Hannes, I forwarded this message to the M-users as I can not answer all questions, and maybe others will be interested.
On Thu, 09 Jan 2003 06:40:13 -0600 R Hannes Beinert <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I currently use Eudora as my MUA... I'm not exactly sure how that > happened, but it was probably because of circumstance. Then, once > I had used it for awhile, I just became comfortable with it. While > there are many features of Eudora which I use and enjoy, there are > also quite a number of features which I strongly dislike. It is > bloated, bug-ridden, has a limited API, uses unfortunate and > undocumented file formats, etc. In addition, my current version is > not very well integrated with PGP, and simply does not give me enough > tools to fight the massive amount of spam I receive. I need a new > client!!! Let's hope M can be this new client ! > Please forgive the long list of questions I'm sending you, however > I've been maintaining a list of desirable features in an MUA for quite > a long time, so it has been building up. Any insight you are willing > to share with me would be greatly appreciated, and any citation to > a document would also be very welcome... > My questions: > 1. Provided you are familiar with Eudora, how would you contrast the > feature set between M and Eudora? (I realize one could probably write > a thesis on this, I'm just curious about the "big picture") I never used Eudora, so.... > 2. I prefer using PGP/MIME, however, does M also grok S/MIME (and > X.509)? Crypto support in M is currently in its infant state: so far we can only decode and/or verify the signatures. Messages can be in ASCII Armor format or PGP/MIME. Unless I missed something, S/MIME is not implemented. > 3. I realize that one can filter using the GUI interface, as well as > Python. I'm affraid nobody uses the Python stuff at this time. So I'm really not sure of its state. > Can one filter on incoming, and outgoing messages, as well as > messages which are currently in a folder (ie, neither incoming or > outgoing)? Filtering incoming message is ok. Filtering outgoing messages can be done by applying filters on the SentMail folder, or any other folder where you ask M to put your outgoing messages (there can be several, depending on identity used, current folder, etc.) Filtering messages in the current folder can be done by selecting the message(s) and choosing 'Apply filter rules...' in the Message menu. This will apply all the filters as if the message was just coming to this folder. Note: filters are associated with folders. Each folder has its own set of filters, which are applied on mail that arrives in the folder. If a filter moves the message to another folder, the filters in this new folder are triggered. > 4. Will your use of GPG be via an SDK/API, or will you actually > execute the "gpg" program? As GPGME is not available on Windows (and much less for Mac), we directly use the GPG program. > 5. Does M have Eudora-like "stationary" (are those "templates" in M?)? Do you mean 'pre-prepared messages'? Yes, those are the templates. > 6. Do identities, switch "stationary", signatures, and the sets of > server accounts (which are folders in M?) to retrieve mail from? I don't know, because I do not use identities. On the other hand, I configured my folder hierarchy so that there are two separate parts: one for personal, and the other for business. Depending on the current folder when I start composing a mail, the From header and the signature change. I never felt identities were needed when all you want to change is what outgoing mail looks like. And, if two users would use M, then they can have separate configuration. Could someone elaborate on its use of identities? > 7. Supposing a user has 2 different network connections (or dial-up > accounts), and since SMTP servers are generally no longer "open > relays", will M automatically switch to whatever SMTP server is > appropriate for the current subnet/domain? I did not use the dial-up feature of M since a long time, so I'm not sure about the answer. I'm affraid the answer is no, and it was one reason for me to use a personal SMTP server to handle this problem. > 8. Does M have an API/SDK? I'm not sure about what you would like this API to enable you to do, but there is a Python binding. But I'm really not familiar with it. > 9. Can M break apart mailing list digests if requested? No, but I guess this could be an interesting feature. > Or, is this a function which could be added by a plug-in? I do not know. > 10. Often, when one replies to an email, the text flow and ">" quoting > becomes hopelessly mangled. Does M offer a framework where > a button/function could be added from the GUI to activate a "message > formatting" function or plug-in? No. Composing messages is actually one (the?) worst part of Mahogany. M offers the possibility to use an external editor instead of the internal one. I always use Vim (which offers the functionality you ask), and I guess many other M users also use an external editor. > 11. Can M handle flowed text? No. There is already a feature request for that. But there is so much to do and so little time... > 12. On a Linux machine, would it be possible to filter an incoming > email through a filtering program -- such as SpamAssassin or Procmail? Of course, as such filtering occurs before the last SMTP server. Mahogany