Re: [Phpgroupware-developers] New features in Mail app

[Ryan Waldron]

On Tue, 20 Nov 2001, Tony (Angles) Puglisi wrote:

> Will someone post to this list their concept of how this "filtering" should 
> work,
> so I at least have a target functionality to shoot for before I start 
> writting any
> code. Note that this will provide me with some insight from people who 
> actually
> know what they want in this capacity. 

A-HA!  At last, something I can actually talk about with some tiny
modicum of clue.

Here are the things that I find incredibly useful in email filtering:

o Ability to classify headers in groups ("Recipients", which would
include To:, CC:, and even BCC: (since filtering should also be
possible on outbound email, to automate CC:ing to folders)

o Ability to filter on arbitrary strings in the header section - this
basically lets me search for a specific header ("X-Dorkmeister: ")
that I might get from some program that sends me email, and is
generally useful for all kinds of things.

o REGEXPS!  I want my regexps.  I NEED my regexps.  Gotta be able to
filter based on at least simple regexps, to catch stuff like
'bill@(.*\.)?microcrap.com' and filter Bill's clever attempts to reach
me from ANY domain under the microcrap.com domain.

Some nice-to-haves that probably wouldn't be too much more work;

o Extend the option to filter to the text body.
o Filter messages based on whether or not they have attachments
o Filter based on message size
o Filter based on missing recipient lists (a rudimentary spam alert)

Some just-dreaming-here stuff:

o Filter rulesets - In English:

  If 'to:' contains "address@hidden", then
      If "Subject: " contains "Important!" then
          Flag 'High Priority'
      else
          Flag 'Medium Priority'
  else
      If "Subject: " contains "Important!" then
          Flag "Spam"
  endif

It would be nice, in other words, to be able to create chains of rules
that are conditional on ones above them, and can "fall-through".  No
idea how you'd do that. :)

o Make the filtering stuff hookable (is that a word?) such that some
enterprising person who wants to port one of the existing Open Source
spam filter tools or rulesets to a module can plug it in, and voila!
phpGroupWare, now with spam control (as an option).

There!  There's my (initial) thoughts on it.

-- 
Ryan Waldron    |||   http://www.erebor.com    |||    address@hidden

"The web goes ever, ever on, down from the site where it began..."