[comp.mail.mh] Excessive names in 'To:'line

ray@smart.sps.mot.com (Ken Ray) (02/26/91)

I have just started using "mh" for electronic mail, and I need a simple,
easy method to send messages to a large number of people (~1,000) without
have a 1,000 addresses in the 'To:' line.

I am sure that this topic has been covered multiple times in the past.  As
I read the 'comp.mail.mh' news group for the first time this morning, I
found some related, but much more complicated, issues being discussed; and
I wondered if there was an easy way to force only the alias name to be
dispayed, or only the name of the person receiving the message, rather 
than showing the names of everone in the alias. A -switch would be
the simplest, but I could find no information concerning such a switch.

Any help would be appreciated.

Ken Ray
ray@dover.sps.mot.com

ziegast@ENG.UMD.EDU (Eric Ziegast) (02/27/91)

Ken Ray writes:
>I have just started using "mh" for electronic mail, and I need a simple,
>easy method to send messages to a large number of people (~1,000) without
>have a 1,000 addresses in the 'To:' line.
>
>I am sure that this topic has been covered multiple times in the past.  As
>I read the 'comp.mail.mh' news group for the first time this morning, I
>found some related, but much more complicated, issues being discussed; and
>I wondered if there was an easy way to force only the alias name to be
>dispayed, or only the name of the person receiving the message, rather 
>than showing the names of everone in the alias. A -switch would be
>the simplest, but I could find no information concerning such a switch.

If you use sendmail, you could try having your sys-admin put in
a bunch of those aliases for you.  They won't be expanded in the message.

The might crash sendmail though if you put too many in one alias.
One warped way you could do it:

	dist:you@your.host
	dist1:addr1,addr2,addr3,addr4 . . .
	dist2:addr100,addr101 . . .
	distN:addr,addr . . .addr

and sending it to the dist addresses with a Reply-to: to dist.
That way you can use slocal to filter in that mail and resend it out
with "To: dist1,dist2,etc." again.


Also, I'd suggest that if you have a mailing list bigger than 1000
people that you should have a USENET newsgroup created.  It is most-
likely alot more efficient.  (Could rec.humor survive as just a mailing
list? ;-)

Others like comp.mail.mh (mh-users@ics.uci.edu) use a split method
between mail and USENET.

I doubt there's any -switch.
________________________________________________________________________
Eric W. Ziegast, University of Merryland, Engineering Computing Services
ziegast@eng.umd.edu - Eric@(301.405.3689)