is not involved at all in this. > And, provided some enterprising soul were to port these applications, > would it presumably be possible in a Windows environment? I do filter incoming mail on my Windows machine. I use Hamster-Fr for that, which calls SpamProbe via a Perl script to classify incoming mails. Again, Mahogany is not involved at all, and I could use any MUA. > 13. Can an incoming email filter change fields in the incoming email > header? No. Filters in M don't change the content of the message itself. > So, could SpamAssassin pre-process the email add it's X-SPAM > headers, for example? Yes. This is done before M downloads the mail. And M can detect the added header and react accordingly (e.g. moving the message to a 'Spam' folder). > Would this be before or after M examines the > header information Before. Actually, M may even not be started. > -- ie, could an incoming filter change all "To:" > headers from "To: Bob" to "To: Alice"? Mahogany will not do that, but other programs could. Actually, filters inside Mahogany are mainly used to move/delete messages, or flag them as important. What you ask for in the last questions is generally handled by external programs. > Can an outgoing filter add > headers -- such as an "X-No-Archive: Yes"? Any header can be added to an outgoing mail. For example, I had one folder that was configured so that any mail composed when this folder was the current one would have an X-Face. And this would also automatically apply to sub-folders, thanks to the inheritance of settings in the folder hierarchy. > 14. In the message index for a particular folder, can M highlight > various entries in various colors (a feature a rather like in Eudora > :-). When this is done, *where* is this information maintained -- in > the message itself as a "header", or in a special "table-of-contents > file"? You can flag some messages as 'important', and then they have another color. This is currently the only possibility, I guess. I do not remember where this flag is stored. > *** > Now, these next questions are related to the manner in which Mahogany > receives an incoming message, how it decodes the message, and how it > stores them. > For some applications I need to maintain an email archive of all > incoming and outgoing messages. The archived messages ought to be the > exact text which is received and/or sent. One shortcoming of Eudora > (for me) is that it decodes the messages and attachments, and > separates them -- the email into the mbox, and the attachment file > into a common directory. This makes archival difficult because one > must manage to synchronize emails & attachments manually. In > addition, one must place great faith that there are no bugs in the > original decoding of the email since one has no original copy. > So, > 15. I have read that M can handle a variety of different email > "database" formats -- MH, MBOX, IMAP, etc. MH, MBOX and MBX are "database" formats, yes. IMAP is a way to access your messages on the server. > When an email is received by M from a server -- what happens next? > Does it store the exact received text in the database, Yes. > or does it decode the message and then save it? No. > What happens to the attachments? Nothing. > Or, is the email saved as-is, and decoded only when it is viewed (such > as the way UNIX elm processes email)? Correct, the mail is saved as-is. > 16. When an outgoing message is PGP/GPG encrypted and a copy of the > outgoing email is saved, is the pre-encrypted plaintext saved, or the > actual outgoing email saved? Encryption is not yet implemented. > 17. Does M have a "Find" function, allowing the user to search for > particular emails depending upon a variety of criteria? Yes. It allows to search in multiple folders, but not (yet) in sub-folders of a given folder: they must be manually added. > 18. Supposing that all outgoing emails are saved -- some of which are > PGP encrypted. How does the "Find" function cope with these encrypted > emails? Will it detect the encryption, and ask for decryption > keys/passphrases? This has to be defined. But as messages are usually encrypted for someone else, I guess you won't often have the private key to decode, no? Or do you always add yourself in the recipients? > 19. Supposing some of the incoming (stored) emails are encoded (UU, > base64, etc) -- how is a "Find" accomplished? Is every email in the > database decoded prior to being examined for the search criteria? I don't think so. I suppose that the message content is treated as simple text, and only charracter decoding is applied (actually, I am not even sure of that). > How much does the speed of such a search degrade as the size of the > email database grows? N/A > *** > Xavier -- thank you ever so much for putting up with my long, long > list of questions. I would be truly grateful for any insight you > could give me on these items! > Thank you, again! You're welcome. I hope others will have the missing answers. -- Xavier Nodet "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - Benjamin Franklin, 1759. ------------------------------------------------------- This SF.NET email is sponsored by: SourceForge Enterprise Edition + IBM + LinuxWorld = Something 2 See! http://www.vasoftware.com _______________________________________________ Mahogany-Users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/mahogany-users
