Re: [SLUG] Procmail FAQs

From: Ian C. Blenke (icblenke@nks.net)
Date: Wed Jul 18 2001 - 11:41:37 EDT


On Wed, Jul 18, 2001 at 11:05:08AM -0400, Derek Glidden wrote:
>
> If I read mail with Mutt, and "tag" some messages to be deleted without
> actually deleting them on exit, and then open up Netscape, it can "tell"
> that those messages have been flagged "deleted" and will indicate them
> as such.

I'm purely using mutt at the moment, and it tends to show the deleted
messages only as read when I restart it. :(

Can you look at your raw mbox and look for the Status: and X-Status: lines
of the deleted messages? Once you know the flag to use with the
"formail -A" rule to mark incoming messages the same way.

> Likewise, Pine seems to understand the same thing, and if I
> mark messages deleted in any of those three apps, any of the other three
> will see that those messages have been tagged to be deleted.

Yeah, there is probably a well known and agreed upon Status:/X-Status:
value that marks them as deleted... I'd need to setup a test to figure
it out myself.

> I don't know the method by which they are communicating this information,
> which was part of the original question I suppose, although indirectly, but
> since they can do this, I was under the impression there was some fairly
> standard way of tagging a message to say "This message should be deleted
> in the indefinite future by some mail app that understands this flag."

There is a "standard" way to mark messages with extra headers in
"standard" mbox format. The hell if I know where the "standard" is
documented, however ;)

> I suppose I could actually enter mutt, tag some messages to be deleted
> but not delete them when I exit mutt then go look at my mail spool and
> see what it's done.

Yeah. This is what I'd try.

> So, presuming I can figure out what to do to the message to tell it to
> be deleted, I should be able to use a rule something like this, eh:
>
> :0
> * ^.*slug@nks.net
> {
> :0 cw
> | formail -A "Status: Deleted"
>
> :0
> slug
> }

Exactly. That should do it.

> to make the message in my inbox be "Deleted" and then also slap a copy
> of it into the "slug" folder.

Yes.

> So the further question is, WHERE THE HECK DID YOU FIGURE THIS OUT? I
> can't find ANY decent reference on how to make procmail do anything
> anywhere!!

Lots of google searching on "procmail", "tagged", "deleted", and
eventually "Status:" when I figured that part out. That's why I'm
unsure about the Status: values, however... noone seems to have a
reference page describing exactly what mbox fields are what (this,
after 15-20 minutes of searching).

My life is google anymore ;)

 - Ian C. Blenke <icblenke@nks.net> <ian@blenke.com>



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