[Dovecot] Pigeonhole sieve re-filter extension?

[T.B.]

Am 07.05.2014 08:35, schrieb Steffen Kaiser:
> Just musing:
>
> the antispam-plugin triggers e.g. an external command, if you fork it, 
> give it another name and another setting's prefix, you can configure 
> it to spawn sieve-filter on the special "Re-filter" folder, maybe 
> delaying its run to gather all messages from a bulk move operation or 
> something like that. That said, on small systems even a cron may work.
>
> I never used the sieve-filter tool, though. And the man page warns 
> about its useage.
>
> - -- Steffen Kaiser

I think it would not be a problem to develop a solution to remotely 
trigger re-filtering for me, myself and I. But that is not the point 
here. Clients like the Thunderbird Sieve Extension 
(https://github.com/thsmi/sieve, 
https://addons.mozilla.org/de/thunderbird/addon/sieve/) or the diverse 
webmail MUA's will only start implementing such a feature if there is a 
official draft or specification.

The whole point of my initiative here is that Managesieve finally 
becomes the capability to replicate the features the users know from 
their local client side filtering (Thunderbird, Outlook) which provide 
the feature of re-filtering. Even big webmail providers like the Global 
Mail Exchange / GMX here in Germany provide re-filtering in their webgui.

I use the sieve-filter tool very often for myself - everytime when I 
create a new subfolder and create a new fileinto rule, I refilter my 
Inbox to clean it up and have a consistent subfolder with all old and 
new mails that are matching the rule.

The man page of the sieve-filter tool is 2 and a half years old ;) 
(http://pigeonhole.dovecot.org/doc/man1/sieve-filter.1.html)
Sadly even the Wiki page doesn't mention it directly: 
http://wiki2.dovecot.org/HowTo/RefilterMail

The tool works like a charm, but if your sieve script does not do what 
you actually intended, you can delete all your mails.
But that's the same with Thunderbirds or Outlooks client side 
techniques. The only difference is that both MUA's  provide a good GUI 
which explains and summarizes what the filter rules will do and thereby 
prevent not intended behavior of the rules.

Since the new german Dovecot book (http://www.dovecot-buch.de/) 
recommends the sieve-filter tool for refiltering, it will get much more 
attention in the future.

Best regards,

T.B.