Newbie questions re registration

[David Relson]

On Mon, 22 Sep 2003 09:24:00 +0100
Geoff <capsthorne at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:

> Hello,
> 
> I am a new user and I am trying to understand the
> registration process.  My MUA is sylpheed, which stores
> mails in folders in which it simply numbers them from 1
> upwards, and renumbers to extend the sequence or to
> fill gaps when mail is added or deleted.
> 
> I have been using a simple script to train bogofilter on
> these folders by sending mails to it one at a time
> with the appropriate "s" or "n" option.  This appears to
> work, but it means that, in my single wordlist.db I already
> have several mails, both spam and ham, which were registered
> under the identical names "1", "2" etc. My plan for the
> future was to use the same system for new mails.  This would
> obviously mean that the number of duplicate names
> will grow.
> 
> On looking at the manpage I noticed the"S"
> options to correct the wordlist, and this made me wonder how
> bogofilter identifies registered mails internally?  I do not
> know how, under the system I am using, I could identify a
> mail for correction by the use of this option - which of my
> numerous mails registered as "1" would be identified. This
> makes me wonder if my whole approach is flawed because of
> the duplicate names it produces, so that even my existing
> wordlist is in some sense corrupt or inaccurate?
> 
> TIA
> 
> Geoff

Welcome Geoff,

We're always glad to hear from new users.  With version 0.15.0
bogofilter's input code was revised so that it can better handle
different mailbox and mail directory formats.  The revision included
handling of MH directories.  So, if you don't have the latest release,
i.e. 0.15.4, you should get it!

Bogofilter's wordlists save spam and ham counts for each token, as well
as message counts.  No effort is made to identify the particular
message.  As you've realized, the process of correcting a misclassified
message, involves giving it to bogofilter with flag combinations "-Ns"
or "-Sn".  These combos perform decrement/increment operations.  You can
read the man page for details on exactly what they do.

As to identifying the sylpheed message, probably the best thing is to
use "File/Save as" so that you know the name.

Hope this helps!

David