Re: w3 under development or not?

[Ted Zlatanov]

On Fri, 14 Nov 2003, pete_lee@swbell.net wrote:

>>>>> Ted Zlatanov writes:
> 
>     Ted> There are many, many such tools.  For Unix mail servers the
>     Ted> options are plentiful and a simple web search will turn
>     Ted> them up.  I don't use Windows mail servers but I'm sure
>     Ted> similar tools exist for them.
> 
> After a brief look at Procmail and SpamAssassin, I don't see how
> they solve the problem.  Installing either locally still results in
> the mail being pulled down my small pipe from swbell.  

You asked for server-side options.  Procmail and SA are best
installed on the server if you want to cut down the download times.

> I suppose I could lobby for swbell to install SpamAssassin.  But
> then I'm dependent on someone else setting up rules that could
> potentially cost me a valid email now and again.  

With any reasonable ISP that provides you a shell account, you can
set up your personal rules in ~/.spamassassin/user_prefs

I use pair.com but there are many others.

> What would be cool is if (in Gnus) you could download mail headers
> only first... run through spam processor... then only download valid
> mail, and reprocess again including body.  The spam would still show
> up in spam group, possibly annotated to show that only the headers
> have been retrieved on some (hopefully most).  If you moved it to a
> ham group it would then fetch the mail, otherwise it would be
> expired and on expiry be deleted from the server the next time you
> asked for mail.

You can actually do all that and more with spam.el, a package for Gnus
which I maintain.  Check out the CVS version of Gnus and look in the
manual (Oort Gnus comes with spam.el also, but many bugs have been
fixed meanwhile).  spam.el is sort of a framework, and inside it are
various flexible spam checks you can enable depending on your needs.
I would still do server-side filtering in addition to client-side
filtering, but that's your choice and moving away from swbell is
certainly going to be a hassle for you.

To only get mail headers, use IMAP.  There's more to it, I suggest you
read the Gnus manual in the spam.el section, but what you describe is
definitely possible - and you should continue the discussion on the
gnu.emacs.gnus newsgroup if you have any questions.

Ted