[Pan-users] Re: Filtering out body content

[Duncan]

clarjon1 <address@hidden> posted
address@hidden, excerpted below,
on  Thu, 29 May 2008 10:13:27 -0400:

> i was wondering if it would be possible to create a filter/regexp that
> would work in pan to filter out certain content of a mail message.

You can't filter or score on content at all with pan.  Pan's scoring 
works only on the normal but limited set overview headers, so it's not 
even possible to score based on all headers, let alone the content or the 
message as a whole.  

Even if it did, the only existing mechanism is the scoring mechanism; 
there's no method for filtering out one part of the content and not 
showing it.  Attachments, MIME or otherwise, do that to some extent, but 
if it's text and not an attachment, even if it's a separate MIME part 
with a boundary, it's shown.

To change that would require either being a C++ coder and delving into 
the code yourself, or having the necessary money to sponsor someone with 
the coding skills to do it if you don't have them yourself.  Elsewise, 
you can file an enhancement/feature-request bug, and maybe it'll get in 
eventually, but this isn't a common request, and while I may be wrong, it 
doesn't strike me as something Charles is likely to take a strong fancy 
to and just implement because he likes the idea, so it's likely to be 
targeted "bluesky", which means, it'd be nice... someday... likely years 
from now.

So practically speaking, if you're really set on this feature and you're 
/not/ a C++ coder, you'll probably want to find another news client that 
either implements a feature like this already, or has a scripting 
language implemented to allow expanded functionality.  If you're an EMACS 
fan, gnus, implemented in EMACS LISP, is an example of the latter.  It's 
quite possibly an already implemented feature for it, and if not, 
implementing it, for an already EMACS/LISP fan, should be relatively easy.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman