TidBITS#649/30-Sep-02
=====================
QuarkXPress may not yet be Mac OS X-native, but those who
rely on it will appreciate guru David Blatner's favorite
tips. For people nostalgic for Mac OS 9, Adam examines Jaguar
capabilities that simulate tabbed windows. William Porter
closes his look at Mailsmith's distributed filtering, and
we cover Apple's extension of .Mac trial accounts, plus
the iSync public beta, Now Up-to-Date & Contact 4.2.5, and
new versions of Internet Explorer.
Topics:
MailBITS/30-Sep-02
Jaguar Brings Back Tabbed Windows?
QuarkXPress 5 Tips and Tricks
Mailsmith and Distributed Filtering, Part 2
<http://www.tidbits.com/tb-issues/TidBITS-649.html>
<ftp://ftp.tidbits.com/issues/2002/TidBITS#649_30-Sep-02.etx>
Copyright 2002 TidBITS Electronic Publishing. All rights reserved.
Information: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Comments: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
---------------------------------------------------------------
This issue of TidBITS sponsored in part by:
* Make friends and influence people by sponsoring TidBITS!
Put your company and products in front of tens of thousands of
savvy, committed Macintosh users who actually buy stuff.
For more information and rates, email <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>.
* READERS LIKE YOU! Help keep TidBITS going via our voluntary <------ NEW!
contribution program. Special thanks this week to Robert Burr,
Karyn Voldstad, and Mike Millard for their generous support!
<http://www.tidbits.com/about/support/contributors.html>
* SMALL DOG ELECTRONICS: Refurbished eMacs on Sale! <---------------- NEW!
eMac G4/700 128/40/Combo CD-RW/DVD 17-inch CRT: $979!
eMac G4/700 128/40/CD (no modem) 17-inch CRT: $879!
LaCie USB CD-RW: $109! <http://smalldog.com/tb/> 802/496-7171
* DEALMAC: Refurbished HK695 Champagne speaker set for $59. <-------- NEW!
<http://dealmac.com/articles/41330.html?ref=tb>
DEALMAC: Maxtor 80 GB EIDE 7200 rpm for $90 after rebate.
<http://dealmac.com/articles/41226.html?ref=tb>
* Creo's Six Degrees is time-freeing technology that automatically
connects messages, files, and people on your desktop so you can
quickly navigate through projects. Free 30 day trial version!
==> <http:///www.creo.com/sixdegrees/index.asp?id=tidbits> <==
---------------------------------------------------------------
MailBITS/30-Sep-02
------------------
**Apple Extends .Mac Deadline** -- If any iTools members remain on
the fence about whether to pay for .Mac, Apple is giving you a
couple more weeks to decide. The special $50 upgrade price for
current iTools members will be available until 14-Oct-02 instead
of 30-Sep-02; on 15-Oct-02, any data still in iTools accounts
which have not signed up for .Mac services will be erased. So,
if you don't plan to use .Mac, you have an extra two weeks to
rescue any data and inform correspondents to use a different
email address. [JLC]
<http://www.mac.com/>
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=06934>
**iSync Public Beta Released** -- More than two months after
previewing iSync at Macworld Expo, Apple has released a public
beta of its multifaceted synchronization software. This initial
version includes support for synchronizing data to .Mac accounts,
iPods, and supported cellular phones (such as the Sony-Ericsson
T68i demonstrated at Macworld). Palm devices are supported through
an iSync conduit that works with HotSync Manager; you need HotSync
Manager 3.0, part of the Palm Desktop 4.0 package. As expected in
a public beta, some functionality is missing or incomplete: notes
or memos in Palm devices do not sync, the Conflict Resolver dialog
does not display all fields properly, you can't synchronize with
.Mac through a proxy server, and in several cases you could end
up with duplicate records. As always, be sure to make a backup of
your important data! The iSync 1.0 Beta is a free 6.9 MB download,
and requires Mac OS X 10.2.1. [JLC]
<http://www.apple.com/isync/>
<http://www.palm.com/macintosh/>
**Internet Explorer Updates Address Vulnerability** -- Microsoft
has released a pair of Internet Explorer updates aimed
at resolving a security vulnerability related to digital
certificates - in the right situation, an attacker could
use it to enable a number of identity spoofing attacks.
