noffle-users

[Noffle-users] idea: "pipe" filter / procmail

[Dan J. <ji...@ji...>]

In the man page
       action = full|over|thread|discard|default.  Specifies the action to  be
       taken  if the filter matches. If not specified or specified as default,
       the action is as specified by the group's subscription mode.
Better add some examples to show how a filter with action of "default"
is useful.

But never mind that. Introducing pipes.
As we know, procmail is useful for incoming mail, but what about
incoming news? Assuming noffle is the right place to do it. Then a new
type of filter, "pipe <shell command>" would be useful.
Probably mostly we would just "pipe procmail".

That way when the occasional Pancake Club announcement comes along, we
can extract any recipes contained therein with some script we wrote.

Noffle must be the right place to do the pipe, just as exim, and not
one's mail reader, calls procmail.

I mean how can we not be able to process news messages just as handily
as mail messages?

Oh, and if our pipe filter fires, we should still also be able to say
the message has not yet been "delivered", so we can have our pancakes
and eat them too. I.e., still read the announcement.

So maybe we should instead just have all messages optionally sent to
procmail (with .procmailrc location customizable.) and use the return
code to see if it has been "delivered" or not...

Anyways, otherwise we must store those recipes by hand, no?

Re: [Noffle-users] idea: "pipe" filter / procmail

[Jim H. <jim...@ac...>]

On 20-Oct-2004 Dan Jacobson wrote:
> But never mind that. Introducing pipes.
> As we know, procmail is useful for incoming mail, but what about
> incoming news? Assuming noffle is the right place to do it. Then a new
> type of filter, "pipe <shell command>" would be useful.
> Probably mostly we would just "pipe procmail".

I rather like this idea. The pipe overhead could be carefully tailored to
articles where you think you might need it.

Things are slightly complicated internally, because filters fire at the
overview collection stage, not at article body collection. But we could add the
filter command to the request for the article text that causes the subsequent
article collection.

So article comes in and if a pipe request is active it is sent to the pipe.

> Noffle must be the right place to do the pipe, just as exim, and not
> one's mail reader, calls procmail.
> [...]
> Oh, and if our pipe filter fires, we should still also be able to say
> the message has not yet been "delivered", so we can have our pancakes
> and eat them too. I.e., still read the announcement.

To my mind there's a slight difference between piping a mail message to
procmail for end user delivery and putting it into the newsbase for reading by
potentially anybody. I'm inclined to say that articles should always be put into
the newbase.

I suppose one filter use might be a spam/virus/malware detector, in which case
cancelling the article from the newsbase would be the right thing to do. Or
maybe (so as not to break threading) removing the article body and replacing it
with a 'Article removed for your own good' type message.

-- 
Jim Hague - jim...@ac...          Never trust a computer you can't lift.