Subject: Suggestions to PINE improvment

From: Petr Skoda <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 26 Jan 1994 15:35:15 +0100 (MET)

Dear PINE developers,
let me suggest several add-ons to your excellent program.
I use it everyday and I am very satisfied with it.
I came to PINE after notice of Barry Bouwsma in our local BITNET discussion
list csinfo-l where  we had been just discussing methods of processing
of incoming mail from listservers. Soon  after my comment that the Save
should be done also by Sender field Barry modified the source of v 3.85
and I am glad that you have included this in later versions

After long time of usage of PINE I have several other ideas how to improve
the management of mail from discussion lists:

1)  The sort-key option should include value "sender", so I could have all
    mail from each listserver displayed together. Inside this should be
    applied the option arrival. 

2) Some listservers have very unconvenient Sender field that says little 
about the subject of the list (e.g. one Czech discussion list on SCO 
machine have sender field   maiser.). So it would be nice to have some
other configuration file (say .pinesaveto) which would map the sender:
field to actual name of folder (including path)

3)  Other improvement could allow the save command from index screen with
possibility of selection of several messages together (some form of marking
-highlighting)  and all messages from each sender.

4) Other configuration option (say header-display  with values from:, 
sender:, recipient ... ) should change a form of presentation of headers 
in index. The from: field in massages form listserver is not very useful -
better is sender:  (but may left as it is if the sort-by-sender will be 
used) 

5) For sending mail to international and local lists would be nice to have
two various signatures (one in local language and in English). In BSD mail
is the option ~A   ~a   for appending the .Signature  and .signature 
files respectively. I suggest the usage of some key to include the 
.Signature file or .signature          and have the possibility not to
append it just after start of composing (say option   choose-signature)

6) There should be a possibility during Sending message to invoke a sendmail
with -v (verbose mode) that displays a SMTP conversation between machines.
It is useful when you try a new address and you are not sure wheather it is
right or if you need to see that the massage was delivered to the target 
machine (to recipient) just now.
I suggest either an  auxiliary question 
"Verbose sending ? [n]:" after ^X (Send) or two cases of Send command
^X  normal send in background
^x  verbose mode. 

I know that for processing of mail-lists there are better programs 
(e.g.procmail) but these will save incoming messages in time of delivery.
But I want to see what has just come alltogether and then sort to various 
folders myself but with smallest effort (saving keystrokes).

Let me know, please, whether you have accepted any my suggestion and what 
form of its implementation will be used. 

Regards,

*************************************************************************
*  Petr Skoda                         Phone : +42-204-85201, ext. 361   *  
*  Stellar Department                         +42-2-724525              *
*  Astronomical Institute CAS         Fax   : +42-2-881611              *
*  251 65 Ondrejov                    e-mail: [email-masked]  *
*  Czech Republic                             [email-masked]     *
*************************************************************************

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From: David L Miller <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 26 Jan 1994 09:05:11 -0800 (PST)

Petr,

Thank you for the good suggestions!  See my comments below.

|\ |  |\/|  David L. Miller    [email-masked]  (206) 685-6240
|/ |_ |  |  Software Engineer, Pine Development Team   (206) 685-4045 (FAX)
University of Washington, Networks & Distributed Computing
4545 15th Ave NE, Seattle WA 98105, USA

>     applied the option arrival. 
This is a good suggestion.  We will also have other ways to group 
messages in the next version of Pine.  e.g. you will be able to Zoom in 
on a set of messages.

> field to actual name of folder (including path)
The handling of the Sender field by listserv is very unfortunate.  There 
have been some other suggestions how to handle a save-by-alias operation, 
but we have not decided on a strategy yet.

> -highlighting)  and all messages from each sender.
This is coming in the next version of Pine.

> better is sender:  (but may left as it is if the sort-by-sender will be 
This is an interesting suggestion.  We will have to give it some 
consideration.

> append it just after start of composing (say option   choose-signature)
Several variations of this have been suggested.  For now, you might try 
naming your signature files .s and .S, then use ^R to read in the 
appropriate one on each message.

> ^X  normal send in background
Hmmm...  This would definitely be a power-user feature...

BTW, ^x and ^X are the same character...
> folders myself but with smallest effort (saving keystrokes).
Stay tuned, improvements are coming...