The updates - version 5.1.6 for Mac OS 9 and 5.2.2 for
Mac OS X - also include all other recent fixes. Microsoft
made no release notes available, but it's unlikely that the
new versions incorporate any new features. Microsoft didn't
even update Internet Explorer's installer in the Mac OS X
version, which unnecessarily insists on quitting all active
applications. Version 5.1.6 is a 5.4 MB download; version
5.2.2 is a 7.2 MB download. [ACE]
<http://www.microsoft.com/mac/download/ie/ie5_classic.asp>
<http://www.microsoft.com/mac/DOWNLOAD/IE/ie5_osx.asp>
<http://www.microsoft.com/technet/treeview/?url=/technet/security/
bulletin/MS02-050.asp>
**Now Up-to-Date & Contact 4.2.5 Released** -- Now Software
has released Now Up-to-Date & Contact 4.2.5, adding Jaguar
compatibility and iPod synchronization to its powerful
calendaring and contact management program. Also new is
text smoothing under Mac OS X 10.1.5 and higher. Notable
fixes include dialing via modem, proper display of menu bar
icons for the Quick Contact and Quick Day components, and
contacts opened via Quick Contact appearing in detail view.
Now Up-to-Date & Contact 4.2.5 is a free update for existing
users, and is a 15 MB download. [JLC]
<http://www.poweronsoftware.com/products/nudc/>
<http://www.poweronsoftware.com/jaguar.html>
Jaguar Brings Back Tabbed Windows?
----------------------------------
by Adam C. Engst <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Excitement ran high recently on TidBITS Talk, when Jim Grisham
mentioned that it seemed as though some of the behavior for
Mac OS 9's tabbed windows was partially available in Mac OS X 10.2
Jaguar. Further investigation showed that Apple may be aiming at
returning tabbed windows to Mac OS X, but the feature isn't quite
there yet. Despite that disappointment (some of us here at TidBITS
remain big fans of tabbed windows), Jaguar's new capabilities with
regard to obscured windows are welcome, and you might find them
useful in your everyday work.
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tlkthrd=1759>
**Pseudo Tabbed Windows** -- To see what caused all the
excitement, first put your Dock on the left or right side of the
screen. Then open a window in the Finder and drag it all the way
to the bottom of the screen so only the title bar shows. It fits
down there nicely, and, if the window is fairly narrow, even looks
a bit like the tabs of old. Now drag a file onto the tabbed title
bar and pause briefly. After about two seconds, the window
smoothly slides up. (If you press the Spacebar while hovering
over the tabbed title bar, the window pops up immediately.)
Without letting up on the mouse button, drag the icon off the
tabbed title bar, and the window smoothly slides back down,
just like the tabbed windows of old. The problem is that if
you actually drop the icon into the window in its open state,
it stays open, which is not how tabbed windows worked.
Now, let's say you want to get something out of this pseudo tabbed
window. It has no tab to click, of course, but if you click the
green zoom button, the window immediately zooms to a size large
enough to display the contents of the folder. Click the green
zoom button again, and it shrinks back down to the tabbed title
bar look. (Occasionally, you may have to click the zoom button
an extra time or two, as the Finder flips between different states
for the window.) Again, it's not quite the way tabbed windows
worked, since they would open automatically when you clicked
anywhere on the tab and close automatically as soon as you
clicked outside the open window.
The behavior is slightly different if you put your Dock on the
bottom of the screen. With the Dock showing, you can't drag
windows so only their title bar shows, and although dragging an
icon to a visible portion of the window's title bar does cause
it to slide up and reveal the entire window, it's hard to avoid
dragging onto the Dock. You can hide the Dock by choosing Turn
Hiding On from the hierarchical Dock menu in the Apple menu, but
that doesn't solve the problem entirely. You still can't get only
the window's title bar to show, and dragging an icon all the way
to the bottom of the screen causes the Dock to pop up.
