From owner-freebsd-current Wed Oct 9 04:26:24 1996 Return-Path: owner-current Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) id EAA18049 for current-outgoing; Wed, 9 Oct 1996 04:26:24 -0700 (PDT) Received: from pillar.elsevier.co.uk (root@pillar.elsevier.co.uk [193.131.222.35]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) with ESMTP id EAA18040 for ; Wed, 9 Oct 1996 04:26:22 -0700 (PDT) Received: from snowdon.elsevier.co.uk (snowdon.elsevier.co.uk [193.131.197.164]) by pillar.elsevier.co.uk (8.8.0/8.8.0) with ESMTP id MAA21821 for ; Wed, 9 Oct 1996 12:23:38 +0100 (BST) Received: from cadair.elsevier.co.uk by snowdon.elsevier.co.uk with SMTP (PP); Wed, 9 Oct 1996 12:25:32 +0100 Received: from tees.elsevier.co.uk (tees.elsevier.co.uk [193.131.197.60]) by cadair.elsevier.co.uk (8.8.0/8.8.0) with ESMTP id MAA16071; Wed, 9 Oct 1996 12:25:26 +0100 (BST) Received: (from dpr@localhost) by tees.elsevier.co.uk (8.8.0/8.8.0) id MAA06265; Wed, 9 Oct 1996 12:24:29 +0100 (BST) To: Dan Janowski Cc: current@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Best mail for threaded majordomo reading? References: <3259C7E9.41C67EA6@netcom.com> From: Paul Richards Date: 09 Oct 1996 12:24:28 +0100 In-Reply-To: Dan Janowski's message of Mon, 07 Oct 1996 23:18:01 -0400 Message-ID: <57lodgfkib.fsf@tees.elsevier.co.uk> Lines: 49 X-Mailer: Gnus v5.3/Emacs 19.30 Sender: owner-current@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk Dan Janowski writes: > What are you guys using? I am using netscape > mail which does threading and mbox-es nicely, but > it has some annoying deficiencies. What is a > good way of auto-processing all the mail into > separate mbox-es, i.e. put list mail somewhere > different than "regular" mail? Well, I re-subscribed to *all* the FreeBSD lists a few months ago after a lengthy break and the first thing I did was evaluate mail readers so it was feasible to stay subscribed. The solution I'd recommend *VERY* strongly is Emacs/Gnus. It has lots of features useful for reading these lists: 1) It's a news reader that has a mail interface so you can filter incoming mail into what look like newsgroups (this is not the same as piping mail into news since these are not real newsgroups). You can choose from a number of backend drivers for mail storage, I use nnml format for incoming mail and nnfolder format for long term archiving. "nnml" looks like a news spool, "nnfolder" is just like a normal mail folder so I can use elm etc on it. You can filter the separate mailing lists into individual groups or merge them into common groups or you can do the selection on subject or author or something else. Very flexible and totally configurable. 2) It removes duplicate postings from multiple mailing lists so I only ever see one copy of a posting, this is *really* nice :-) 3) You can do ranking on subjects so things you're interested have more prominence. 4) It does expiry (just like news) so if I don't read questions for a few days they just go away :-) Personal mail doesn't have expiry enabled but the big, general lists have aggressive expiry, again all very flexible and configurable. I wouldn't survive the massive mail load without gnus, given that I'm a serious vi advocate and consider Emacs to be a resource devouring beast you can appreciate that it must be pretty good for me to have switched to an Emacs based solution :-) -- Paul Richards. Originative Solutions Ltd. (Netcraft Ltd. contractor) Elsevier Science TIS online journal project. Email: p.richards@elsevier.co.uk Phone: 0370 462071 (Mobile), +44 (0)1865 843155