From: "Bradley, Todd" <todd.bradley@...>
Date: 2004-11-11T00:32:02+09:00
Subject: Re: Ruby and Mozilla?

> If you have further thoughts, let me know...

Rather than worrying about dealing with Mozilla, why don't you take a
mailer-generic approach and deal with the mail separately?  The POP3
protocol is quite simple.  There are two approaches you could take,
following in the footsteps of anti-virus programs that have done both of
these:

1) Write a Ruby POP3 client that analyzes message in-situ and deletes
the ones off the server that you don't like.  Then, when your regular
POP3 client (Mozilla in this case) goes to suck in mail off the server,
the spam's already gone.  This is the approach taken by SpamEater Pro,
for instance.

2) Write a Ruby POP3 client that sits between your mail reader and the
server.  It acts as a proxy and listens on your local host's mail port.
You set your mail reader (Mozilla) to connect to localhost instead of
pop3.myisp.com.  When the proxy gets a request for messages, it wakes up
and requests messages from your real server (pop3.myisp.com), then
passes through the ones it thinks aren't spam.  This is the approach
taken by every anti-virus program I've seen.

One advantage of both of these approaches over your original idea is
that they're independent of the mail program.  If, at some time in the
future, you drop Mozilla mail for Microsoft Outlook or whatever, your
anti-spam program will still work.


Todd.