But these behaviors provide a hint to the more generalized
explanation of what is going on, which Gordon Meyer alerted us
to on TidBITS Talk. In Jaguar, if you drag an icon onto a portion
of a window that's obscured, either by another window or because
it's partially off-screen, the Finder treats it like a spring-
loaded folder, either by bringing the window to the front or
moving it so you can see its contents. You can try this by shoving
a window almost entirely off the left or right edge of the screen
and then dragging an icon to it - you'll see the window slide
over smoothly. The effect is most striking if the window is in
one of the lower corners of the screen, since then it slides up
on a diagonal.
In short, though Jaguar doesn't yet have tabbed windows, you can
simulate some of how they worked, and no matter what, it's good to
know that dragging something to a partially obscured Finder window
(you must be in the Finder when you start the drag) will cause
that window to reveal itself.
**Tabbed Application Launchers** -- If you like the tabbed window
approach and want to use it in other contexts, check out Sig
Software's Drop Drawers X, an application launcher that offers
a tabbed window interface. Also, the recently released DragThing
4.5, also an application launcher, offers a mode in which any of
its docks can be turned into a drawer. Although both of these
utilities offer extensive customization capabilities and numerous
other features, neither exactly duplicates the basic functionality
of Mac OS 9's tabbed windows, which display the constantly updated
contents of a folder.
<http://www.sigsoftware.com/dropdrawers/>
<http://www.dragthing.com/>
PayBITS: The TidBITS community helped with this article; if
you found it of value, consider contributing to TidBITS!
<http://www.tidbits.com/about/support/contributors.html>
Read more about PayBITS: <http://www.tidbits.com/paybits/>
QuarkXPress 5 Tips and Tricks
-----------------------------
by David Blatner <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Quark, Inc. continues to be an enigma in the Macintosh software
world. Its flagship application, QuarkXPress, still dominates the
desktop publishing market, despite inordinately long development
cycles between revisions and a lack of direct support for the
latest Mac technologies. XPress 5 runs under Mac OS 8.6 or later
or in Classic mode under Mac OS X, and many dialog boxes still
have that pre-Mac OS 9 feel to them. Quark recently announced that
the Mac version of XPress 6, due out sometime in 2003, will only
run under Mac OS X.
XPress remains the dominant player for good reason: it's a deep,
powerful program that gets the job done. QuarkXPress 5 can also be
a gold mine for those who enjoy tips and techniques that can help
streamline the way they use it. Here are some of my favorites.
**Create One-Celled Tables** -- Have you ever wanted to draw a
text box with different line thicknesses on each side? Or a box
that only has a border on three sides? Try this trick: Make a
table using the Table tool with only one column and one row, and
then select each side individually (Shift-click it) and change its
color, style, or width. To make a box with a border on only three
sides, select the fourth side and change its color to match the
background. (Because you can't set table gridlines to a color
of None, this trick won't work if you need to put the table
over a picture or a multi-colored background.)
**Web-Safe Colors in XPress** -- In the "bad old days," most
people had 8-bit color monitors which could only display 256
colors at any one time, and colors would often become dithered
(which looked kind of mottled and ugly). To counteract this
problem, people tried to pick colors from a palette of 216
"Web-safe" colors, which wouldn't dither on screen. Today, every
computer can display 24-bit color, few colors are ever dithered
on screen, and designers can generally choose whatever RGB color
they want. However, if you care about using Web-safe colors, XPress
can give 'em to you.
When you have a Web document open, XPress automatically displays
a bunch of Web colors in the Colors palette, like Web Navy and Web
Maroon. However, these are not necessarily Web-safe colors. If you
want to add a Web-safe color to your document, you can select Web
Safe Colors from the Model pop-up menu in the Edit Color dialog
box. Or, use my favorite method.
1. Pick any RGB color in the Edit Color dialog box.
2. Change the percentage values in each of the Red, Green, and
Blue fields to the nearest 20-percent mark - 0, 20, 40, 60, 80,
or 100 percent. For instance, if the Red field reads 24 percent,
change it to 20 percent. If the Blue field reads 71 percent,
change it to 80 percent.
3. Save the color (you might include "Web-safe" in its name to
remind you).
