ietf-mta-filters
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Re: Comments about draft-martin-managesieve-00.txt

2000-02-08 15:39:21
-- On Tuesday, February 8, 2000 8:55 AM -0500 the entity known as Barry Leiba <leiba(_at_)watson(_dot_)ibm(_dot_)com> wrote:

<begin quote>



So the user can use any IMAP client to create the active script, by just
saving (APPENDing) the message to the _Mail_Filters_ folder, and then
turning on the \Flagged flag.

This is not the ideal answer, but it *is* simple, and it *is* an interim
measure.  Think about it.

<end quote>

To which Matthew Wall offers this response on Tue, 08 Feb 2000 17:35:58 -0500:

Yah, I'd actually prefer using plain old SMTP for the submission protocol as the interim solution (assuming SMTP AUTH for authenticity), with a magic mail processor at the other end. Users can mess up these "magic" IMAP folders all too easily, other mail clients can stomp on them, etc. And I'm loathe to tie Sieve support into IMAP per se, since the 'delivery' concept is a bit different in the Cyrus IMAP concept than it is in other mailers. (Better, yes, but that's beside the point right now 8-).

Think about it: you can use a modified Listserv to parse the Sieve scripts, and good old email to return error messages. Users, at least anybody who's signed up for a mailing list, can understand this. If you ship the parts around using MIME application/sieve, presumably your well-behaved Sieve-cooperating MUAs can do some automated processing of results for presentation to the user and possible correction. In a worst case, a hand-prepared script can be emailed as text/plain. That's no worse than any other scheme that sends filters around in this manner.

As an interim hack, awaiting ACAP, LDAP, etc., I can't think of anything that's simpler and less problematic for other services, and requires little in the way of modification of existing software for Sieve other than the engine executing at the appropriate time.


- Matt