Re: How to organize mail in folders?
Michelle, I think there is a misunderstanding. I wanted to understand how other people process their email. You are giving me pointers to programs but don't describe how you use them. Here is a potential strategy for handling mail: - All incoming mail goes to inbox. - I process all mails from inbox. - Some messages I read, then delete right away. - Other messages I read, then archive by project. By project means that there is a folder for each project. - Some messages I read, then respond to and archive (by project). - Some messages I read, decide that I can't handle them right away, so I put them in the todo folder. Every morning I go through my todo folder. - Some messages (often those sent by me) are waiting for responses from others. I file those in the pending folder. Every morning I go through my pending folder to see whether a response has arrived. Some of the above steps could be automated. The strategy does not handle mailing lists well. But I hope it shows one possible response and makes it clear in what way your response differs from what I was expecting. (I do not follow the above strategy, if that matters. Maybe I should. Or maybe you have a better strategy?) On to the details of your message: On Thu, Jul 19, 2007 at 07:26:31PM +0200, Michelle Konzack wrote: Am 2007-07-11 17:03:23, schrieb Kai Grossjohann: What I'm looking for is some suggestions on how else I might organize my mail, that fits more with what Mutt offers. I think most of you face the same basic situation as I do: - Receive personal mail and mailing list mail. fetchmail or getmail Those do not know the difference between personal mail and mailing list mail, I think. - Have different strategies for handling mail depending on the address they were sent to (some mailing lists are less important than most personal mail, so we don't check for new mail there as often). procmail or maildrop Those do not check whether new mail is available that needs to be processed. - Want to archive a large portion of mail. archivemail This is a good hint. Thanks a lot! - Want to have an overview of messages that still need action of some type. ??? I get a message. It could be something I read and then delete. Or it could be something that I read and then archive. Or I respond right away and then delete or archive. These cases are easy. Then there are messages that mean I need to do something, but I need longer to do them. Or I need to get feedback from somewhere. Or whatever. My memory is quite bad, so I like to have the computer store a list of these open ends so I don't have to remember them. - Don't want the archive to interfere (too much) with this overview. ??? Suppose I have a folder for the foo project. Then which of the messages in that folder are open ends that still need action, and which of them are archived messages? Right? So what do you do? ...its up to you. :-) I hope that what _you_ do is not up to _me_. Kai
Re: disallowing to send mail without Subject:
Matthias Apitz [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: When I write with mutt (1.4.2.2i) a mail without Subject: it asks me if I want to cancel this or not, and the default is to cancel it and not let it pass accidently by just hitting ENTER; so far so good; is it even somehow configurable that it does not let send me the mail without Subject: in any case? Yes. If you read http://www.mutt.org/doc/manual/manual-6.html#ss6.3 , the documentation for the very first option listed tells you exactly how to accomplish that. Charles -- --- Charles Cazabon [EMAIL PROTECTED] GPL'ed software available at: http://pyropus.ca/software/ ---
disallowing to send mail without Subject:
Hello, When I write with mutt (1.4.2.2i) a mail without Subject: it asks me if I want to cancel this or not, and the default is to cancel it and not let it pass accidently by just hitting ENTER; so far so good; is it even somehow configurable that it does not let send me the mail without Subject: in any case? Thx matthias -- Matthias Apitz Manager Technical Support - OCLC PICA GmbH Gruenwalder Weg 28g - 82041 Oberhaching - Germany t +49-89-61308 351 - f +49-89-61308 399 - m +49-170-4527211 e [EMAIL PROTECTED] - w http://www.oclcpica.org/ http://www.UnixArea.de/ b http://gurucubano.blogspot.com/ OCLC PICA GmbH, Geschaeftsfuehrer: Christine Magin-Weeger, Norbert Weinberger Sitz der Gesellschaft: Oberhaching, HRB Muenchen: 113261
Re: How to organize mail in folders?