**Web Images in XPress: Use TIFFs, not EPS Files** -- XPress can
automatically convert your document's TIFF and EPS pictures into
GIF or JPEG files upon export to the Web. However, because EPS
graphics contain "encapsulated" data, XPress can't get in to
convert them properly, so you end up with GIF or JPEG versions
of the low-resolution screen previews you see in XPress. Yuck!
If you plan to repurpose your XPress pages, stick with TIFF
files. (Though, to be painfully honest, you'll often achieve
better results if you convert the images yourself in Photoshop
and import them into XPress as GIF or JPEG.)
**Quick 'n' Dirty Background Lines** -- Tables in which every
other row is tinted (like an accountant's ledger) are notoriously
difficult to build in XPress. Here's how XPress's custom dashes
can do the trick.
1. Select Dashes and Stripes from the Edit menu, and create a new
dash.
2. In the Edit Dash dialog box, set the Repeats Every pop-up menu
to Points and turn off the Stretch to Corners checkbox. Double the
height of each row and type the result in the Repeats Every field.
For instance, if the table rows are 14 points tall, type 28 (2
times 14).
3. Now type the height of the table's rows in the Position field
and press the Add button. (In the example above, you'd type 14
and press Add.)
4. Save this dash with a descriptive name and apply it to a line.
5. Set the width of the line to be the same width as your table.
For example, the line width might be 6 inches thick. Finally,
change the color and the shade of the line (and the gap, if
you want).
**Boxes with One Round Corner** -- It's easy to make a rounded-
corner rectangle in QuarkXPress. But what if you only want one or
two rounded corners on a rectangle? Don't worry, almost anything
is possible!
1. Use Step and Repeat to duplicate the box with zero offsets.
2. Set the Corner Radius of your duplicate box to the radius you
desire (in the Modify dialog box).
3. Select the original box and choose the Bezier box shape from
the Shape submenu (under the Item menu). That's the one that looks
like an oval with one part squished in.
4. Option-click on the sides of the original rectangle near the
corner (but not too near). This adds points. Make sure you don't
move the point accidentally!
5. Option-click the corner point to delete it.
6. Finally, select both rectangles and then choose Union from the
Merge submenu (under the Item menu). The result is a box with one
rounded corner.
**Comparing Two Styles** -- I hate it when I have two styles
that are very similar but I can't remember how they're different.
Fortunately, QuarkXPress lets you compare two style sheets. Select
two styles in the Style Sheets dialog box (click one, and then
Command-click the other), then Option-click the Append button.
(Actually, as soon as you press the Option key, you'll see the
Append button change to a Compare button.) The result: a dialog
box that lists each element of the two style sheets; the
differences are highlighted in bold. Of course, you can only
compare two character styles or two paragraph styles; you can't
mix and match.
**From Beginning or End** - You can print all the pages in a
document by typing "All" in to the Pages field of the Print dialog
box. On the other hand, if you only want to print the first four
pages, you can type the cryptic "+1-+4" (remember that when it
comes to page numbers the plus sign means "absolute page number,"
no matter what page numbering scheme you're using). To print
from page 15 to the end of the document, type "15-end".
**Post-it Notes** -- If your XPress documents need to move from
one person to another, you may want to add comments to certain
objects or areas of a page. By taking care of QuarkXPress's
ability to suppress the printout of any item, you can easily
create noticeable but non-printing, electronic "Post-it" notes,
to contain comments and suggestions about an individual document.
Create a text box and enter the text of the note. Then select
Modify from the Item menu, give the box a background color of
70 percent yellow, a runaround of None, and turn on Suppress
Printout. Any object that has Suppress Printout turned on and
runaround turned off is a "non-object;" it shows up on screen,
but won't print or affect anything on the page.
**Making Content-less Boxes** -- It took 10 years for the
engineers at Quark to figure out that we sometimes put boxes on
our pages not to contain text or a graphic, but just for the sake
of a background color (sometimes known as a tint build). In the
past, you had to use a picture box or a text box to do this, with
annoying side effects. Empty picture boxes display a big "X" in
them; and text boxes, when covered by other boxes, display an
overset mark, even if there's no text in them to overset. Instead,
select the box and choose None from the Content submenu of the
Item menu.
