Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.
Re: Can I script Outlook Express or Eudora?
Author: Eric Kidd Posted: 9/7/1999; 5:07:28 AM Topic: Can I script Outlook Express or Eudora? Msg #: 10656 (In response to 10652) Prev/Next: 10655 / 10657
(I'm speaking for myself, not for UserLand.)(yeah, but the UNIX folks have been cheating all these years -- they've always stored mail in easy-to-parse text files... luddites! ;-)
Right now, I'm running a custom mail system. The major components are:
- fetchmail, to retreive mail from various servers
- procmail, to sort my mail into folders
- mutt, to read my mail
- a custom Emacs mutt-mode, to compose and edit mail
- sendmail, to handle outbound mail
- bzip2, to handle long-term archiving
The best part of this system is mutt, which is a text-only mail reader tuned for huge amounts of mail. It works fairly well up to about 10,000 messages per mail folder. After that point, opening and closing folders gets slow (but browsing folders always remains fast). Mutt also supports message threading, which makes it easier to read mailing lists and review long conversations. My Emacs mutt-mode is fine-tuned for the way I write mail, too, which also saves me time.
I intend to keep using this system for the next few years. I can currently handle several hundred e-mail messages per day without problems. However, I'd eventually like to replace it with a mail database system that supports virtual folders and a powerful query language.
The Gnome project is currently building a modular, graphical mail system to solve this problem. It will be based on CORBA and support multiple mail-storage back ends. The Gnome developers say they get far too much e-mail, and need a way to search and sort it.
Cheers,
Eric
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