alex@dutirt1.tudelft.nl (Alexander Vonk) (10/11/89)
Just an idea: I receive or send mail to my friend Matthijs a lot. His address is specified as alias 'matthijs', because his mail address is 'b35@dhdurz1.bitnet' and that's to much to remember for me. When I want to save this mail using ELM 2.2 PL11 the default save folder pops up as '=b35', while I want to save this mail in archive '=matthijs'. Is it possible to specify default save folders in an aliases-like way, like usage of the aliases database to come up with a more user friendly name than the userid in the mail address itself? By the way: I have been using ELM for about 3 months and I am very pleased with ELM. +++ Alexander Vonk - Technical Univ. Delft, Netherlands +++ +++Phone: (NL) 015 - 78 64 12 (world) 31 15 78 64 12 +++ +++Mail: alex@dutirt2.tudelft.nl or alex@dutirt2.UUCP +++
edwin@praxis.cs.ruu.nl (Edwin Kremer) (10/12/89)
In article <627@duteca.UUCP> alex@dutirt1.tudelft.nl (Alexander Vonk) writes: > Just an idea: > I receive or send mail to my friend Matthijs a lot. His address is specified > as alias 'matthijs', because his mail address is 'b35@dhdurz1.bitnet' and > that's to much to remember for me. When I want to save this mail using > ELM 2.2 PL11 the default save folder pops up as '=b35', while I want to > save this mail in archive '=matthijs'. > Is it possible to specify default save folders in an aliases-like way, > like usage of the aliases database to come up with a more user friendly > name than the userid in the mail address itself? Right, I'd like to see a feature like this as well, not only for the reason mentioned above but also for the following scenario: if you happen to know a few guys named "joe", messages to whichever "joe" all end up in the same mail folder and that's pretty annoying. Of course it's not an easy step to change this, because Elm needs to *recognize* email addresses to find the corresponding alias name. If the mail headers in a message from "Joe Blue" to me *always* contain the *same* 'From:' line, it seems to be just pattern matching on the aliases, but that's not always the case. E.g. if "Joe Blue" is located in the domain "foo.bar.toplevel", it depends on his mail delivery agent how it constructs the 'From:' line: if it prepends the domain with a host name, we're in trouble because "Joe Blue" might be sending off mail from a lot of different machine is his domain. If we want to tackle this, I guess we should add an "also-known-as" field to the alias file. This extra field consists of one or more alternate email adresses. How about the opinion of other Elm users on this suggestion ??? --[ Edwin ]-- -- Edwin Kremer, Department of Computer Science, University of Utrecht Padualaan 14, P.O. Box 80.089, 3508 TB Utrecht, The Netherlands Phone : +31 - 30 - 534104 | Telefax: +31 - 30 - 513791 E-Mail: edwin@cs.ruu.nl | UUCP to: ...!hp4nl!ruuinf!edwin
rob@PacBell.COM (Rob Bernardo) (10/12/89)
In article <1686@ruuinf.cs.ruu.nl> edwin@praxis.cs.ruu.nl (Edwin Kremer) writes: +In article <627@duteca.UUCP> alex@dutirt1.tudelft.nl (Alexander Vonk) writes: + + > Just an idea: + > I receive or send mail to my friend Matthijs a lot. His address is specified + > as alias 'matthijs', because his mail address is 'b35@dhdurz1.bitnet' and + > that's to much to remember for me. When I want to save this mail using + > ELM 2.2 PL11 the default save folder pops up as '=b35', while I want to + > save this mail in archive '=matthijs'. + > Is it possible to specify default save folders in an aliases-like way, + > like usage of the aliases database to come up with a more user friendly + > name than the userid in the mail address itself? + +Of course it's not an easy step to change this, because Elm needs to +*recognize* email addresses to find the corresponding alias name. If +the mail headers in a message from "Joe Blue" to me *always* contain +the *same* 'From:' line, it seems to be just pattern matching on the +aliases, but that's not always the case. This is true, and also the fact that not all messages have a From: line, nor do all messages from the same person always have the same return address (even if originated from the same logname & host, if your system does not use internet addressing). +If we want to tackle this, I guess we should add an "also-known-as" +field to the alias file. This extra field consists of one or more +alternate email adresses. This won't work. There is a one-to-many relationship between aliases and addresses. You can't take an address and be guaranteed to get a single alias record with a matching address. An additional hitch is that this feature would also have to work for (1) saved copies of outbound messages (whether or not you used an alias availble for the address used) and (2) the 's' and 'C' commands for saving and copying a message to another folder. A more complex solution would be needed to implement this enhancement. -- Rob Bernardo ...![backbone]!pacbell!pbhyf!rob -or- rob@pbhyf.PacBell.COM Product engineer, UNIX/C Reusable Code Library Editor, "Go `C' UNIX" Office: (415) 823-2417 Pacific * Bell, San Ramon, California Residence: (415) 827-4301 R BAR JB, Concord, California
scott@grlab.UUCP (Scott Blachowicz) (10/16/89)
The general problem... In article <627@duteca.UUCP> alex@dutirt1.tudelft.nl (Alexander Vonk) writes: > Just an idea: > ... > Is it possible to specify default save folders in an aliases-like way, > like usage of the aliases database to come up with a more user friendly > name than the userid in the mail address itself? In article <6226@pbhyf.PacBell.COM> rob@PacBell.COM (Rob Bernardo) writes: > ...[followup to a followup describing problems with mapping username > back through the aliases file]... > >A more complex solution would be needed to implement this enhancement. ...or a simpler solution. If most of the messages involved have the user's "FullName" somewhere in the headers (From:, Full-name:, others), couldn't that be used to generate a folder name. It achieves the desired goals of distinguishing between different people with the same username and giving a better name to usernames like "b35". I know all mail doesn't have a FullName in it, but using it if it's there might help a lot of cases out. If the Full-Name were used, then problems of users on different machines would be gone, to be replaced by problems like "is 'Joe Blow' the same person as 'Joseph X. Blow, III' or 'Josef BLOW'?". Maybe one could set up a list of regular expressions to describe the auto-save somehow and the folder to save to. The VM mailer under GnuEmacs has such a facility. Is a reasonably simple solution possible here or is it just a different set of complexities? ...food for thought. -- Scott Blachowicz E-mail: scott@grlab.UUCP USPS: Graphicus ..or.. ...!hpubvwa!grlab!scott 150 Lake Str S, #206 VoicePh: 206/828-4691 Kirkland, WA 98033 FAX: 206/828-4236