always, IMHO.

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From: Elmar Kurgpold <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 29 Mar 1994 10:05:20 -0800 (PST)

Perhaps I shouldn't jump into this without first having tried filter and
deliver, and whatever else may have been suggested.  But I lean towards
procmail because it is so powerful, and as at least one person mentioned,
safe to use in many different mail formats and systems.  However, it can
be somewhat cryptic, but whether this is bad or good I think is subject to
debate.  What are sys-admins for, anyways?  You'll probably need one to
install the software to begin with.  Besides, if the user wants to filter
mail into different folders, then chances are that she or he is not a true
novice.  And if she or he is a true novice (this happened to me!) then
that person really should have help from a sys-admin. 

Even though I use procmail and recommend it, I don't think that the Pine
team should really be involved.  Frankly, I wouldn't wish the extra hassle
on them because I'd like to see them dedicate that time to Pine itself. 
But since the range of Pine users is so wide, with so many different
levels of expertise and opinions (wow!), I think it would be best to just
make a few suggestions for filtering software and tell where to find the
source code.  I know that elm includes "filter", but it just doesn't seem
right for Pine to follow suit.  We've all heard the discussions about
adding too many features to Pine... besides, the source code is big enough
as it is. :-)

What I might do is include a page in the docs (stick it way in the back)
about filtering software, perhaps with a ***brief*** explanation of the
three (or so) top packages.  I might even describe how to filter incoming
messages from a particular address to a particular folder, and then tell
where to look for more information.  For example: 

    Here is how to filter mail from the Pine Info group into another
    folder using procmail.  Create a .procmailrc file in your home 
    directory with the following lines:

	# Please check if all the paths in PATH are reachable, remove the
	# ones that are not.
	PATH=$HOME/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/ucb:/bin:/usr/local/bin
	MAILDIR=$HOME/mail      # You'd better make sure it exists
	:0:
	* ^From.*owner-pine-info
	pine-info		# will be saved to $HOME/mail/pine-info

    For more information, see the man page on procmailrc(5), ask your 
    system administrator, or send mail to [email-masked].

There now, that wasn't too painful, was it?  Yes, I know, it's a little
more involved than all that, but you get the idea.  The point is I think
we have enough experienced users/administrators who would be willing to
provide this type of information that the Pine Team could then incorporate
into the documentation. 

	Later!

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From: David L Miller <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 30 Mar 1994 16:11:11 -0800 (PST)

Elmar,

All well and good.  Unfortunately, from the requests I have seen for a 
"filter" capability (including many to pine-bugs), it is apparent that 
the people who are requesting this capability are the ones who would 
never be able to figure out procmail.  Even something like "filter" would 
require a fair amount of hand-holding if it were routinely installed as 
part of the Pine distribution.

It would be good to have something like you suggest in the yet-to-be-written
Pine FAQ though.  Would you be willing to flush out your example section for
possible inclusion? 

Thanks for the suggestion!

--DLM

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From: Elmar Kurgpold <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 30 Mar 1994 16:14:45 -0800 (PST)

That is pretty much my view of things.  Putting it in a FAQ is a Good 
Idea!  Yes, I'd be glad to contribute, just let me know!

	Elmar

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From: "Richard J. Foote" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 30 Mar 1994 20:32:48 -0800 (PST)

To be honest, I don't get much of a chance to read much pine-info mail 
due to being incredible busy at work, as well as the high volume of the 
list. Here at UofM, we're buying in big to the IMAP/Pine system. I'm 
currently working with a team very interested in setting up socket-based 
IMAP filters. Is anybody else working on the same? If so, I would be very 
interested in starting to a separate "IMAP Server protocols" list 
for this sort of discussion. Of particular interest to me, and many of 
the people I work with, are object oriented programs and various perl 
scripts (perl5 being the ideal, of course). Thanks.

Richard Foote ([email-masked])
School of Public Health
ITD/User Services
Universtiy of Michigan

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From: David L Miller <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 30 Mar 1994 18:46:04 -0800 (PST)

Richard,

You might want to take the IMAP discussion to the [email-masked] 
discussion list.  That is where you will find the real IMAP expertise.  
To subscribe, send a message to [email-masked].  It is 
manually maintained so the format of the request is not important.

Thanks for the request!

--DLM