!AntiSpam is a spam deleting programme for use with POP3 mailboxes. It can delete spam from your mailbox(es) while only having to download the headers. It can also download your e-mail, if you wish.
The current maintainer of !AntiSpam is Frank de Bruijn. His version of !AntiSpam is at http://www.aconet.org/tools and I recommend that you use that version in preference to mine; his has more features and less bugs, and is being actively maintained. The version here is for historic reasons only.
It can be used in conjunction with another e-mail fetcher; run !AntiSpam first to delete the spam, then run your normal fetcher. Alternatively it can fetch the e-mail too; this is more efficient. !AntiSpam works particularly well in conjunction with POPstar and Messenger Pro or Messenger.
!AntiSpam is compatible with Iyonix and RISC OS versions 3 to 5.
!AntiSpam is released under the GNU GPL.
To run AntiSpam, you are strongly recommended to use !SysLog and StrongHelp. If you have RISC OS Select, you already have !SysLog. If you have an earlier version of RISC OS, you may already have !SysLog anyway; if not, you should find the current version here. You should find the current version of StrongHelp here.
You can download !AntiSpam here.
There is an updated Client file (updated 2004 March 17) here. This is incompletely tested yet, but should remove the sensitivity to body lines beginning with "-ERR". If you wish to test it, please do so and let me know, via the !AntiSpam SmartGroup, whether it works satisfactorily. My preliminary tests show it's basically OK, but I won't know any more until I've finished testing.
Harriet Bazley has written an excellent article about User Tests and how to write them, which you will find here.
Various accessories are available to assist your use of !AntiSpam or to enhance it in some way.
Harriet Bazley has produced a patch which makes dealing with "headered" items easy. You can find it here.
There is a utility, !RulesUsed, to summarise usage of Rules here. Stuart Painting has updated the BASIC of !RulesUsed, which you can find on Stuart's web site.
Mark Rowan has written a utility called LastDel which shows the e-mails most recently deleted by !AntiSpam according to its logs. You can find it here if you follow the links through Mark and RISC OS software.
Rosemary Miskin has written a utility called RuleSort, and a set of instructions for integrating !AntiSpam with Voyager. You can find her web site here.
Pete Bready has written a log analysis utility called !AnalyseLog, which you can find in the !AntiSpam Smartgroup's files area here.
For programmers only: While developing !AntiSpam, I wrote a rather basic POP3 pseudo-server. A couple of people have asked for it, so I've put it here. It is supplied as is; it will need some alteration of the POPserver and Server files to work on your system. I will not be updating it or providing significant support for it. You do NOT need it as part of !AntiSpam. If you don't know what you're doing, leave it alone!
1.00 2003 May 5 First release.
1.01 2003 May 6 Removed a left-over debug line which would write "Keyword is LENGTH" to log files. Minor corrections and re-formatting of StrongHelp file.
1.02 2003 May 11 Added RunEvery (see Help file under "First time installation"). Running with either Alt key pressed inhibits AutoRun and RunEvery. New !Run file to counter problems if the app hasn't been seen or if required modules are not available. Updated StrongHelp file.
1.03 2003 May 11 Added AutoCloseProgress (see Help file under "First time installation"). Updated StrongHelp file.
1.04 2003 May 17 Added RunOnClick (see Help file under "First time installation"). Updated StrongHelp file. Fixed bug which added up items in Progress window incorrectly if last item was deferred. Added "Web site" button in Info window.
1.05 2003 May 24 Changed method of launching URI for web site. Fixed opening of another log file when consecutive mailboxes are set to log to the same file. XOS_CLI replaced with XWimp_StartTask. Changed path to StrongHelp file in !Help file.
1.06 2003 May 29 Added ReadVariable to Rules files. Updated StrongHelp file. Download file type set to Text.
1.07 2003 June 1 Added PreRules file. Updated StrongHelp file.
1.08 2003 June 6 Added CheckConnect, LogDefaults and LogBlanks (see Help file under "First time installation"). Updated StrongHelp file. Changed !Boot file to use <AntiSpamDir> in place of <Obey$Dir> where possible. Removed spurious comment character in example PreRules file.
1.09 2003 June 11 Added to log the header line that triggered a rule. Modified !Boot and !Run files to fix some boot-up problems. Altered ReadConfig to default arguments sensibly.
1.10 2003 June 14 Wimpslot larger. Fixed bug which caused crash on attempting to log long header lines.
There is partly tested code in this version to support the "Header" decision. This code is not yet complete, therefore not yet tested, therefore not yet supported, therefore there's no help for it. Use it at your own risk if you're interested.
1.11 2003 June 17 Fixed bug which caused "Not enough application memory for BASIC to start" error. Fixed priority bug triggered by adjacent priorities.
1.12 2003 July 2 Put the update of the progress counters in a better place, so the "Can't count" bug should be fixed. "Back" icon added to Progress window. Incompatibilities with RO3.11 removed. More code added to support the "Header" action but there is no functional difference.
1.13 2003 July 25 "Header" action added fully. Help file replaced by Harriet Bazley's version (updated with "Header" help). New Progress window. Slightly wider Trial window.
1.14 2003 July 29 Fixed bug in "Header" action. Progress window now comes up minimised.
1.15 2003 August 29 Added "MiniProgress" and "AlwaysGetLength" configuration options. Changed Progress window template. Changed structure to be a little more modular.
1.16 2003 September 12 Fixed bug where Progress window always opened small from menu. Passed special arguments to FNUserTest_DoTest for length trials, same as for tests. Updated Help file with details of those arguments.
1.17 2003 September 13 Fixed mis-labelling of an icon in Trial window.
1.18 2003 September 22 Logs changed from session to ordinary. Fixed bug that caused User Tests to fail in Trial window. Fixed spelling mistake in Messages file. Re-enabled QuietErrors code, which had been accidentally left disabled for many versions. Sample Rules file includes rules to delete the Gibe-F worm.
1.19 2003 September 25 Fixed bug in creating synthetic header when triggered by User Test of lower priority than any Rule. Updated StrongHelp file with instructions on how to configure POPstar to send only.
1.20 2004 February 23 Fixed some long-standing priority bugs. Permits arguments to be null so can be used to check for null Subject: lines, for instance. Added base-64 and quoted-printable decoder. Added a user test function to be called at the end of a header. "Run" menu entry becomes "Stop" when running. "Quit" menu entry has a "Restart" submenu. Updated StrongHelp file in line with the above, and to document some functions useful to user tests.
1.21 2004 February 27 Fixed bug in Quota system that caused requests for items with negative numbers. Fixed bug that caused exit if web site button clicked when no browser loaded. There still seem to be bugs in the priority system, but this version is no different in this respect and fixes the bugs named above, so it's better than nothing.
1.22 2004 February 29 Fixed major priority bug just introduced in 1.21 (as a result of half-implementing a new system). Fixed some errors in operation and display of Trial window.
0.04 2003 May 17 Fixed bugs which caused some messages not to be counted.
Page last updated 2005 December 8