Subject: Suggestion re exclamation marks

From: Nancy McGough <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 12 May 1999 17:32:22 -0400 (EDT)

Dear Pine Gods,

Please do not use exclamation marks unless something is truly
extraordinary or important. For example, in this status msg:

  [New mail to you! From Yogi Bear subject: BooBoo]

I don't think this^ exclamation mark is needed! 

Thanks,
Nancy

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From: "Ed Greshko" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 13 May 1999 11:30:11 +0800

Nancy,
 
>   [New mail to you! From Yogi Bear subject: BooBoo]

I don't know about that....  An email from Yogi seems rather important to me.
 
> I don't think this^ exclamation mark is needed! 

You are talking about the "!" at the end of your sentence, yes?

Ed

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From: Michael Talbot-Wilson <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 13 May 1999 19:36:32 +0930 (CST)

> You are talking about the "!" at the end of your sentence, yes?

Um... being a bit literal, aintcha Ed?  Could she have ended with a small
joke, perhaps?

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From: Edward M Greshko <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 13 May 1999 18:27:06 +0800 (GMT)

On Thu, 13 May 1999, Michael Talbot-Wilson wrote:

> Um... being a bit literal, aintcha Ed?  

Yeah.

> Could she have ended with a small joke, perhaps?

Perhaps.  I know I forgot my ;-).

Yet, this "!" thingy is a nit picking cosmetic item.

Funny thing, as I was typing this in I got a notification about "New
mail!" from Postmaster to inform me of a non-deliverable.  Being the
Postmaster of this site it was, to me, important enough to add the "!".  
I suppose this could lead to a whole new set of configuration settings.
You could specify when to set the "!" and when not to based on the sender
and the To: and/or Cc: fields.  Hummm....let's see, if I get a mail from
my boss but I'm not in the To: or Cc: header then he must have Bcc:'d
me....that may make it worthy of a "!".  :-)

Good night....

Ed

P.S.  Sorry....too much coffee today.

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From: Steven Whatley <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 13 May 1999 15:55:14 -0500 (CDT)

> me....that may make it worthy of a "!".  :-)

How aout checking the "urgent" flag?  If set, use "!".  If not set use
".".  Otherwise, use "?".  [You got new mail?] :) 

Later,
Steven

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From: "Eduardo Chappa L." <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 22 May 1999 15:30:35 -0700 (PDT)

*** Nancy McGough ([email-masked]) wrote on May 12, 1999:

:) Dear Pine Gods,
:) 
:) Please do not use exclamation marks unless something is truly
:) extraordinary or important. For example, in this status msg:
:) 
:)   [New mail to you! From Yogi Bear subject: BooBoo]
:) 
:) I don't think this^ exclamation mark is needed! 
:) 

  Ok, after all the jokes, here's a way to do it.

  If you have access to the code you just have to erase the "!" in line
324 of newmail.c, if you don't use sed, say, and substitute the following
strings:

  "New mail%s!"

  by something of the same length

  "New mail%s.", say

  From the command line in my unix the command that does this is

sed 's/New mail%s\!/New mail%s./' pine > pine2

  An now use pine2, instead of pine. On the other hand, this won't solve
the problem, because there is another place where a "!" is placed in line
322 of the same code, so you would have to change also

  "%ld new messages!"

  by something of the same length as before.

  But on the other hand, I guess this message is important enough for you
to deserve a "!" in the status line message :)

Eduardo
http://www.math.washington.edu/~chappa/personal.html