[ingo] how filters are applied

[Darragh Bailey]

Currently in the version of imp that is being used on the server that hosts my 
mail (software versions from test.php page below), when you apply the filter on 
your INBOX if mail has arrived between the last refresh of your INBOX and when 
the request is sent to the server for the filters to be applied, unread mails 
that have arrived into your INBOX will also be filtered.

Horde: 2.1 
IMP: 3.1 
Turba: 1.1 
Kronolith: 1.0 
Mnemo: 1.0 
Nag: 1.0 


I know ingo will be the default filter system for imp in the near future (when 
version 4 is released I believe) so I've looked to see if on the demo site 
version it allows you to specify that the rule should only be applied to unread 
messages. As far as I can see the best you can do is to use the Self-Defined 
header set to "Status:" and have it check to see if it contains the string "R".

The only problem I see with this is that if you only want rules to apply to 
your read emails you can't have rules that use the "Any of the following" 
setting since you will always want the the check for the message to be read 
before filtering. Would it not be better to allow for this to be a separate 
check i.e. be able create rules that can do the following

condition1 AND (condition2 OR condition3)

Although I would have to say that beside handling to make sure that the mail is 
already read before filtering it not sure what else this could be applied to.

Fairly certain that I could probably do this using the "Self-Defined Header:" 
and use regular expressions for the other headers that need to be included but 
I think that for something that would be useful as being able to apply various 
rules only to messages that are in certain states, i.e. why apply sorting 
filters to unread messages. 

Would others find it benificial to be able to control rule application based on 
the status of the message?

-- 
Darragh

"Nothing's foolproof to a sufficently talented fool"