**Snapping Line Edges to Guides** -- When you drag a line close
enough, it snaps to the nearest guide. But what part of the line
snaps? Whereas a box or a group always snaps to a guide based on
its bounding box, there are different rules for lines. Lines built
with the Diagonal and Orthogonal Line tools always snap to guides
at their endpoints. Bezier lines, on the other hand, generally
snap like boxes - at the edges of their bounding boxes. If your
line is thin, like 0.5 point, it hardly matters where it's
snapping. If it's thick, though, it could make a big difference.
You can force a diagonal or orthogonal line to snap at its edge
instead of its endpoints by selecting it along with another
object. For instance, you could draw a little dummy picture box
above a line, select both the line and the box, and then drag them
both close above the guide. This lets you snap the bottom of the
line to the guide; then you can delete the picture box you made.
You can force a point on a Bezier line to snap to a guide by
selecting it first. If you want to move the whole line, select
all the points (double-click on any point on the curve) before
dragging the point you're trying to align.
**Cut or Copy the Opposite** -- If you have the Content tool
selected, you can cut or copy an item itself (as though you
had the Item tool selected) by adding Option to the keystroke:
Command-Option-C copies the object, Command-Option-X cuts it.
**Anchoring Text Outlines** -- If you hold down the Option key
when you select Text to Box (from the Style menu), XPress converts
the text to an outline and automatically anchors it in the text
box.
**Scale-Specific Guides** -- Here's one of my favorite "hidden"
features in QuarkXPress: If you hold down the Shift key while
dragging a ruler guide onto your page or spread, it becomes
magnification-specific. That is, if you pull it out while in
Actual Size view, you'll only be able to see it only at Actual
Size view or a higher (more zoomed-in) magnification. If you
zoom out (let's say to Fit in Window view), it disappears. This
is great for those times when you want to see a thumbnail of the
page without guides, but need the guides to work with normally.
[David Blatner is the author of Real World QuarkXPress 5 (formerly
The QuarkXPress Book), from which these tips have been adapted. He
is also the author or co-author of Real World Photoshop 7, Real
World Scanning and Halftones, and The Joy of Pi.]
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0201354926/tidbitselectro00/>
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0321115600/tidbitselectro00/>
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0201696835/tidbitselectro00/>
<http://www.joyofpi.com/>
PayBITS: Did these tips help you use QuarkXPress better and/or
save you time? If so, why not send David a few bucks via PayPal?
<https://www.paypal.com/xclick/business=david%40moo.com>
Read more about PayBITS: <http://www.tidbits.com/paybits/>
Mailsmith and Distributed Filtering, Part 2
-------------------------------------------
by William Porter <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Last week I explained how you can use Mailsmith's distributed
filters to manage your incoming mail in flexible and efficient
ways. This week I concentrate on outgoing mail, with a few tips
on handling mail you do not expect - and may or may not want.
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=06943>
<http://www.barebones.com/products/mailsmith.html>
**Filtering Outgoing Messages** -- In most email programs, the
mail you send is all lumped together in a single Out box on the
assumption that you probably don't want to read something you've
written. However, it's often important to go back and discover
what you said to someone (did you really tell your client that
job would be done by Friday?), or make sure you're not repeating
yourself on a mailing list. With every outgoing message stored in
one Out box, you must either perform a search or scan the messages
by date to find the one you're looking for.
To work around this annoyance, I use Mailsmith to filter my
outgoing mail into logical locations. For example, all messages
between me and a client - incoming as well as outgoing - are
grouped together in one mailbox, making it easy to experience
the back-and-forth nature of our correspondence.
On the surface, it would appear that you can't use Mailsmith's
distributed filtering to process outgoing messages. It's true that
you can't get mail out of the outgoing mailbox using a deposit-
action filter, because a move directly from the outgoing mailbox
to any user-defined mailbox would be a lateral move, and deposit-
action filters don't work this way. They must always drill further
down inside a given mailbox. The trick to making this work is to
get all your mail out of the outgoing mailbox and into one that
contains the other mailboxes - you can do this by defining only
one such filter. From that point on, deposit-action distributed
filters can kick in.
