procmail quick start

by Doug Youn » Wed, 25 Sep 2002 14:19:47

I've been wading through the Nancy McGough 'Procmail Quick Start'
at http://www.ii.com/internet/robots/procmail/qs/ & finding it quite
worthwhile. Unlike the vast majority of technical documentation out there,
this thing is actually written in simple english & even more surprising, it
appears that the writer has not assumed the reader has a particularly
high level of experience. Interestingly for a confirmed MCP, the only
other documentation I've read lately that has been even halfway intelligible
(cgi101) was also written by a person of the fair gender.

Top

1. UPDATED: Procmail Quick Start

My "Procmail Quick Start" is a major rewrite of the Procmail
section of the "Filtering Mail FAQ." I just updated it so that it
now more clearly (I hope!) describes how to use Procmail's
special ^TO_ expression. I've also added some more information on
regular expressions. There are lots of other tweaks throughout
the document. Here is the outline:

* Overview
* Terms Used in this Article
* Strategies
+ Modularize and Plug & Play
+ Stick to a Style
* Step by Step Through Setting Up and Testing Procmail
+ Is Procmail on Your System?
+ Set Up Procmail Files for Testing
+ Test Your Procmail Setup
+ Create Recipes to Sort Mailing List Messages
* Accessing Your Message Folders
* Understanding Procmail Recipes
* Tracking Your Incoming Messages
* Pulling the Plug on Procmail
* Troubleshooting
+ Look at Your Log File
+ Look for Typos
+ Check File and Directory Permissions
+ Turn on Full Logging
+ Try Alternate .forward Files
* Getting More Procmail Information
* Thanks
* Author Blurb for the Book
* Questions