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Date:      09 Oct 1996 12:24:28 +0100
From:      Paul Richards <p.richards@elsevier.co.uk>
To:        Dan Janowski <danj@netcom.com>
Cc:        current@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: Best mail for threaded majordomo reading?
Message-ID:  <57lodgfkib.fsf@tees.elsevier.co.uk>
In-Reply-To: Dan Janowski's message of Mon, 07 Oct 1996 23:18:01 -0400
References:  <3259C7E9.41C67EA6@netcom.com>

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Dan Janowski <danj@netcom.com> 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



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