The test to use for this filter is simple enough:
If Sent Is equal to True...
Two things to note about this test. First, the special Sent
property of messages in Mailsmith applies to only outgoing
messages; it fails (or is ignored) when applied to incoming
messages. Second, since mail in the outgoing mailbox is filtered
only after it has been sent, this test is strictly a formal
requirement. You can't define an action without defining a test
to trigger it, and this is the one test that all outgoing mail
will satisfy.
So where do we transfer these messages? The incoming mailbox would
seem like the obvious choice, since all other mailboxes, including
the outgoing mailbox, sit logically inside it. But that hierarchy
is precisely why the incoming mailbox won't work. Follow along for
a minute: You send a message. Once it's on its merry way to the
intended addressee, Mailsmith transfers it out of the outgoing
mailbox and up to the incoming mailbox, and since the transfer
action causes further filtering to be halted, the message just
sits there. Later (seconds later, or weeks later) you reapply
your filters to this message. It is offered first to the outgoing
mailbox, which - you guessed it - kicks it back up to the incoming
mailbox. It's like catching a fish that's too small, throwing it
upstream, then catching it again, and throwing it back upstream.
If you don't want to see that fish any more, you need to throw it
in the other direction.
The solution is to create a catch-all mailbox that lives
downstream from the outgoing mailbox in the filtering hierarchy
and contains all your other user-defined mailboxes. Then, you
start filtering everything from there. Accordingly, my folders
are set up something like this:
(incoming)
(outgoing)
my mail
- clients
- lists & subscriptions
- personal
The mailbox named "my mail" is one that I created. (I could have
named it anything I wanted.) Only three filters are attached to it
to catch mail from all of my server accounts. When messages are
downloaded, they are moved here first. Nothing is ever left in my
incoming mailbox.
This arrangement proves to be very flexible no matter what type
of outgoing mail I have. I have outgoing messages to mailing lists
deleted, since I know I'll get copies back from the list. I use a
single filter for this purpose, with a test that catches outgoing
messages to each of the lists I subscribe to:
If To Contains "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
Or To Contains "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
(etc.)
This filter does not need the "Sent Is equal to True" test.
That test was simply a formality to catch outgoing messages that
didn't match any more specific tests. Why don't I just test to
see what server account is being used for outgoing mail and throw
everything sent using the "lists" account to the trash? Because
occasionally I write off-list messages to people using that
account, and I may want to preserve them.
Outgoing messages not addressed to lists are then processed by
the next filter:
If Sent Is equal to True
Transfer (to) "my mail"
This moves everything that is not to a list into the "my mail"
mailbox.
From time to time, I manually refilter that mailbox so the
appropriate subordinate mailboxes in my hierarchy pull all the
outgoing messages into themselves. Doing so insures that messages
_to_ my mother end up in the same folder as messages _from_ her.
And the neatest thing is that the same filter processes both
incoming and outgoing mail. How is this possible? To use a
modification of an example from last week, I use the following
filter to catch correspondence from a certain imaginary client:
If (any address) Contains "@notsobig.com"
[Then] Deposit
This filter catches not only mail to me from the guys at Not So
Big, Inc., but also my mail back to them. The "(any address)"
criterion first appeared in Mailsmith 1.5.3. So: one
correspondent, one mailbox, one filter. Very efficient.
**Are Transfer-Action Filters Obsolete?** With the sole exception
of the filter used to extract sent mail from the outgoing mailbox,
all of the filters I have described use the deposit action,
because it's integral to the concept of distributed filtering.
If you use the deposit action to pull a message into a folder, you
don't have to specify the folder's name, and that means you can
use the same filter in many different contexts. Plus, the deposit
action does not forestall additional movement of the message the
way the transfer filter does. The deposit action - unique to
Mailsmith - is so important to distributed filtering that it's
easy to think they're one and the same thing.
Nevertheless, the transfer action remains useful, at times even
necessary. As I pointed out above, you must use at least one
transfer-action filter if you want to filter outgoing mail, since
deposit-action filters can't get their hands on outgoing messages
any other way.
