fffff lll fff ff lll iii fff fff iii lll iii fff iii lll fffffff lll eeeeee 000 77777 4 4 iiii fff iiii lll eee ee 0 0 7 4 4 iii fff iii lll eeeeeeee v v 0 0 7 4444 iii fff iii lll eee v v 0 0 7 4 iiiii fffff iiiii lllll eeeeee v 000 * 7 * 4 ifile web site --> "http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~jr6b/ifile/" <-- If you try to use ifile, I would enjoy hearing from you. There is a comment form at the bottom of this README which I encourage you to fill out and e-mail to me . For installation instructions, read the INSTALL file. For information on modification history, read the ChangeLog file. If you are upgrading from a previous version of ifile, please read the UPGRADE file. For answers to commonly asked questions, read the FAQ file. What is ifile? ifile is a general mail filtering system which uses a modern-day text learning algorithm to intelligently filter mail according to the way a user tends to organize mail. ifile is different from other mail filtering programs in three major ways: 1. ifile does not require the user to generate a set of rules in order to successfully filter mail 2. ifile uses the entire content of messages for filtering purposes 3. ifile learns as the user moves incorrectly filtered messages to new mailboxes ifile is not dependent upon any specific mail system and should be adaptable to any mail system which allows an outside program to perform mail filtering. Currently, ifile has been adapted to the MH and EXMH mail systems. Does it actually work? Yes. I've had a number of users tell me that ifile does a great job of filtering mail. In my own experiences, it has also done a nice job. Since I've added code to keep track of the number of filters vs. refiles, ifile has correctly filtered about 85% of my mail. What is impressive about that number is that I have over 30 folders into which I filter mail. You can keep track of how well ifile filters your mail by examining a file named .idata_accuracy, which will be created in your home directory once you use ifilter or irefile for the first time. Once I install the system, what exactly do I do? Before expecting the ifile system to filter your mail with any accuracy, you should run the knowledge_base script associated with your mail client. This will have ifile compile a database on the way you organize mail. Once ifile is installed and knowledge_base is run, ifile will be capable of filtering your mail. Your only requirement is to move to its proper place any mail that is filtered incorrectly. This action will modify ifile's learned model and allow it to better filter subsequent messages. Who wrote this? Why, I did! 'I' am Jason Rennie, a junior majoring in Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University. I've been programming for most of my life, starting with BASIC as a youth, moving through Pascal during high school and then widening my horizons in college with such languages as C/C++, perl, Java and ML. Since installing it in December of '95, I have become a big-time linux fan, running it almost exclusively. I've been doing quite a bit of work with learning algorithms, especially text-based learning, and I decided it would be cool to apply one of the text learning algorithms to mail filtering. So, I did. Other code contributors include Diego Zamboni, Chris Browne and Andrew McCallum. Credits ------- Tom Mitchell - Professor who was willing to hire me for a summer during which I learned vast amounts of information about machine and text learning. He is also a very nice guy to work with. Dave Robinson - Alpha tester, pointed out some major bugs in the early versions. A good source of encouragement :) Diego Zamboni - Wrote first C port of ifile. Another nice source of encouragement. Chris Browne - Proposed numerous suggestions and ideas for increasing the efficiency of the ifile C code. Andrew McCallum - Author of Rainbow, a text classification package which is the basis for some ifile code. Thanks also go to such people as Colin McCormack, Alfred Werner, Mikael Nilsson, Jim Grinnell and Ken Wallich who have made their own little contributions to the success of ifile. Neat web sites related to ifile/text learning: WiseWire - WWW document filtering - sort of like Yahoo, only better http://www.wisewire.com/ General code for text classification http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~mccallum/bow/ Tom Mitchell's home page http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~tom/ If you do find this program helpful and would like to support it and see it grow into a powerful, full-featured, robust mail filtering system (gotta make sure to include all the buzzwords) please fill out the following short survey and mail it to jr6b+@andrew.cmu.edu: ------------------------->8-------------------------- What version of ifile are you using? : What operating system do you run? : What is your default C compiler? : What mail client do you use? : What version of perl is on your system? : Did you have any problems installing ifile? If so, please describe them here: Did you encounter any problems while running ifile (e.g. lost mail - poor job of filtering)? If so, please describe them here (copies of /tmp/ifile.info, ifilter.mh.info and irefile.mh.info and would be really helpful) : Do you have any suggestions on how to improve ifile? ----------------------8<--------------------------- Thank you for your interest!!!! :) $Id: README,v 1.13 1999/04/23 02:50:04 jr6b Exp $