[Spambayes] IMAP filtering

[David Lang]

I'm not currently on the list so please CC me ina reply.

I'm currently looking for a spam filtering tool that I can use in my work
environment (exchange server, but linux client so not outlook) and I find
that your project almost fits my needs, but not quite so I'm pointing out
the difference to see if it is something that were considered and rejected
or not tried yet.

According to the README the current IMAP filter keeps track of what
messages it has already classified by deleteing the message and re-posting
the same message, but with a header added to it. This will not work for me
for a couple reasons.

1. do to some unknown configuration bug in the exchange server attachments
from other exchange users cannot be read via IMAP or POP3 (attachments
sent via SMTP can be read) so deleteing and re-posting these messages
would have the effect of stripping the attachments from them

2. I am extremely nervous about deleting, modifying, and re-posting
messages that exchange uses for special purposes (calander scheduling
messages are a prime example), while they show up as mail messages, they
really are slightly different

the fix that I am thinking of to resolve this would be to change how the
IMAP filter tracks the messges it has processed. Instead of modifying the
message itself if the filter tracked the highest message number that it
has processed it can process only messages newer then that (the IMAP
message ID is supposed to grow larger with time).

As an additional optimization, instead of running every x min as it
currently does the filter could register itself with the server for
specific mailboxes and have the server notify it when new mail has arrived
and process it immediatly (this also can produce less server load and
network traffic then frequent polling for new messages, a win for both
load and responsivness)

are these changes that have been considered or are they something that
could be integrated?

David Lang

-- 
"Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place.
Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are,
by definition, not smart enough to debug it." - Brian W. Kernighan