The essential ideas of distributed filtering are, first, that
different filters are attached to different mailboxes and second,
that the filters are applied in conformity to the way you organize
your mailboxes. Almost every mailbox in my hierarchy has at least
one filter attached to it. The one exception is the incoming
mailbox, which has absolutely none.
**Dealing with Leftovers** -- Because I filter the messages I
expect so aggressively, almost all of my correspondence with
lists, clients, family, and friends ends up in the right place
instantly. But not all of it. Five to ten percent of the mail I
receive is either (a) welcome but unexpected or (b) extremely
unwelcome but increasingly expected - in other words, spam. The
odds are heavily weighted in favor of (b), but not heavily enough
that I can simply move all unfiltered messages into the trash
without perusing them first.
There's not much you can do about the messages in group (a). You
can't create filters for messages you don't see coming. A couple
weeks ago, I received email from my best friend in high school.
I hadn't heard from him in twenty-five years, so I didn't have a
filter defined for him. Even some messages you do expect are hard
to filter, for example, acknowledgments from online stores where
you've just placed an order. These messages land in the "my mail"
mailbox and I file them by hand.
And as for group (b) - spam - well, filtering spam turns out to
be constant and persnickety battle. I do want to note, however,
that the fact that Mailsmith lacks a built-in spam-sniffing
process like those in Microsoft Entourage and Apple's Mail does
not mean that Mailsmith users are by any means defenseless against
spammers. Although traditional filtering techniques work as well
on spam as distributed filters, Mailsmith still performs well
thanks to its powerful grep pattern matching capabilities. The
members of the Mailsmith Talk list love to share spam-catching
tests, many of which make use of grep to tease out the subtle
patterns that differentiate spam from legitimate messages.
Honestly, though I initially wrote more about filtering spam, over
the last few weeks I've stopped using most of my homegrown filters
in favor of a new shareware utility for Mac OS X called SpamSieve.
Written by developer Michael Tsai, SpamSieve employs Bayesian
probability theory to identify junk mail (the first link below
explains the theory behind Bayesian filtering). You have to
train SpamSieve by feeding it both spam and legitimate messages,
but once it has a satisfactory statistical base, you can ask it
to start identifying and labeling spam, using Mailsmith's custom
labels feature; then you filter the spam wherever you want. I've
been using SpamSieve with excellent results - no false positives,
and a growing success rate at identifying the mail that I
personally regard as spam. And the best thing is that it merely
extends Mailsmith's capabilities, so what happens to the spam
remains entirely within my control. [We're planning a full review
of SpamSieve soon - it currently supports Mailsmith, Entourage,
and CTM Development's PowerMail; support for other email clients,
including Eudora, is in the works. -Adam]
<http://www.paulgraham.com/spam.html>
<http://www.c-command.com/spamsieve/>
**Getting It** -- Distributed filtering is so novel that it took
me a while to "get it," and I have noticed other people going
through a similar evolution on the Mailsmith Talk list. If you
don't get distributed filtering, or if for some reason you decide
you just don't like it, Mailsmith lets you work entirely with
traditional filters, and even in this area, it's more powerful
than any of its competitors. But if you stick with distributed
filtering for a while, you will get it, and once you do, you
won't want to go back.
PayBITS: Did learning about Mailsmith's distributed filtering
save you time? If so, why not drop Will a few bucks via PayPal?
<https://www.paypal.com/xclick/business=paypal%40polytrope.com>
Read more about PayBITS: <http://www.tidbits.com/paybits/>
$$
Non-profit, non-commercial publications may reprint articles if
full credit is given. Others please contact us. We don't guarantee
accuracy of articles. Caveat lector. Publication, product, and
company names may be registered trademarks of their companies.
This file is formatted as setext. For more information send email
to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. A file will be returned shortly.
For information: how to subscribe, where to find back issues,
and more, email <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. TidBITS ISSN 1090-7017.
Send comments and editorial submissions to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Back issues available at: <http://www.tidbits.com/tb-issues/>
And: <ftp://ftp.tidbits.com/issues/>
Full text searching available at: <http://www.tidbits.com/search/>
-------------------------------------------------------------------