[Popfile-announce] POPFile v0.18.1 Release

[John Graham-C. <jg...@jg...>]

INTRODUCTION

v0.18.0 was a major update and inevitably some bugs crept in that we =
didn't
detect prior to shipping.  Happily they have been fixed, and even more=20
happily the regression test suite now has tests for many of them so that =

they will never reoccur.  v0.18.1 fixes these bugs (see THE GORY DETAILS =

below for the gory details) and also has two significant changes: the=20
caching code associated with the History page has been totally rewritten
by me so that the History barely slows down as the number of messages in
the History increases; the Windows installer can now configure Outlook
and Outlook Express Internet email accounts for you (and undo the =
changes
if you uninstall POPFile).

POPFile v0.18.1 is also the first version where the UI meets the Bobby =
AA
rating for accessibility.  This means that not only does POPFile not=20
discriminate against particular operating system, or natural languages,
or ways you want to sort your mail, but it is also accessible by =
everyone
regardless of the specific challenges they face.  (FOr more details on
this drop by http://bobby.watchfire.com/bobby/html/en/about.jsp)

Aside: If you are young, fit, and computer literate you might wonder why =
I=20
bothered to make Bobby-level accessibility a requirement. Early on in=20
POPFile's development a user told me that POPFile was a life changer. =
For=20
him, sorting mail had been an arduous, frustrating task.


ESSENTIAL READING IF YOU ARE UPGRADING FROM v0.17.x

1. BACK UP YOUR OLD INSTALLATION: POPFile makes this really easy, just =
copy
   the entire POPFile directory somewhere.  You can then safely install
   POPFile v0.18.1 on top of your current installation; I just think a =
back up
   is a sensible precaution.

2. YOUR HISTORY WILL CLEAR: I have changed the format of the History =
files
   used in this version which means that the old History files will not =
be
   read by POPFile and will in fact be deleted to save disk space.  If =
you
   need to do any reclassifications prior to installing v0.18.1 do them!
   POPFile does NOT clear buckets, statistics or anything else on =
install of
   this version, just the History files.  To refresh the History view =
click
   the History tab at any time; POPFile will check disk for new =
messages.

3. IF YOU HAD BROKEN MAGNETS: I have added automatic update of broken =
magnets.
   If you had a magnet like [foo] which POPFile mistakenly changed to =
\[foo\]
   it should get magically fixed and start working.

4. ACCURACY MIGHT DROP FOR A SHORT WHILE: because of some changes made =
in the
   mail parser it is possible that you might see accuracy drop initially =
and
   you may find yourself reclassifying a few messages that used to work. =
 This
   is unfortunate but necessary to make POPFile even more accurate than =
before
   and v0.18.1 incorporates changes that make POPFile's classification
   accuracy better; however old corpuses might need a little retraining.


DOWNLOADING

You can obtain the latest release of POPFile by visiting

    http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=3D63137


UPGRADING

Just install POPFile on top of the currently installed version.  But did =
you
read the ESSENTIAL READING above first if you are upgrading from a pre =
v0.18.0
version?


FAQ

zonk3r has spent a great deal of time on a POPFile FAQ.  Please check it =
out
as it covers many questions that you might have:

    =
http://sourceforge.net/docman/display_doc.php?docid=3D14421&group_id=3D63=
137


THE GORY DETAILS

 1. Fixed a serious bug that could cause POPFile to stop responding to =
POP3
    and HTTP requests in the middle of downloading mail when the mail =
message
    containing a MIME encoding that used certain characters that were =
special
    in a Perl regular expression. (Reported by ecarlseen, gilesjuk, =
panther757,
    szkaroly and fixed by sschinke)
   =20
 2. The skinning system continues to evole with kraelen, stanley_krute =
and
    kinematics working madly to make everything skinnable, make =
everything
    comply with HTML 4.01, CSS1 and Bobby AA guidelines.
   =20
 3. The code that handled the History cache that was meant to speed the =
loading
  of the History pages and that I originally wrote was pretty lame and=20
  some people (including me!) were ending up with 1000 message in the =
history
  and the load time sucked.  So I fixed it.  The new cache will load =
ONCE and
  ONLY ONCE per file and caches everything in memory.  When new messages =
are
  received they get loaded once per new message as well.  When a History =

  page needs to be generated everything can be loaded from the cache =
without
  doing any disk access which means that you should see little =
difference=20
  between 10 messages and 1000.

 4. To magnets would not work correctly if the To line in the email =
header
   contained multiple lines.  (Reported by drunin and fixed by =
kinematics)

 5. There was a nasty problem where sometimes the statistics would not =
update
 correctly which typically happened when you downloaded a large number =
of
 emails in one batch.  This was caused by the fact that we weren't =
flushing
 the pipe between the child POP3 process and the parent regularly, this =
has
 been modified so that this can never happen and statistics update in =
real=20
 time even as mail is downloading. (Reported by burale,  ct85711)

 6. The Windows installer has been much improved with the assistance of=20
    xuesheng to make it reconfigure Outlook and Outlook Express for you =
and=20
    include a number of new screens.
   =20
 7. Quarantine had a couple of bugs where it would show the incorrect =
date
    (reported by thejcab) and the wrong to address (reported by =
dyoungmciwcom)
    under some circumtances.
   =20
 8. When the From or Subject was encoded using base64 or quoted =
printable=20
    weird things would show up in the History. (Reported by goulduck and =
fixed
    by williamxp)
=20
 9. spf and I went back and forth discussing line endings in the files =
saved to
  disk so that all the MSG and CLS files could be loaded into an editor =
on
  any platform without extraneous characters.
 =20
10. People who live on the Bleeding Edge were getting update warnings =
from=20
 POPFile even though they were on the latest version.  This has been =
fixed
 on the update server.
=20
11. Magnets containing the & character could not be deleted. (Reported =
by the
  infamous stanley_krute and fixed by helphand)
=20
12. There was a bug associateds with invisible ink detection that could =
cause
 POPFile's HTML engine to think invisible ink was in use when a font tag
 spanned a table. (Reported by mfichtner)
=20
13. If POPFile didn't exit gracefully then statistics were not being =
saved to
  disk and would not be up to date. (Reported by daemon72)
 =20
14. The Shutdown page had no CSS because POPFile was shutdown, we now =
have a=20
 simple SSI solution just for the shutdown page. (Fix and report by=20
 helphand)
=20
15. There was a problem with Subject Line Modification where if it was =
turned
 off every subject line got an extra space in it. (Reported by       and
 fixed by helphand)
=20
16. There was a bug where you couldn't look up words that had # in them. =

 (Reported by adammc and fixed by helphand)
=20
17. Viewing base64 encoded messages in the History resulted in little =
useful
 output. (Reported by biljir and fixed by pkarlin)
=20
18. sschinke whipped up a new -archive option that causes message =
removed from
 the History to get saved away on disk.
=20
19. sschinke made POPFile behave better when a POP3 server suddenly =
stops=20
 responding in the middle of a conversation.
=20

DONATIONS

Thank you to everyone who has clicked the Donate! button and donated =
their
hard earned cash to me in support of POPFile.  Thank you also to the =
people
who have contributed patches, feature requests and bug reports and big =
thanks
to the two POPFile team members Stan and Sam for their continued =
efforts.

Keep the ideas and bug reports coming.

John.