631819 - Filter Groups / Filter Chains

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 362808

(MailNews Core :: Filters, enhancement)

Description

[Bryan T]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en; rv:1.9.2.11) Gecko/20101021 Sabayon Firefox/3.6.11
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.9.2.11) Gecko/20101021 Lightning/1.0b3pre Thunderbird/3.1.5

I have a lot of email, I setup a lot of filters to organize it all. Filters are ran sequentially, and takes some thinking into getting the filter logic correct. 

My feature request is to implement filter groups or similar. For example I have staff members that all should be sorted into folder staff/user name, each filter should be configured into a parent "staff" group. Currently If I want to organize it such I must click up many times for the new staffer to be with the rest. If I had a filter for some other criteria before it, then it would be filtered incorrectly. There are many like rules that can be grouped together where I could just move the entire group up. There are many other scenarios with complex filters that arise as well. I would like to compare what I would like to see implemented to how iptables rules are implemented, granted of course sequential but with the ability to jump into another chain and return if no match.

Thank you,
Bryan Taylor

Reproducible: Sometimes

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Create filters
2. Create more filters
3. Scream
Actual Results:  
Complex to filter loads of mail. Mail becomes lost.

Expected Results:  
Configurable filter groups to respect sequential logic when like criteria is present.