[Mailman-Users] Digest indexes

[Lucio Chiappetti]

On Wed, 17 Dec 2014, Peter Shute wrote:

>> On 17 Dec 2014, at 8:58 pm, Lucio Chiappetti wrote:
>>
>> I am subscribed in MIME digest mode to all lists which support them. I
>> find they are a great way to receive messages once per day (more or less)
>> without being pestered by single messages as they come.

So you have found a way to bypass the digest and pestering me ! :-)

>> this splits the digest into a mail folder.

> So this breaks the digest into separate emails? Wouldn't it be simpler 
> to have a message rule that diverts the individual emails into a folder 
> on arrival instead of using digest mode? Or doesn't Alpine support that 
> kind of thing?

technically speaking, "on arrival" pertains to a mail delivery agent, and 
not to a MUA, which may operate when first entered by the user.

Perhaps it is possible to use Alpine "filter rules", but I never tried 
them and am not familiar with them.

On the other hand formail is part of procmail, which IS a delivery agent 
(actually on my SuSE it is the default delivery agent of sendmail). Any 
"filtering on arrival" can be more or less easily done with procmail.
I do an extensive use of it http://sax.iasf-milano.inaf.it/~lucio/Procmail/

So you could do what you propose straight with procmail !

It is mainly a matter of user preferences (YMMV ?)

I do divert some specific messages to specific folders, seminar 
announcements for one, and different level of spam for another.

Concerning mailing lists, I consider them of a more transient nature, I am 
not interested in keeping their messages "forever". So the MIME digest 
mechanism is fine insofar I want to receive all messages of the day at one 
moment. Then I usually look at the list of messages (almost all digests I 
know, notably the ones generated by mailman, have a list of subjects 
close to the top) ... if I see no subjects which interest me I just delete 
the entire digest. If I see something interesting, I press D, expand in a 
temporary folder, read the messages and reply to or archive the few really 
interesting ones.

I actually do use procmail on mailing lists to divert their messages 
(which usually are entire digests) to a specific folder when on vacation.
We can have pretty long vacations in this country :-)

I have divided the lists I am subscribed to in two categories and so have 
just two folders, one per category.

For the less interesting lists, when I am away I divert them to /dev/null.

For the most interesting lsits, I divert them to a cumulative folder, so I 
can read them when I am back.

This way my INBOX is not cluttered with mailing list messages, but only 
with messages from invididuals. This makes easy to sort the backlog when I 
return. Or to access the INBOX via a webmailer (which I may do once or 
twice per vacation period ... I am not the type which needs to be 
permanently connected :-))

-- 
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Lucio Chiappetti - INAF/IASF - via Bassini 15 - I-20133 Milano (Italy)
For more info : http://www.iasf-milano.inaf.it/~lucio/personal.html
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