This is my periodic (every few years) appeal for help.
SpamBayes is a Bayesian spam filter developed years ago to separate the wheat from the chaff as it were. It still works well (running behind-the-scenes on mail.python.org, for instance) and fills a niche, particularly for those users whose email providers don’t offer decent capabilities in this area. It seems most of these people are Outlook users on Windows (not sure why).
It needs two things, porting to Python 3 (fairly straightforward given the current tools available) and a Windows installer. I am more than happy to help with the Python 3 port, but I don’t do Windows. I have never done Windows. Even if I had access to Windows, I wouldn’t know the first place to start. (And I’m retired, so am no longer looking to pad my resume. )
BITD, Mark Hammond handled the Outlook installer. I’m pretty sure things have changed in the build-Windows-installers realm, so I’m not sure the pieces which exist in the code base would be all that useful.
If you’ve got some expertise in this area and would like to help, let me know.
As for the Windows install it using the nice Inno Setup (open source, documented) that I use for my projects.
And it is installing .exe built using py2exe.
There is nothing scary in the build system, given a cursory look.
The only thing that I do not know about is the how it hooks into Outlook.
These days are there any Outlook users that would want spambayes if the work was done?
Are all the Outlook users using their work email?
If so they are almost certainly on O365 and do not need this.
Yes, a couple of us have created partial Python 3 ports. There are actually several applications in the repo. I think each of us have ported the core bits and those applications we cared about, and left other applications untouched. There is a python3 branch on my repo, for instance. I’m not really worried about 2->3.
As for the Windows install it using the nice Inno Setup (open source, documented) that I use for my projects.
And it is installing .exe built using py2exe.
There is nothing scary in the build system, given a cursory look.
Maybe not for you. I’ve always been a Unix/Linux person as far as software development was concerned. Windows has always scared me. I was fortunate to never need to develop on Windows, and by the time I got to my last job where Outlook was required, all my work was still backend stuff on Linux. The computer they put on my desk was just a big X terminal.
The only thing that I do not know about is the how it hooks into Outlook.
These days are there any Outlook users that would want spambayes if the work was done?
Are all the Outlook users using their work email?
If so they are almost certainly on O365 and do not need this.
The only apparent demand for SpamBayes for the past several years has come from Outlook users. I doubt they were work people or we’d have gotten requests from network admin types. I think Win7 was the current version the last time Mark made a release for Windows & Outlook. Tightening security has moved things around. I’m sure there are other changes that make installing the old Outlook extension no longer possible.
I can do 2 and 3 when i get time.
Need to find someone to do 4.
Thanks, Barry. I can scrounge up someone to test on the SpamBayes list. Warning: Whoever (if anyone) raises their hand will almost certainly not be a Python developer.
My approach was to separate the core part of the logic (the tokenizer and classifier) and remove nearly everything else. I’ve been using this Python 3 version for a while now and it works for my purpose. I have a Unix style deliver script that puts mail into either an inbox or a spam folder. I use the CDB database to hold the word probs.
)
| Do you have git repo with the code in to port?