442165 - Scope and context affecting filter capability

Status: NEW

(MailNews Core :: Filters, enhancement)

Description

[Jeff Beckley]

The values in the fields of the filter editing UI (Filter Rules dialog) is currently constrained by the type of the account that the filter belongs to (also called scope).  Scope is *what* you are operating on (e.g. an offline mail store like Local Folders, an online mail store like IMAP, NNTP news groups, etc.).

There's another dimension to filtering, which is context.  Context is *when* you are performing the operation (e.g. when mail is being downloaded from the server or when the user manually asks to filter messages).  The context of filtering is currently being upgraded to include when outgoing messages are sent, as well as being able to control which of the various contexts a particular filter can be applied.

It would be good to come up with a UI that could incorporate all of these issues while editing filters.  The combination of scope and context affect what matching capabilities are available, and what actions can be performed.

This originally came out of the addition of per-filter selectable context in bug 440635.

Comment 1

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

rkent, 
Is there something still worth pursuing here?  
And a practical set of steps to move this forward?