Re: mail group by author?

[Vegard Vesterheim <vegard.vesterheim@uninett.no>]

On Fri, 17 Apr 2009 11:53:01 -0500 Ted Zlatanov <tzz@lifelogs.com> wrote:

> On Fri, 17 Apr 2009 12:07:49 +0200 Vegard Vesterheim <vegard.vesterheim@uninett.no> wrote: 
>
> VV> I have great hopes for dbmail (dbmail.org). dbmail has an IMAP-backend
> VV> for retrieving messages. Storing headers (and body) for mail messages
> VV> into a database, opens possibilities for flexible and efficient
> VV> queries and retrieval of email messages.
>
> Considering the large amounts of people using IMAP on third-party
> servers nowadays, I think it's best to find an approach that works with
> any IMAP server.  I know this is unfair to solutions like dbmail, but
> otherwise we end up with very limited solutions.  I think David agrees
> with me from his followup.

But dbmail *is* a IMAP server, I do not necessarily suggest any
special support for dbmail in Gnus. Having a proper database as
storage with search indexes for headers, instead of relying on the
filesystem, will hopefully result in a IMAP server with more flexible
and efficienct query and retrieval functionality. Support for virtual
folders (predefined searches), is more easily accomplished with an
infrastructure like this.

Presorting of mail into statically defined folders is IMHO the wrong
approach. I have wasted much time searching for a specific email, only
to discover it was filtered into another folder than I had
thought. With virtual folders, the same message can be found in
several folders, but will still be stored only once, since the folder
is really a query on the IMAP server. Sitewide de-duplication of
messages would be an added benefit of this approach.

For instance, I would like to have a folder called 'People' with
automatically generated subfolders for each person having sent, or
recieved, an email to/from me. I would also like to have the
possibilities to define folders with names (and content) like:
'Messages_recieved_this_month', 'Messages_I_sent_yesterday' etc.

 - Vegard V -