Ifile: ifile
is a neat program for automatically
filtering
email into appropriate folders, such as
spam.
It's design seems to be specifically for
mh/
exmh,
and
slocal (which I use).
It seems to simply use word analysis without much
regard for the semantic or syntactic structure of
email. Email comes into slocal and is sorted based on
ifile's simple database of folders to word
occurences. It's smart enough to learn
when you refile a piece of mail.
I was hoping it would identify spam for me, but
having tried it for a couple of weeks, I'm turning it off.
Unfortunately, it's not appropriate for the
way I file my email. I can
imagine situations where it's useful, but it's got several
problems:
- refile slightly busted. I get an occasional "Not able to
open..."
(I use nmh and mh-e emacs-mode, which might not
all interact well enough)
- treats words equally whether in the header or not
- doesn't notice how slocal rules caused things to be
filed.
I'd like it to learn from the rules I have already. (Need
to periodically run knowledge_base.mh for this reason.)
- seems to pick up folders which weren't
in my .folders, namely my OLD/inbox and ARCHIVE/inbox.
(I auto migrate stuff over a month old, and then
archive and compress after two months.
- I'd like it to treat my manual refiles as extra
important in it's database.
One day, I'd like to get around to making some minor
adjustments and fixes/updates. It seems like parts
of it should be a standard part of the unix toolkit, such
as word frequency analysis. Here are some guidelines
if you're considering using it:
- Use it if you use inc instead of using
slocal/maildelivery.
All your email comes to one inbox and gets filed by
you. It will do a pretty good job of guessing how you file.
- Don't use it if you programmatically filter. ifile is
good for human text, it won't save you much if you deal
with highly structured email. You'll have to continue
to write rules and ifile will often get confused.