(Gee, I get too busy to read the list for a few days and folks
start talking about two cameras I really love -- the KX and
the H3...)
Levente -Levi- Littvay suggested:
> What does everyone think about adding a [pentax] to the subject
> of each letter so it is easier to filter (both with machine and both by
> eyeballing the mailbox)
I am opposed to this, but not vehemently so.
Subject lines get kind of long, and when I'm eyeball-filtering
this list I do so by subject. Sticking "[pentax]" or "[pdml]"
on the front of each subject header means taking away that many
characters from the number displayed in the width of my telnet
window, which would make an existing problem worse for me.
Filtering through software is already pretty easy -- I'm already
sorting each mailing list I'm on into a separate file so that I
can just concentrate on personal mail when I'm too busy for the
lists. (I've got crude spam filtering in place as well, which
I need to refine.)
(Also, personally, I find it's still easy to overlook personal
messages in a forest of list mail jumbled into one mailbox, even
if list-prefixes are used on the subject headers. It helps more
when the tags are on the few messages I'm looking for -- i.e. with
a low-traffic mailing list in a high-traffic personal mailbox --
rather than the other way 'round.)
So for me there'd be no gain and a small but noticeable downside.
As for why my opposition is mild: well it _would_ be a pretty
trivial thing to implement, other folks might be seeing more of
the subject lines than I do and thus have less reason to complain,
and some people probably don't have the means to sort/filter
their email automagically (and thus need the "eyeball filter" help).
But note that a personal reply to a mailing list message will wind
up grouped with the list messages if you sort only on a tag in the
subject line.
That's the important part of my message -- if all you want is my
opinion, skip the rest. Now comes some info on sorting list
mail for folks who have that capability but haven't explored it
yet.
Each message arrives with a whole pile o' headers, many of which
your mail reader may not bother to show you (especially if you've
specifically told it not to.) The very first line of a message
(and how to spot the start of a new message in an ASCII mailbox)
begins with "From ". There's another from-header further down
which has a colon on it -- "From: ". The second one will show
the sender of the message. The first one (if your mail filtering
rules allow you to sort on it) will say
From [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sun Dec 2 04:43:40 2001
(with the date changing from message to message, of course).
Other useful headers for sorting PDML messages into their own
folder are:
Return-Path: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sender: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
and, of course:
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
But watch out for using that last one -- the list address could
show up in the "Cc:" header instead of "To:" (some filtering
programs will combine the two for the purpose of a filtering
rule), if someone uses BCC to send a message to the list then
the list address will not show up in either "To:" or "Cc:".
Anyhow, if you have the ability to sort your mail, you probably
have the ability to sort out the PDML messages without needing
a list-tag on the subject line. (Yes, I do acknowledge that
some filtering systems are incredibly primitive -- I hope those
are a small minority.)
(Wow ... glad this came up, actually. Made me take a look at
my filter rules, which include some for when the list was hosted
elsewhere, and then I looked at my Procmail log file and realized
it was 29M because I'd forgotten to clear it out since April 2000.
Whoops!)
-- Glenn
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