Subject: The FUTURE Power of PINE!

From: Dave <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 26 Oct 1995 08:17:46 -0400 (EDT)

Not to make any hasty statements about the technology of e-mail programs 
nowadays, but I see GREAT limitations in these programs to support 
ORGANIZING e-mail!  Great, your program can do all these nifty things to 
help u in your PRESENT e-mail experience, but what about the FUTURE?  
And what about those pack-rat librarian types that like saving their 
e-mail debates for the long-term?  Someone goes back to their folders that 
contain hundreds of messages....downloads them...tries to organize them 
on their pc, & virtually starts going gray b4 they finish sorting thru 
ONE FOLDER.  So what am I saying? And what specific improvements would I 
suggest?
    Firstly, give the option to save by SUBJECT as the default. 
This keeps all the mailers in a debate on the same subject in the same 
folder.  Sure, there's prolly a program that can do that now...but I 
don't think Pine can yet.  What else?  Secondly, have the program 
AUTOMATICALLY insert the first letter of the person your debating w/ in 
front of the 'replied' text...& also have it insert an abbreviated version 
of the date in front of the text to organize those two year long debates 
that seem to have been going on for ages.(c below). Finally, have the mail 
program be able to AUTOMATICALLY save messages to more than one folder at 
once....& automatically make copies of your incoming messages & save them 
in different folders for u.  Example:  Today I receive 10 messages from 5 
different people w/ 8 different debating topics.  First, when I receive 
this mail, the program should have AUTOMATICALLY made a copy of each 
message and saved it in an "inbox history" folder for u (This folder will 
keep a perfect record of all the mail u have received)[Idealy, the mail 
program should keep these stats for u, as opposed to having to actually 
'copy' the message to a folder]. Second, ideally, the e-mail program 
should have the function to RECOGNIZE the subject header and attempt to 
save a copy of that message in the subject folder that matches that 
subject header.... This way u will have all the messages automatically 
filtered into folders by the subject line---organization begins to get 
easier now.  Third, any REPLIES that u receive to messages should be 
taken off an 'outstanding thread' list that the e-mail program has in it's 
memory.  U should be able to ask your program which mailers I have & 
haven't received replies to... this will give the e-mailer the 
opportunity to reminds the recipient to comment on an important mailer 
that they mailed out 2 weeks ago w/ those 20 other ones....this prevents 
the 'important mailer' that gets lost in the shuffle of things.

How would I increase the power of outgoing part of programs?  Again, have 
pine AUTOMATICALLY, not only save your message to a sent-mail folder (or 
stats list), but if saves a copy to the particular subject it is 
addressing in the subject header.  Also, again, the program should be 
able to keep track of which messages are going out, so it can keep track 
of your 'outstanding' messages.
------
E-mail format should look like the following.....

D>10225. Hey Bryan, What did u think of the Oj Verdict?
B>10245. Dave, I think  Oj was guilty cuz.....blah blah blah blah.....
 >Blah blah blah................
 >Blah blah bla...........
 >Blah Blah........
D>10265. Bryan, Bryan, Bryan,.....He was innocent cuz....blah blah blah
 >Blah blah blah......
B>10275. No. Guilty Dave......Blah blah blah......
 >Blah  Blah......
-------

Anything an e-mail program can do to support the maintenance of the above 
'clean' & organized format should be done.  Too many ">'s" kill a lengthy
debate.  Inserting the first letter of your name and indenting all the
following text 1 space GREATLY adds clarity.  Inserting a BRIEF date in
front of the your response adds chronology to long running debates.
These are my suggestions.  If I had programming knowledge, I would create
and e-mail program to do everthing I mentioned in this mailer (if 
possible).  Maybe it's just for the librarian, pack-rat, record-keepers, 
but I have a feeling that this format will become the e-mail format of 
the future due to it's increased clarity and organization friendliness.

-Dave Blackington
 Auburn University 
 [email-masked]

PS. I know u said u didn't want any questions, but here's the question I had
that spurred my suggestions above.... Maybe  u can try to answer this 
question in xchange for my unsolicited opinion above......Thanks...:)

------------
I'm assuming this is a rather unique question that hasn't been addressed on
this list before...  I'm not a regular subscriber, so I wouldn't be able
to know for sure.  I scanned thru Uwash's web site, and didn't seem to find
the answer.  I also tried connecting to the pinedemo in hopes that it would
'run' the way I wanted it to 'run,' but it apparently seems to be 'down'
right now.
Anyway, My question:  After downloading a folder of mail, if I REupload it,
include it in a mailer, and send it to myself, will pine break this folder
up into individual messages again, or will I only receive one big message?
Well, the answer seems to be vary.... Why?  Cuz I have had BOTH situations
happen.  Last year at Auburn U, I sent an entire folder and pine successfully
broke it back up into it's separate messages for me.  But NOW, I'm using 
FSU's freenet, and it apparently wants to insert a ">" at the beginning 
of EVERY header forcing pine to see this folder as ONE BIG file, as opposed
to a bunch of little messages that are coming in.  Anyway, my question is
how I get pine to do what it did at Auburn....breaking up the folder...
treating each message separately.?  Is this a pine decision, or system
decision?

Why do I want to know?  Well, last year I downloaded all my folders, but I
forgot to organize them b4 I downloaded them.  Now I want to upload them
back to the system, read them in a file, send them to myself, and have 
pine rerecognize them as separate mailers. This will give me a chance to 
rearrange them at my leisure & put them in the correct order b4 I 
download them once again..... C the problem?

---

From: [email-masked] (Tom I Helbekkmo)
Date: Mon, 30 Oct 1995 19:49:26 GMT

[email-masked] (Dave) writes:

...a long text containing interesting new ideas about how to store and
organize e-mail.  I fought my way through it in spite of the "semi
shorthand" style, which I find quite difficult to read and comprehend
at the same time, Dave!  Then again, English is not my native language
-- if it were, I might feel more comfortable with the "c u l8r" style
abbreviations...  :-)

However, I'm not posting this to comment on Dave's ideas.  Rather, now
that the subject has been broached, I'd like to air my own long time
wish for a different email storage architecture:  Instead of folders,
I'd like to have an inverted text database with specific recognition
of header fields and inter-message referencing, so that I could tell
my MUA things like

- show me all mail to or from Dave during the last two months
- list all mail items with "Pine" in the subject field
- find mail from someone at cmu.edu that mentioned CMUCL in the text

and so on.  I'm not sure what sort of query language would be best,
but it should probably be something that could do simple boolean
expressions in English, and be able to store these as macros to be
called by name or through keyboard bindings.  A MUA using this concept
would come with a set of commonly used macros already bound to
keyboard shortcuts, of course -- single key commands for the most
"normal" actions, including stuff like (when you're reading a newly
arrived mail item) "list the items making up the context of this one".

Comments, anyone?

-tih
-- 
Tom Ivar Helbekkmo
[email-masked]