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Agreed. Squirrelmail really isn't cutting it for my needs any more. But even more than that, I really need server-side rules to sort my messages into folders for me. The only web-based app I've seen that does that is Horde's Ingo, which works with Sieve.

• Eudora - OS X and Windows
• Mulberry - Linux, OS X, Windows
• Thunderbird - Linux, OS X, Windows
• Mozilla - Linux, OS X, Windows

Just something I came across:

Procmail stuff - lots of links http://www.ii.com/internet/robots/procmail/qs/

Anyway - I once came across a recipe to use Cyrus to copy every incoming email into folders indexed under

-date received
-FROM: domain
-size?
-other things?

Because Cyrus (it's strange dealing with software I share a name with :) has a database format, copies are cheap and, presumably, the same message can exist in a number of places under INBOX without adding any extra storage requirements. I guess procmail or sieve coud do this.

Anybody know where this page went (or has come up with a recipe for something similar)? I think it's a wonderful idea.

You could look under "1995, April" or under "from mit.edu" and find the message you're looking for. Zoe I guess would do just as well but I thought this was a neat idea when I saw it a few years ago?

Is anybody using Sieve out there?

Here's a page I found on Cyrus IMAP on FreeBSD.

By accident I found their website myself while waiting for this story to be published. I agree: looks impressive and seems to do what I want. At the moment, however, I use Mulberry to read my mail and are not yet ready to give up on that piece of software. I also would like to prevent to (again??) become attached/hooked on a specific piece of software (implies ... back to pen&paper?) although the windows aspect is probably not a problem.

I use Firefox for browsing of course, and I keep checking and trying the various Mozilla.org mail/news client releases, but so far nothing touches Mulberry for ease of use and functionality with my IMAP mail stores.

Mulberry is very good, very capable and compliant with standards. I use it on Windows mostly, and run it on Linux and Solaris sometimes. It's ability to utilize multiple IMAP accounts is unmatched which is great for email junkies. A lot of people will be turned off by its lack of skinning or themes features. Mulberry uses its own private widget set, which usually closely resembles the native widget set of whatever platform Cyrusoft has ported it to.

Of course, Linux doesn't really have a native widget set, and the Motif/Borland-ish buttons and borders will probably throw off your desktop's Fung Shwei, no doubt. Unless somebody comes up with a Mulberry-cum-Motif desktop theme that matches Cyrusoft's look and feel... Tnen you can make everything look that way. ;)

I avoided mentioning it at first, I didn't want the conversation to derail into a fight about specific clients. But, my personal taste leans toward the combination of Procmail and Mutt. It's an acquired taste, and probably not for most new users. I know better than to push it to any but the most hard-core Unix-philes. There are certainly other clients, with GUIs even, that match Mutt's power and may even surpass it; it's just what I use. (For what it's worth, I've heard exceptional things about KMail (KDE) and Mulberry (cross platform) from people I personally know and trust who have to juggle heavy mail loads.)

• Mulberry (Cross-platform. Linux, too!)

We use cyrus imap which has sieve as part of it. We've made it so people can tune the sensitivity of their filter, and the mail automatically gets dropped in a special folder that they can browse with a website we made for them. (or webmail, or imap).

On the server a script removes all spam older then 7 days. This seems to work very well. That said though, all the "pretty" stuff we did added months to our ability to deploy it.

I would suggest that you should be pretty happy that your ISP has had it for years now. Its quite a commitment to both hardware and time on their part.

I use Sieve to sort (and bounce) my e-mail.

Really? Everyone I know uses pine, Eudora, or Mail.app - you should be careful about making assumptions

I agree, Moz has a nice browser but the mail client is ponderous and unpleasant. I use Mulberry on Linux, OS X, Windows, and I used to run it on Solaris. It's just awesome!

Another protocol that can be used for shared address books is IMSP, which was written as part of Carnegie-Mellon's Project Cyrus. The problem is that few applications support it. In fact, the only one I know of is Mulberry.

Well, that means they were using webbugs - proof that everyone should use mailer agents that either can disable network access or refuse to display HTML.

Mulberry displays HTML without images (Win/Mac/Linux x86+PPC/Solaris)
The Bat makes it easy to disable HTML. (Win)
Pegasus normally disables downloading images by http (Win)

Supported on Windows, MacOS, OS X, Linux, and various other Unices

Great PGP support

encrypted logins, SSL, etc

kick-ass technical support

amazingly configurable, remote administration, cool "kiosk" mode

They even make a web-mail solution called "Silky Mail" that does a remarkable job of mimicking the appearance and functionality of Mulberry!

and, like all Truly Great mail readers, it's named after a tree.

I don't buy much software, but Mulberry was the best $40 I've ever spent. I bought a license way back in 1999, and I still get the most recent upgrades and plug-ins for free. Cyrusoft also has very generous site-license pricing. And no, I don't work for them, my only connection to Cyrusoft is as a satisfied customer.

Speaking as a tech, the best tech support I've reached is from Cyrusoft, the makers of the lovely Mulberry email client. Every inquiry I have ever made (well, all two) has been answered by Cyrus Daboo personally. Even my "thanks for your help, love the client" gushes that follow have been answered by well-written personal responses.

Any other recommendations for windows IMAP clients?

One worth looking at is Mulberry. It is a great client written primarily for IMAP (with top-notch IMAP compatability). One or two annoyances, most of which I figured out in the first 15 minutes (it is very configurable and I don't agree with many of their defaults). Worth a look. Similar to OE in many ways, but fixes the security holes, auto-HTML rendering, shows you the real email address, etc.

Check it out at http://www.cyrusoft.com/mulberry/. It is payware, but it's a damn nice email client. Works on Windows, Mac, MacOS X, Linux, and, I believe, Solaris.

-c

POP3is a lovely protocol but it has one terrible disadvantage: It's a download only process. Oh sure email can be left on the server but there's no flagging, folders, etc. possible.

IMAP4 is an interesting protocol. Many developers (Steve Dorner of Eudora being a notable one) complain that IMAP makes too many assumptions about how folks are implementing it, the underlying system, etc. On the other hand it works well at this point for managing remote mailboxes, setting flags, folders, partially downloading messages, etc.

So why one over the other? POP is fine for tied-to-one machine folks. You get your mail, you download it, it's your problem. IMAP is suited to those who work from multiple machines or prefer the security of their email being kept on a server.

Guess which population is growing? More importantly guess which population corporate types are part of?

As an email administrator which would you prefer to work with:

Every person having a mail file on their own computer where it can get damaged, stolen, lost along with the laptop, etc.

or

One server holding all of the mail safely & securely, backed up nightly, easy for you to trouble-shoot, folks able to access it from any machine?

Now you see why MS supports IMAP: Their customers really pushed hard for it. Is it part of some big MS-conspiracy? Possibly but there's no good evidence and certianly no rationale.

Furthermore IMAP doesn't give a whit about "Mailer Type" (if it even has such a thing as an option in it's protocol which I doubt.) MS is using their encrypted login as a means to enforce this, nothing so trivially hackable as a client ID string.

Actually encrypted logins are a Good Thing. It's just unfortunate MS is using them as a club to force folks to use only their email products and not supporting industry standard login strategies.

So now we have AOL, the largest ISP requiring their email client (there were trials years ago with opening it up, indeed Claris Emailer still does so though the application was EOL'd 3 years ago by Apple) and now MSN doing the same. Indeed in spite of the fact that there are now perfecty good clients and secure ways of working these folks want to go back to the old "lock 'em in" strategy.