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Hello all,

I'm writing a IMAP client that is a virus/spam scanner.   My plan is to
scan where i have write access,  and to mark messages with a flag 
MyScanner or something, to signify that it is scanned, and does not need
to be scanned again.   If it is a positive spam or virus hit, i will
store changes to the message.

My question is if anyone sees problems doing this, and how many servers
that are in use today do not support custom permanent flags?    My
testing so far with courier looks like it will work..

If the server does not support custom permanent flags, what i could do,
is store changes to the email header.

Thanks,
----
Karl Hiramoto

On Wed, 2007-06-13 at 14:39 +0200, Karl Hiramoto wrote:
> Hello all,
> 
> I'm writing a IMAP client that is a virus/spam scanner.   My plan is to
> scan where i have write access,  and to mark messages with a flag 
> MyScanner or something, to signify that it is scanned, and does not need
> to be scanned again.   If it is a positive spam or virus hit, i will
> store changes to the message.
> 
> My question is if anyone sees problems doing this, and how many servers
> that are in use today do not support custom permanent flags?    My
> testing so far with courier looks like it will work..

All the widely used open source IMAP servers support keywords: Cyrus,
Courier, UW-IMAP and Dovecot. I don't know about the less commonly used
or commercial servers.

> If the server does not support custom permanent flags, what i could do,
> is store changes to the email header.

I don't think it's a very good idea. It requires downloading the message
and them uploading it back. Rather just report "Your IMAP server doesn't
support keywords, switch to a better one".

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On Wed Jun 13 13:39:08 2007, Karl Hiramoto wrote:
> I'm writing a IMAP client that is a virus/spam scanner.   My plan 
> is to
> scan where i have write access,  and to mark messages with a flag 
> MyScanner or something, to signify that it is scanned, and does not 
> need
> to be scanned again.   If it is a positive spam or virus hit, i will
> store changes to the message.
> 
> 
Be aware that you'll be selecting the mailbox to do this, which will 
change the \Recent flag on messages, which can be confusing. Also 
note there's an expired draft with solid suggestions for keywords for 
marking junk messages. (You want $AutoJunk and $AutoNonJunk, as I 
recall, and you train off $Junk and $NonJunk).


> My question is if anyone sees problems doing this, and how many 
> servers
> that are in use today do not support custom permanent flags?

I seem to remember AOL doesn't, but that's the only instance. It's 
actually a per-mailbox thing, so it's possible that some mailbox 
drivers on UW-IMAP don't support permanent flags. Otherwise, most 
servers do on all mailboxes, but some have a limited number, and the 
ability to create new ones will vanish.

>     My
> testing so far with courier looks like it will work..
> 
> 
You need to look at the specification carefully, rather than just 
testing on one implementation. I'd suggest testing against many 
implementations, and in particular UW-IMAP and Cyrus.


> If the server does not support custom permanent flags, what i could 
> do,
> is store changes to the email header.
> 
> 
No, you can't - IMAP messages are immutable, so all you'd be able to 
do, as Timo says, would be remove the original message and create a 
new one. This is not a great idea.

Dave.
-- 
Dave Cridland - mailto:dave@cridland.net - xmpp:dwd@jabber.org
  - acap://acap.dave.cridland.net/byowner/user/dwd/bookmarks/
  - http://dave.cridland.net/
Infotrope Polymer - ACAP, IMAP, ESMTP, and Lemonade

On 6/13/07, Karl Hiramoto <karl@hiramoto.org> wrote:
>
> Hello all,
>
> I'm writing a IMAP client that is a virus/spam scanner.   My plan is to
> scan where i have write access,  and to mark messages with a flag
> MyScanner or something, to signify that it is scanned, and does not need
> to be scanned again.   If it is a positive spam or virus hit, i will
> store changes to the message.

FYI, that's what Apple Mail.app already does.

-- 
DINH Vi?t Ho?

Timo Sirainen writes:
> All the widely used open source IMAP servers support keywords: Cyrus, 
> Courier, UW-IMAP and Dovecot. I don't know about the less commonly 
> used or commercial servers.

I bet that if there were one that doesn't support permanent user-defined 
flags, we'd have heard about it before now.

Arnt

Dave Cridland wrote:
>
> I seem to remember AOL doesn't, but that's the only instance. It's 
> actually a per-mailbox thing, so it's possible that some mailbox 
> drivers on UW-IMAP don't support permanent flags. Otherwise, most 
> servers do on all mailboxes, but some have a limited number, and the 
> ability to create new ones will vanish.
>

You are correct.  The AOL server does not support them.

snow.
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> FYI, that's what Apple Mail.app already does.

Mail.app gets a few things wrong.  But now that their developers are 
participating with the IMAP community we are getting those bugs fixed.

--lyndon

   We've heard that a million monkeys at a million keyboards could produce
   the Complete Works of Shakespeare; now, thanks to the Internet, we know
   this is not true.
   			-- Robert Wilensky, University of California

On 6/14/07, Lyndon Nerenberg <lyndon@orthanc.ca> wrote:
> > FYI, that's what Apple Mail.app already does.
>
> Mail.app gets a few things wrong.  But now that their developers are
> participating with the IMAP community we are getting those bugs fixed.

Do you have any example(s) of this ?
I do not see anything wrong in using flags for marking messages as Junk.

-- 
DINH Vi?t Ho?

> I do not see anything wrong in using flags for marking messages as Junk.

There isn't, as long as all the clients agree on the same set of flags.

--lyndon

   We've heard that a million monkeys at a million keyboards could produce
   the Complete Works of Shakespeare; now, thanks to the Internet, we know
   this is not true.
   			-- Robert Wilensky, University of California

Lyndon Nerenberg writes:
>> I do not see anything wrong in using flags for marking messages as Junk.
>
> There isn't, as long as all the clients agree on the same set of flags.

Hm... what happened to the imap-keywords draft?

Arnt