prefix missing in subject

[Tom Diehl]

On Wed, 23 Jan 2002, Greg Zartman wrote:

> I can't see how having [SAMBA] at the beginning of the subject degrades 
> your screen space to any noticeable degree.  Look at the subject line of 
> this email.  Does it affect the apperance in any way?  No.  We're only 
> talking seven characters here.


This particular email is not a good example. Very often there are msgs
that when combined with the other stuff on the line make it so that
you cannot see the whole subject. In some instances it also leads to
stupid things like Re: [samba] Re:[samba] Re: [samba] some subject here.
Now that is what I call useful!! I will admit that mailman seems to be 
good at limiting that garbage.
Just as an example on an 80 column screen this is what I see:

+   112 Jan 22 Mailer                       (11K) SourceForge.net Update: Janua

There was actually more to the subject but enough that I knew what was going
on. throw in an Re: [samba] and you do not lose just 7 characters in a lot
of cases you loose enough of the subject that in order to know what the
subject is you have to open the msg. That is why I object to the tags.

> Well, for those who don't have the expertise to setup complex mail 
> sorting, it's quite useful.  The current Samba mailing list messages 
> simply plop into your inbox, looking like any other email.  

Try subscribing to 50+ mailing lists and see how long your way is useful. 
For that matter try doing 4 or 5. If they have more than a few msgs a 
day it is just as bad as no tag in the subject anyway.

> > ALL messages from this list that are easier and better to filter on. If 
> 
> How do you figure?  Nearly every email client out there has the ability 
> to scan subject lines and sort.  Many don't, however, have the ability to 
> sort using the various other email headers.  Why should a person have to 
> switch email clients to enjoy this forum?   Lets step outside of the box 
> here a little.  Not everyone subscribing to this list is a NIX guru.

You do not need to be a guru. Just read the man pg for 30 seconds and you
will see that there are very clear examples on how to do this. 
When I first started doing this stuff the email client I use would not sort
on anything so I found procmail nearly 10 years ago. Hint every msg from 
this list has the following line in the 
header: "X-BeenThere: samba at lists.samba.org"

> As an aside: I've lurked in this and another Samba list for over a year 
> now and I view this more of a beginners to intermediate list than 
> anything.  Most of the posts are simply setup questions that have been 
> answered dozens of times.  
> 
> 
> > Procmail is your friend!!
> 
> Agreed.  I love procmail.  Problem is, procmail isn't exactly intuitive 
> to the NIX beginner.  I'd bet that most of the newcomers to this list are 
> folks trying to transition from a Windows solution to a Linux-Samba one.  
> I have no doubt that they could, in time, figure out procmail.  Problem 
> is they first need to know what the heck procmail is and then how to use 
> it.  

I will agree that procmail can be a bear for advanced things but how hard 
is it to look in the header of the first mail you receive from a list 
and do something like the following:

:0:
* ^X-BeenThere: samba at lists.samba.org
samba

One of the really cool things about mailman is that it puts the X-BeenThere 
line in every msg it generates which is just there for sorting on (among 
other things). IMO it does not get much easier. It just requires 5 minutes 
of effort. The really good thing about this is once someone learns how 
easy it is the problem is solved for ever.

FWIW, This is well documented in procmailex 5. As to your argument that 
it is too difficult for a beginner I disagree. It was one of the first 
things I figured out when I first transitioned from DOS to *nix many years
ago. It took all of about 10 minutes reading of the man pages and I felt good
about it my accomplishments too. Besides there are many places to ask for 
help just like this list.

Since this is really OT for this list I will not comment on it further.
My mind cannot be changed on it's usefulness and I doubt I will change 
anyone else's mind either. Besides just last month I finally figured out how
to use procmail to get rid of the garbage. I will be the first to admit 
that was a tough one for me to get right but I finally got it. This is 
reason why I argue against it so hard. I wasted way too much time 
figuring out how to filter the tags out and it actually took someone 
else's help to get it right. So since you are arguing about how difficult 
it is to configure I will say that I spent many more hours figuring out 
how to filter out the tags than I did figuring out how to sort the msgs.

Hopefully someone will take this info and use it to set up procmail.

Enjoy,

-- 
......Tom		BITTERNESS: Never be Afraid to Share Your Dreams 
tdiehl at rogueind.com	with the World, Because There's Nothing the World 
			Loves More Than the Taste of Really Sweet Dreams.