[Beowulf] suggestion for the digests

[Nifty Tom Mitchell]

On Fri, Apr 17, 2009 at 08:43:20AM +0200, Jonathan Aquilina wrote:
> 
>    i know this has nothing to do with clustering, but im not sure how many
>    of you get the digests of whats being said on the list. from other
>    lists im a member such as the kubuntu and amarok mailing lists. could
>    it be possilble at the beginning of each digest that we get a list of
>    topics that are in it?

This is a common request from time to time.

You have a Gmail account so it makes sense
to use the Gmail filters and turn off digest mode.
The filter can label all the list messages place
them in a mail box and remove the clutter from your INBOX.
Then opening the gmail folder/label will let you see
a subject by subject display.

If you pop/imap fetchmail your mail to a local reader or mbox then 
look at ways to preserve the mail boxes (gmail labels) or use procmail
filters.  There are some gmail issues with imap/pop that are 
interesting.

It is a common enough request that the web has a long list of digestify
and undigestify tools.  Each has their own value equation.    The old
guard likes a digest the way it is.  This is incompatible with
those that want to see a magazine layout that begins with a TOC since
the TOC is not mailbox friendly.   One could build a pseudo email message
that looked like a TOC.  Some mail readers (I forget which)
can look into a digest as if it was a folder and then let you see
subject blocks, threads, by date etc...

Since you have a gmail account use gmail filters and turn
off digest mode.   

Gmail does have some limits (pop/imap).... but for the ones I care about multiple
gmail accounts solves those issues for me.

If you really care consider contributing an alternate digest mode 
(call it magazine mode) to the source of Mailman that can be applied 
as a patch to vers 2.1.4+
  http://www.gnu.org/software/mailman/index.html

I suspect any cool looking solution would be html and many dislike html
as it has security issues.

There are RFCs that some consider important!
  Digest message format: http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1153.html
so the existing format will NOT vanish.




-- 
	T o m  M i t c h e l l 
	Found me a new hat, now what?