Warning... just a theory follows.
I like the customizability of procmail alot bette then the way
netscape does its filtering, so I would like to use procmail
exclusively. The problem I've encountered though is that when your
reading the messages and deleting or moving them around. If you don't
compact the folders, procmail will remark the messages as unread or
something next time procmail moves messages to that file. Basically,
until you compact the folders the messages still reside in that mail
file.
Has anyone else noticed this or found a work around for it. I'm a
gui freak, pine and elm are ok, but I prefer gui's
Netscape doesn't do any file locking when it manipulates a folder, so the
combination of procmail and Netscape together can be problematic.
The cleanest solution is to avoid one or the other, or have Netscape use an
IMAP/POP server to read the files so that some level of locking is
introduced.
Not sure, but if Netscape's mail folders resemble Eudora's, then
there might be two files involved. Seems likely due to the notion
of "compacting the folders" which, for Eudora, means rewriting the
file containing messages to match the index file (as well as
updating the file offsets in the index).
If Eudora ever finds that the index doesn't match the file of messages,
it tries to rebuild the index "as best it can" which means that
deleted messages since the last compaction (only deleted by an
indication in the index) will reappear, and read messages will become
unread.
My theory is that if you have procmail just append to the mail text
file, then Netscape is deciding to rebuild the index. (This has
nothing to do with locking, of course, but just means that
procmail is delivering to a folder format it "almost but not quite"
understands, since it doesn't know about the index file.)
(I'm not using Netscape myself, so I can only use Eudora as the
example here. This *would* happen this way with Eudora.)
Cheers,
Stan