Subject: Pine 3.95 and multiple folders and filtering, etc

From: [email-masked]
Date: Fri, 14 Feb 1997 10:44:17 -0500 (EST)

I am thinking of using procmail along with Pine 3.95 to automagically filter
my mail into various local folders on my Unix (Solaris 2.5) machine.

I just thought of something: 

Procmail will put various messages into various files (folders) according to
the rules I give in my .procmailrc. So far so good. 

But how the heck am I to know which folders to open and read? I dont want to
go and look in each and every folder and look for the 'N' flag to see if I
have got any new messages. My purpose in doing mail filtering is to make life
more efficient/stream-lined. This 'hunting down new messages in all the damn
folders' is the exact opposite it this.

How have you guys dealt with this problem?

Sven, Nancy?

Thanks a lot,
--Vikas

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From: Mike Brudenell <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 14 Feb 1997 17:45:30 +0000 (GMT)

If you have arriving messages being delivered into different folders (eg,
by using the "procmail" or "filter" packages) you can set Pine up to make
checking and using these really easy...

1.  Start Pine and go to its Setup Configuration screen.

2.  Look for the "enable-incoming-folders" option.

3.  Read the builtin help for this (by typing "?"), then set it.

4.  Exit from the Setup Configuration screen, saving your changes.

5.  Go to the Folder List screen (L).

Your INBOX folder now appears in a "collection" by itself.  With the
cursor on any folder in this collection (currently you will only have the
INBOX there!) use the Add (A) command to give the name of another of the
incoming mail folders.  Repeat, adding each in turn.

You can now move between the mail folders using the Folder List screen, or
the Goto (G) command.

An even easier way is to use the Tab key.  This normally hunts through
your current folder for the next recent (or "important") message.  When
there aren't any more it will now offer to check further folders that you
have set up in the incoming folders collection.  If one of these contains
any recently arrived messages it will offer to open the folder so that you
can read them.

Cheers,

-- 
Mike Brudenell                                         <[email-masked]>
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Computing Service, University of York, Heslington, York, YO1 5DD, UK
Tel: +44-1904-433811  FAX: +44-1904-433740  http://www.york.ac.uk/~pmb1/

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From: [email-masked]
Date: Fri, 14 Feb 1997 14:44:13 -0500 (EST)

> any recently arrived messages it will offer to open the folder so that you

Hmm.. that sounds interesting. 

But it is still not what I am looking for. Say procmail siphons off my mail
into 3 of such incoming folders that I defined as above. Looking at Pine,
which is displaying my INBOX (primary incoming mail), I have *no* way to know
exactly how many messages are waiting for me in each of my other folders in my
incoming folder collections.

I like the way Pine changes my Xterm icon/title to tell me that '3 new
messages. Most recent from John Doe'. 

Is there a way I can get similar functionality (a summary report) of all my
new messages in all my incoming folders? Or am I asking too much from Pine?

From what you say, the only option I have is to merrily <Tab> along blindly!
What I am looking for is a cure screen that I can invoke on-demand that tells
me the number of new messages in each of my incoming folders! 

Also, Pine does not beep or do anything special when a message is filtered off
into a incoming folder other than INBOX. In a given day, say I am working with
Pine iconized, how am I going to tell that procmail just did a bit of work and
channelled a mail to folder XXX? 

*sigh* I think I know what your answer is going to be! 

Thanks for your reply, Mike. I appreciate it.

--Vikas

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From: [email-masked] (Sven Guckes)
Date: 15 Feb 1997 19:54:50 GMT

[email-masked] ([email-masked]):
> Procmail puts various messages into various folders according to the rules I
> give in my procmailrc.   But how am I to know which folders to open and read?

Well, procmail's logfile will have the info on the filtered email.
You can use a script to gather this info and give you a summary.
However, you have to decide when to clear the log - every time you get
the summary or periodically or just do it manually when you see fit.

No solution is perfect.  Just try and see.  Or look at it the same
way as with Usenet and newsgroups - start your mailer and see.

I use this command to get a screenfull from the end of procmail's log:

	grep "^  Folder:" ~/.procmail/log | tail -${1:-$LINES}

There are probably better ways - let us hear about them!

Sven

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From: Mike Brudenell <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 17 Feb 1997 15:07:12 +0000 (GMT)

> messages. Most recent from John Doe'.

It only does this for your INBOX folder (plus the currently open folder if
not the INBOX).  In particular it does not monitor the other
"incoming-folders" folders to watch for new mail arriving into them.

I suspect this is partly for efficiency's sake: every additional folder
that has to be monitored is yet another IMAP connection to the mail server
machine.

> new messages in all my incoming folders? Or am I asking too much from Pine?

You're asking too much, I'm afraid. 

> me the number of new messages in each of my incoming folders! 

Well, not quite blindly... I think it skips over any subsequent
incoming-folders which don't have any recent messages in them.

> channelled a mail to folder XXX? 

You can't (see above).  I guess you'll have to start looking at running
some sort of "newmail" script in the background if you want this.

Cheers,

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From: Paul O Bartlett <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 14 Feb 1997 19:29:59 -0500

On 14 Feb 1997 [email-masked] wrote:

> But how the heck am I to know which folders to open and read? [...]
> 
> Sven, Nancy?

    Well, I am not Sven or Nancy, but I have a technique which may
serve your purpose of knowing how many messages are in each folder
managed by procmail.  From your message header, you seem to be using
Solaris, which is a Un*x variant.  If Perl is installed on your system
(and you have a WWW browser), browse my home page under the Pine and
mail filtering section.  I have a shell script and a Perl script which
it calls which display how many messages are in each incoming folder
(and something about those in the INBOX itself).  You will have to
adjust it according to how many folders you have and what their names
are, of course.  Any other needed adjustments are your own, also, but
they are free for the taking.

Paul                             <[email-masked]>
----------------------------------------------------------
Paul O. Bartlett, P.O. Box 857, Vienna, VA 22183-0857, USA
Finger, keyserver, or WWW for PGP 2.6.2 public key 
Home Page:  http://www.access.digex.net/~pobart

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From: [email-masked] (Mike Hollyman)
Date: 18 Feb 1997 04:34:26 GMT

>my mail into various local folders on my Unix (Solaris 2.5) machine.

(snip)

>folders' is the exact opposite it this.

(snip)
I have the solution to your problems.  You have X, so there is no better 
app for you than XBuffy.  It will watch as many folders as you want.  I 
currently use procmail to filter on 7 folders, and eash is listed in a 
small window, a little bigger that the xbiff with each folders name.  When
new mail arrives, it changes inverse color, and or flashes the subject
and who it's from.

It's the best app I have running on my machine!  You can get the source from:
ftp://uiarchive.cso.uiuc.edu/pub/X11/contrib/utilities/xbuffy3.2.1.tar.gz

Enjoy!
--
Mike Hollyman				   www.uiuc.edu/ph/www/mikeh
Computing & Communications Services Office
(217) 244-8724  	  --finger [email-masked] for PGP Public Key