Subject: RE: Proposed Sieve extensions

From: Gregory Sereda <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 13 Nov 1998 12:04:51 -0500

At 05:06 PM 11/12/98 -0800, Alan K. Stebbens wrote:
>Let's suppose that the real goal of Sieve is to establish a usable email
>filtering standard for the Internet, one which lets users across the
>Internet easily define filtering rules.  Given this supposition, is it
>better that a few programmers work harder to write a good parser, or better
>to have millions of Internet users work harder to write their filters in yet
>another "easy to implement" but difficult to understand language?

It appears to me that Sieve tries to be both, easy to implement and easy
to understand.  However, I found the implementation of Sieve-03 to be
quite challenging.  You have to handle any number of nested allof(),
anyof(), and if/then/else statements.  Adding the tagged arguments,
such as :is, make it more difficult for humans to read and write,
and the syntax for comparators is obscure (at least for me).

Overall, these issues don't concern me much.  I really doubt that we
are going to have millions of internet users writing Sieve scripts.
I expect most services will have a easy point and click interface
to create the filter rules, hiding Sieve details.

Greg Sereda

Greg

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From: Randall Gellens <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 13 Nov 1998 11:52:24 -0800

> to create the filter rules, hiding Sieve details.

I also expect that most sieve scripts will be created with a GUI. 
However, this brings up an interoperability question.  Given the 
potential complexity of Sieve, I expect most GUIs to present a 
simplified form, with severe restrictions.  (For example, we have been 
playing with an in-house GUI that is based on the existing Eudora 
filters interface.  It allows users to create and edit a series of 
rules, each of which can only have only two conditions, and five 
actions.  Anything else gets dumped into a raw edit box at the bottom, 
where power users can create and edit raw sieve.)  The subset of Sieve 
which can be handled by one GUI is likely not to match the subset 
handled by another.

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From: Matthew Wall <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 16 Nov 1998 13:45:04 -0400

--On Fri, Nov 13, 1998 12:04 PM -0500 the entity known as Gregory Sereda
<[email-masked]> wrote:

> I really doubt that we

Exactly. It's up to us client-types to come up with a good interface for
real human beings.

What I think is a reasonable general goal, though, is that all other things
being equal, the syntax be such that a reasonably adept sysadmin can
understand it. And I don't see anything in Sieve at this point that's
really that difficult to follow. 

Difficult to implement may be another issue, but I'd like to see more trial
and error by several implementers off a relatively stable specification
before making any conclusions.

- matt

 =====================================================================
   Matthew Wall * mailto:[email-masked] * http://www.cyrusoft.com
   Cyrusoft International, Inc.          Proud Purveyors of Mulberry
            "Making the desktop safe for IMAP since 1995"
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From: Ned Freed <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 18 Nov 1998 00:30:23 -0800 (PST)

> before making any conclusions.

FWIW, I have found nothing in the language syntax or core semantics hard
to implement. Sematics as relates to processing actions and message
access are another matter, but that's expected.

				Ned