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>

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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/>

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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/>



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