Alex Rousskov wrote:
When we began this work, I thought that the per account customization
for HTTP was very important, but not worth screaming about.  In the
intervening years HTTP has become more important to daily life, and I
think the issue is as important as for SMTP.  I would really like to
see some ideas on how to get this specified and set into standards
as we move forward with SMTP.
I think this plays well with P rules or similar standard to express  
filtering rules.
Most ISPs cannot offer rich customizations today because they would 
have  to invest in a custom interface to support/maintain those 
customizations.  If we give the world a common filtering language, the 
ISP can buy an  off-the-shelf rules management tool and have users 
specify their  preferences on the web (auto-converted to [P] rules that 
ISP's servers  understand).
Agree. But that's what the email world has 'sieve' for. So we want to 
be careful to not re-invent the wheel (that's why Tony was suggesting 
to first compare 'sieve' to what we intend to do with 'P').
My email provider actually let's me specify 'sieve' rules, using 
either an "advanced" interface where I can put in my sieve rules in 
ascii, or via kind of a "wizard" interface.
Hilarie re-emphasized an important point, we want to keep that in mind.
-Markus