[sork] vacations - without spamming mailinglist

[Lars Hecking]

> vacation:
> I should be able to define a a given period, and ofcourse a text via the
> web interface.
 
 A good idea, but it doesn't work with the standard vacation(1) command,
 which doesn't allow defining a vacation period. The only way around
 this I can see now would be to let sork store dates and vacation message
 in a database, and set up an at job to schedule the actual creation (and
 removal) of the .vacation and forward files. The problem here is
 authentication: the user's password would have to be stored somewhere
 (in cleartext, nevertheless) until the operations are completed.
 Not so nice.

> I should be able to select, if I want the vacation message applied
> before or after, my filters (ie. if I filter mailinglists into
> subfolders, I would perhaps like the vacation message to not be applied
> to those ;)

 Very difficult, as there is no standard for mail filter programs.

> I should be able to select, if a vacation message should only be sent
> out once pr. sender, or just for every email - no matter if it's the
> same sender address (I do this with procmail today).

 There is no way to do this with the standard vacation(1) command.

> Sidenote: it would be great, if one could f.ex. organize the
> filters - and choose - from where, the vacation would kick in - ie. not
> my mailinglists, but I want my other lists to get it.

 Mailing lists should never get vacation notices. This is why:
<quote man vacation:>
     No message is sent if the To: or the Cc: line does not  list
     the  user  to whom the original message was sent or one of a
     number of  aliases  for  them,  if  the  initial  From  line
     includes  the  string -REQUEST@, or if a Precedence: bulk or
     Precedence: junk line is included in the header.
</quote>

> Is this also what you are hoping will come out of the vacation (and
> perhaps other) module(s)?

 Only if sork came with its own mail filtering system.

 (Some of) your suggestions make good sense, and I would expect a comfortable
 vacation tool to offer such features, but I don't think they can be
 implemented easily with the limitations of the standard vacation command.

 Just my €0.02.