On Fri, Jul 20, 2007 at 03:33:37PM +0200, Kai Grossjohann wrote: Michelle, I think there is a misunderstanding. I wanted to understand how other people process their email. You are giving me pointers to programs but don't describe how you use them. Here is a potential strategy for handling mail: - All incoming mail goes to inbox. - I process all mails from inbox. - Some messages I read, then delete right away. - Other messages I read, then archive by project. By project means that there is a folder for each project. - Some messages I read, then respond to and archive (by project). - Some messages I read, decide that I can't handle them right away, so I put them in the todo folder. Every morning I go through my todo folder. - Some messages (often those sent by me) are waiting for responses from others. I file those in the pending folder. Every morning I go through my pending folder to see whether a response has arrived. Some of the above steps could be automated. The strategy does not handle mailing lists well. But I hope it shows one possible response and makes it clear in what way your response differs from what I was expecting. The above strategy is a pretty good description of what I actually do. The only difference in my case is that I use a procmail lookalike (it's a perl sript) to sort incoming mail, basically into a mailbox per mailing list and my main inbox. Which parts of the above would you automate? I can't really see what can be automated except, possibly, the archive by project. My archive folders don't really correspond to anything that could be gleaned from the E-Mails (except, in some cases, the sender) so the ones I save I just save manually. -- Chris Green
Re: disallowing to send mail without Subject:
When I write with mutt (1.4.2.2i) a mail without Subject: it asks me if I want to cancel this or not, and the default is to cancel it and not let it pass accidently by just hitting ENTER; so far so good; is it even somehow configurable that it does not let send me the mail without Subject: in any case? I assume you have to set abort_nosubject appropiatly in muttrc. Default is ask-yes, perhaps you want yes instead. Greets Alex -- * http://www.lespocky.de *** GnuPG-FP: 02C8 A590 7FE5 CA5F 3601 D1D5 8FBA 7744 CC87 10D0 pgpVqS0DBcxv3.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: How to organize mail in folders?
On Fri, Jul 20, 2007 at 03:19:42PM +0100, Chris G wrote: The above strategy is a pretty good description of what I actually do. I wish I was that organized. It's difficult for me to muster the self-discipline to actually do this. The only difference in my case is that I use a procmail lookalike (it's a perl sript) to sort incoming mail, basically into a mailbox per mailing list and my main inbox. Yes, that seems like a good extension. And easy enough to do. Which parts of the above would you automate? Michelle pointed out archivemail. This way, I could have an active folder per project, then automatically move messages to a corresponding archive folder. I guess the mbox feature (automatically move read messages from spool file/folder to mbox on exit of spool folder) could be used to put them into the todo folder. Not sure whether that would be workable. Does anyone have experiences? I can't really see what can be automated except, possibly, the archive by project. My archive folders don't really correspond to anything that could be gleaned from the E-Mails (except, in some cases, the sender) so the ones I save I just save manually. Suppose that I only have a global inbox and a global todo folder (aside from the mailing lists). Then I could tell Mutt to always remember message ids of refoldered messages together with their target folder. Then archive by project could look in the References header whether one of the message ids there is known, then automatically file to the correct folder. Kai
Re: How to organize mail in folders?
On Fri, Jul 20, 2007 at 05:05:23PM +0200, Kai Grossjohann wrote: On Fri, Jul 20, 2007 at 03:19:42PM +0100, Chris G wrote: The above strategy is a pretty good description of what I actually do. I wish I was that organized. It's difficult for me to muster the self-discipline to actually do this. The major discipline in my experience is just that of creating a usable and easy to navigate hierarchy for the saved messages. It's taken me a few years to tune this to my satisfaction. Once created it makes saving messages relatively easy. The only difference in my case is that I use a procmail lookalike (it's a perl sript) to sort incoming mail, basically into a mailbox per mailing list and my main inbox. Yes, that seems like a good extension. And easy enough to do. Which parts of the above would you automate? Michelle pointed out archivemail. This way, I could have an active folder per project, then automatically move messages to a corresponding archive folder. I do something akin to this I suppose. My mail lives on a remote system (at Gradwell.Net) where there is limited disk space, though much less limited now in fact. I do a daily backup from there to my home system using rsync. I use maildir so each message is a separate file and thus old mail messages on my home system will never get deleted when doing the rsync copy, this means that I can 'thin out' the stored mail on the remote system at Gradwell and still have the old messages on my home system. I can't really see what can be automated except, possibly, the archive by project. My archive folders don't really correspond to anything that could be gleaned from the E-Mails (except, in some cases, the sender) so the ones I save I just save manually. Suppose that I only have a global inbox and a global todo folder (aside from the mailing lists). Then I could tell Mutt to always remember message ids of refoldered messages together with their target folder. Then archive by project could look in the References header whether one of the message ids there is known, then automatically file to the correct folder. Yes, I suppose so, however my todo/pending messages rarely get moved to storage/archive. -- Chris Green
Re: How to organize mail in folders?
