Hi there,
I'd like to colllect feedback on an idea that's been on my mind for some
time now:
looks like there's just two MDA's in use: Procmail, and Maildrop. Both
have their fine (and not so fine) points, which I'll summarize briefly
(YMMV):
Procmail:
+ lots of prepackaged antispam filters
- config files resemble uuencoded assembler
- quite resource-hungry (keeps the whole message in memory while
processing it)
- reportedly isn't completely safe (can lose your mail)
Maildrop:
- not as popular as Procmail (fewer filter packages)
+ square head is not a prerequisite to understand the configuration
- quite optimized (larger messages stored in temp files during
processing)
+ should be safer than Procmail
In fact, I found only a *single* spam filter for Maildrop.
Now, what bugs me about both of these programs: to the best of my
knowledge, neither offers you a real programming language. This can be a
plus, or a minus (YMMV), but imagine being able to write filters using a
full-featured scripting language! This idea really attracts me, and I
started prototyping such an MDA in PHP. Using a scripting language has
of course a few inherent drawbacks, but I don't think the speed decrease
would be so horrible to mean anything on a single user box (as opposed
to a corporate POP 3 server, for example). However, I know that I would
benefit from the enhanced capabilities.
I'm slowly getting the picture of the classes that would make this
happen, and would like to ask you: is there something that you sorely
lack in your favorite MDA? What is it?
Any feedback is much appreciated.
--
FreeBSD 4.4-STABLE
1:33AM up 4 days, 7:57, 11 users, load averages: 0.02, 0.03, 0.00
