Dfilter v3.0 - An email filter for Arachne v1.60beta or later written by Dev Anand Teelucksingh (devtee@trinidad.net) * Introduction * Features of Dfilter v2.5 * Special Requirements (other than Arachne v1.47b!) * Manual Installation * Using Dfilter * Acknowledgements * Final words --------------------------------------------------------------------- * Introduction --------------------------------------------------------------------- Arachne is one of the best Internet suites for DOS, but one feature it doesn't have (as of version 1.67 stable) is a filtering program for e-mail. Since I subscribe to several mailing lists (including Arachne's), my inbox get piled up with messages quickly, slowing down Arachne when I have to access the index of my inbox messages. So I decided to come up with a way to filter the messages. This is done by searching the messages for a specified text string and moving any found messages to a specified subdirectory (under the mail directory) Arachne v1.47beta offers many benefits. When you are reading an individual meesage, you can move it to any mail subdirectory (folder). Also, you can browse these mail subdirectories just like you browse your inbox. Arachne supports the TEMP variable as a location for temporary files so if you point TEMP to a ramdrive, you can get a significant speedup. This version of Dfilter supports these features. --------------------------------------------------------------------- * Features of Dfilter v3.0 --------------------------------------------------------------------- * ability to save filters in a text file for future use for any type of mailbox (inbox, outbox, read and sent) * ability to select from a web page (in Arachne of course) which filter to run on one mailbox. You can also choose to run all filters on one mailbox * ability to edit the text file FILTER.TXT where the filters are stored so you add and delete many filters quickly. You can, of course, shell to DOS (Alt-E) to run your favourite text editor and edit FILTER.TXT directly. Afterwards, you can reindex FILTER.TXT so that all the changes made to FILTER.TXT are updated in the HTM file where you can run filters. --------------------------------------------------------------------- * Special requirements (other than Arachne v1.47b!) --------------------------------------------------------------------- There are several limitations in the text string to search for * You can't use these symbols inside the text : & + , - ' * The length of the text string should be less than 50 characters * Arachne v1.66 has a bug passing query strings to DGI apps like Dfilter. You should upgrade to v1.67 or later --------------------------------------------------------------------- * Manual Installation --------------------------------------------------------------------- * If you've installed Dfilter v1.x with Arachne v1.47, you should make a backup copy of your FILTER.TXT and uninstall Dfilter v1.x * Create the subdirectory DFILTER under ARACHNE. i.e. if arachne in installed in c:\arachne, create directory c:\arachne\dfilter * Unzip the contents of DFLTER25.ZIP into the dfilter subdirectory * Add these lines to MIME.CFG file/drunfilter.dgi |@call dfilter\\runfltr.bat $s $m $t file/dregen.dgi |@call dfilter\\regen.bat $t * Backup your mail directory in case Dfilter doesn't work and makes a mess of things. * Restart Arachne (for MIME.CFG changes to take effect) and in Arachne, open file:dfilter/dfilter.htm * If you had a backup FILTER.TXT from your previous Dfilter installation, you can copy it to the dfilter subdirectory. * I highly recommend that you use a Shift Function hotkey to point to file:dfilter\dfilter.htm so you can quickly access it. --------------------------------------------------------------------- * Using Dfilter..... --------------------------------------------------------------------- Should be straightforward. The only care is in editing FILTER.TXT. Each filter is on one line and is of the format subdirectory 'text string' The subdirectory should be 8 character or less and the text string MUST have the single quote (') around it. So, a sample FILTER.TXT with 3 filters would look like this : arachne 'arachne-digest V1 #48' arachne 'arachne-digest V1 #49' simtel 'Simtel' Make a regular backup of FILTER.TXT in case anything goes wrong. Another possible problem is your environment space being too low. This is used by programs (including DFILTER) to store variables created via the SET command. To increase it, * Exit Arachne and open CONFIG.SYS and look for a SHELL statement like SHELL=C:\DOS\COMMAND.COM C:\DOS /E:512 /P (If not, then put it in yourself) Increase the /E parameter which is the size of enivronment space in bytes. This depends on what programs use the environment space. I normally use 1500 bytes without problems. Save the changes and reboot the computer for the changes to take effect. * Also, type SET by itself. You should see a listing of environment variables. Look for the variable COMSPEC. Typically it is COMSPEC=C:\DOS\COMMAND.COM Modify it by including this statement in your AUTOEXEC.BAT SET COMSPEC=C:\DOS\COMMAND.COM /E:1500 Save the changes and reboot the computer for the changes to take effect. Either of these solutions should work for you. --------------------------------------------------------------------- * Acknowledgements --------------------------------------------------------------------- Dfilter uses three freeware programs : XGREP v1.03 by Robert Nordier (rnordier@iafrica.com), A program for searching text files, and is based on the UNIX utility GREP. The main benefit of this program was its ability to list the filenames which matched the specified text which could be redirected to a text file. HORST v3.1 by Horst Schaeffer (http://home.nikocity.de/horst.muc/int/index.htm) A FANTASTIC collection of freeware batch (DOS) utilities. These powerful utilities allowed me to complete Dfilter with the use of batch files. Anyone doing anything with batch programs should look at this. MV v0.6 by Cristiano Leoni (leoni@cs.unibo.it) A program which moves files. It is used for those DOSes which don't have MOVE.EXE The original distributions in ZIP format are in the DFILTER sub-directory. --------------------------------------------------------------------- * Final words --------------------------------------------------------------------- Dfilter is emailware. I'll like to hear your comments/suggestions or bug reports about Dfilter. Visit my Interesting DOS programs page at http://www.opus.co.tt/dave Dev Anand Teelucksingh devtee@trinidad.net Dated : November 7th 2000