On 2007-07-20, Kai Grossjohann [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: - Want to have an overview of messages that still need action of some type. ??? I get a message. It could be something I read and then delete. Or it could be something that I read and then archive. Or I respond right away and then delete or archive. These cases are easy. Then there are messages that mean I need to do something, but I need longer to do them. Or I need to get feedback from somewhere. Or whatever. My memory is quite bad, so I like to have the computer store a list of these open ends so I don't have to remember them. I use mutt's 'important' flag (toggled with the 'F' key) for that. Flagged messages are indicated by a '!' in the index menu and just those messages can be displayed using the limit function: l~F I also use the Expires: header to tag messages whose lifetime is limited. This doesn't help me remember things that need to be done, but allows me to identify and delete or move messages that are no longer important, such as meeting reminders. See http://www.spocom.com/users/gjohnson/mutt/#expires for more about this. HTH, Gary
Re: How to organize mail in folders?
On Fri, Jul 20, 2007 at 03:33:37PM +0200, Kai Grossjohann wrote: Michelle, I think there is a misunderstanding. I wanted to understand how other people process their email. You are giving me pointers to programs but don't describe how you use them. This is an interesting and universal problem in this day and age. Some months ago I rearranged my approach to my inbox, and I think it has helped me to the point where I am less behind than I used to be. I'm still seeking the holy grail of being caught up, which sometimes seems like futile quest, but things are better. There are a bunch of resources out there, where people have expressed their thoughts and techniques about managing email. For example, this inbox zero series is pretty interesting: http://www.43folders.com/izero/ I think one has to try to understand the problem before trying to fix it. I started with a handful of realizations, including: - You can't read everything. Mail, even from mailing lists that you've signed up for and enjoy, shouldn't create a burden. - Old and as-yet-unhandled email often becomes less critical to deal with, not more, as time passes. I have a habit of deferring some of the more challenging mail until I have more time to think about it, but often that time never comes, and for each such message there rapidly comes a point where that time will never come. Once a message gets very old (and very doesn't have to be too long) one should probably move on to newer things. Old piled-up messages frustrate me by increasing my email load, and most of that is really imaginary. - You can not time-shift your way to efficiency. The more things you time-shift to the future, the less time you have to deal with them. Just look at your tivo or netflix queue :). - I'm on a lot of mailing lists. Not every mailing list needs my complete attention, and not every thread needs my comment. - A cluttered primary inbox wastes time, especially if you are looking at many of the same messages every time you go into it. I try very hard to keep my inbox under a screenful, so that I can see everything that's in it without scrolling around and wasting time and attention. I hate losing something important because it gets lost in the inbox. My strategy is: - Keep the inbox small. - I have a subdirectory (aka a folder collection, but we're all shell users here, no?) called 'M/' which contains most of the mail that gets autofiled using filter rules. (I created a nice control file that describes to my delivery agent how things are filed into the 'M/' folders, but that's another tangent.) Various work-related mail goes into folders there; high-volume mailing-list mail goes there. Lower-volume mailing-list mail that I read immediately (like mutt-users!) still goes directly to my inbox. Periodically I check the 'M' folders in various ways; e.g. sometimes I want to check recently-arrived mail, and other times I simply want to work in a particular folder. - I have an action subdirectory A/ into which I triage messages from my inbox. Old messages that might have a long life get filed into A/long (this keeps me from scrolling in my inbox to see old non-critical messages I haven't dealt with yet); if they stay there long enough, I delete them or can easily ignore them. Interesting material or references to material that I think I might want to read later goes into A/read -- similarly, if they get old enough, I either delete them or simply don't care about them. Stuff that I want to respond to immediately goes into A/answer, and I make sure I clear this promptly. Stuff I need to do goes into A/do and I look at this as time permits. So far this is working well. The hardest part is remembering to stick with it. -mm- (now I've added to your email burden)
