Re: [Exim] Possibility of rewriting the subject...

* Troy Settle <troy@???> [2003-06-03 01:03:13 BST]:
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Peter McGarvey
> > > I subscribe to dozens of mailing lists, very few of which
> > > do this stupid subject-line munging.
> >
> > I *LIKE* the stupid subject line munging. Infact I like it so
> > much I actually rewrote my procmail recipes to add it to the subject
> > lines of all those mailing lists which don't include it.
>
> It's amazing that we're on a list dedicated to a piece of software that
> includes a very robust filtering tool and that we still need to rely on
> subject tags to sort our mail.

Don't believe I said anything about sorting on subject headers.

I merely add a tag to the subject. Then, instead of having a seperate
mailbox for each mailing list, I can group lists by subject matter - and
still be able to tell which list a mail belongs to. I subscribe to
lists with a broad range of topics. Grouping related topics together
reduces the required number of mental context shifts, as well as the
required number of mailboxes.

I remeber one place I worked. All the secretaries stored their XLS
files in one directory, their Word documents in another, Powerpoint
presentations elsewhere, etc., etc., and all filenames were the in the
format "ddmmyyyy". Not supprisingly my main support task was to find
documents people had lost. Eventually I managed to get people to
realise that the filename extension and the datestamp meant that they
could dispense with their standard format, and they could start to group
stuff in a manner that worked for them.

I simply choose to collate my mail in a manner which works for me.


>
> #Exim filter
> if $h_list-id: contains "exim-users.exim.org"
> then
> save /path/to/Maildir/.Lists.Exim-Users/
> finish
> endif
>
> I'm doing this for some 20 mailing lists. Some use $h_sender:, which
> accomplishes the same thing for those lists without a List-Id: header.
> Not one of my filters uses anything in the subject.

Aye. And the next list you subscribe to you'll need to remember to
rewrite your filter. Whereas I use a local_part_prefix. Allowing me to
subscribe to a list and route mail into the correct mailbox simply by
choosing the correct prefix.


> What happens if someone sends you a private response to a message from a
> list and you miss it because you sorted based on the subject tag? I
> don't know about you, but I don't even come close to reading every
> message from every list I'm on.

I'm not *that* stoopid. Of course personal mail gets put into a
personal inbox.

And as far as reading mail is concerned, no I don't read all my list
mail either. But these days I at least read most of the subjects.
Whereas when I had silly amounts of list mailboxes I'd read stuff in
order of "importance", get frustrated at the mid point, and then mark
everything else a read.

Don't get me wrong, my mail isn't perfect, it still sucks. But ever
since I decided to customise my software to fit my behaviour, rather
than try and cusomise my behaviour to fit the software, I don't tend to
notice the suckyness quite so much.


--
TTFN, FNORD

Peter McGarvey
Freelance FreeBSD Hacker
(will work for bandwidth)