[Foss-cafe] mail filtering setup protocol

[Pupeno]

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In short I didn't mean that filtering should happen in the imap server but 
that the imap protocol should have a way for clients to set filter. That 
filtering (I mean, filtering and sorting) should happen when the message 
arrives, after SMTP, it gets delivered to the right folder, the imap will 
serve that folder.
It can be procmail, or maildrop, it doesn't matter, the rules might be written 
in any way, what I'm worry about is how the user can write that rules from 
inside the mail client... that's what I thought an extension to imap could do 
it.
Thanks.

On Wednesday May 19 2004 21:45, Fred Smith wrote:
> On Wed, 2004-05-19 at 20:15, Daniel Cassidy wrote:
> > Uhh, I think you totally missed the point. Which is, it is in theory
> > possible to modify IMAP to allow the client to specify filter rules
> > which will be implemented by the server, and that perhaps IMAP should be
> > modified in such a way, and if not, perhaps a companion protocol/service
> > should exist to do such a job.
>
> As someone who runs a fairly heavily trafficed IMAP/SMTP/POP3 server,
> IMAP is *not* the place to put filtering and sorting rules. Your IMAP
> server, in order to filter effectively, would need to either constantly
> be watching for file changes in the mailbox of every user on the system,
> or would need to scan your entire mailbox every time you connected to
> look for messages that may need filtering. Instead, filtering should be
> done within, or shortly after the inital SMTP conversation. Doing it
> within the SMTP conversation is possible but difficult, as the SMTP
> conversation needs to be over quickly;  SMTP servers are busy creatures
> and will give up if they have to wait too long. Doing it shortly
> afterwards doesn't allow you to reject mail as part of your filtering
> process;  a goal more and more desirable as one looks at the current
> state of junk mail filtering.
>
> None of the 3 possible places are 'good', but I feel that inside the
> SMTP engine is the least bad place. Unfortunately, there are also no
> solutions that do both filtering and sorting before accepting a message
> in the SMTP conversation;  the closest is messagewall, which does
> filtering but leaves the sorting up to something like procmail. So,
> moving on, the next least bad place for sorting and filtering is shortly
> after the SMTP conversation, using a tool like procmail.
>
> Now that we've established that procmail (or something like it) is the
> tool for the job (and *not* the IMAP server..  ugh), we can get back to
> the question which is, 'how do I make this nice enough that Joe user can
> get it to work'.  Webmin has a module to edit procmail rules, but it's
> not built into the mail client so you can't build a rule based on a
> message. It's better than nothing, however.  Maybe someone could build a
> system that integrates with KMail or evolution , writes a procmail rule
> and syncs it up with a procmail file over sftp/ftp?  Alternately, we can
> set up yet another daemon to do nothing but handle procmail changes,
> which seems a bit weird to me.  The third (and probably best) solution
> is to get filtering built into a project like messagewall or
> exim/postfix/qmail so that spam filtering and sorting can take place
> using the same interface.
>
> > Pupeno, my personal opinion is that you should ignore the whinings of
> > purists and go away and modify the IMAP protocol to your heart's
> > content, create a proof-of-concept for your idea, and then if it works
> > hopefully it will become popular and, as a result, a standard.
>
> Filtering in IMAP is a bad idea.  put it in another protocol if you
> want, or just write a handy procmailrc editing tool that integrates with
> the mail client.

- -- 
Pupeno: pupeno at pupeno.com - http://www.pupeno.com
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