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Re: [mpop-users] [PATCH 5/9] New add_header option



Martin Lambers wrote:
> Hi!
> 
> Hm, do we really want to add headers? Next thing would be to allow more
> changes to the mail. Up until now the basic principle of mpop
> was to not touch the mail at all unless absolutely necessary.
> 
> Regards,
> Martin

Yes! I think it is an important feature.
Suppose you are downloading from several accounts to the same mailbox.
mpop keeps track of the accounts, but once it finishes, there's no way
to find out from which account came each mail.
(You may use Delivered-To: in case your server adds it, but I don't
think that it is added by all servers -it's not even on any rfc- and
simply, the task should be handled by the same software merging them, in
this case mpop)
Additionally, with mbox delivery this feature allows appending the
status header at delivery time, which means that the MUA won't have to
rewrite the mbox to add it (of course, this requires that the user knows
the internals of his MUA mbox dialect and which header it uses to keep
track of the flags, but if he does, it's a nice improvement).


Finally, it is my opnion that mpop should be able to produce the same
mail file as your MUA would if it downloaded the mail itself. add_header
is a tiny piece (the work would need to be done in the parameter,
probably by putting a default that makes sense to the MUA), but a
crucial one for being able to do that.



It is currently possible to add a header by doing something like
> delivery mda maildrop -A "Header: value"
(and making maildrop do the delivery to the right place)

However, adding a mda into the pipeline just for adding a header:
* is overkill
* option confusing: moves the header to the delivery option, the
-perhaps variable- delivery path has to be set separatedly (in the mda
config?).
* adds another point of failure where mail could be lost

Specially if taking into account that mpop is already adding a header :)


I don't know which next steps you think would be prompted by this. The
changes to the email are minimal, all of them done above mpop Received: