Hi everyone,
I manage several lists and have a recurring problem When there are many replies in a thread the actual title of the message eventually is hard to see for all the RE:[listname]'s in front of it.
Is it possible to stop the repeated addition of RE:[listname] to the front of the subject title everytime it is answered? just leaving one? (even with all my reminders people still forget to get rid of them!!)
best regards David Kelly AET
At 8:50 AM -0500 2/12/01, David Kelly is rumored to have typed:
Is it possible to stop the repeated addition of RE:[listname] to the front of the subject title everytime it is answered? just leaving one? (even with all my reminders people still forget to get rid of them!!)
Yes; check the FAQ for a recipe that will do what you want (you want to only re-munge the Subject: header if [listname] doesn't appear in it already...trivial, really).
However, I would _strongly_ suggest you reconsider munging the subject field in the first place. There is absolutely NO REASON to add that annoying [listname] nonsense, since EVERY mail client worth its salt can filter on any of the other header fields, including the X-Mailing-List: header field added by SmartList as a default (I assume you're not removing that one, yes?). Any mail client that cannot filter on any header field (I can think offhand of only one so brain-damaged) shouldn't be used.
This munge is ONLY requested by people too lazy to read their mail client's manual and understand how easily they can filter their mail using other header fields. (My goodness, I remember using Eudora on a Mac SE-30 that could filter based on varying header fields! I currently use a version of Eudora from 1997 which handily filters on anything, even the body.) Consider educating your users instead of dumbing-down your list unnecessarily, and making it appear less professional than it could otherwise look.
Much like the also-annoying Reply-To: munge, it's unnecessary at best, and damaging at worst (as you've discovered).
Charlie (who is curmudgeonly pureist on this issue)
Subject: Re:control of RE:[listname]RE:[listname]RE:[listname]RE:[listname]
At 8:50 AM -0500 2/12/01, David Kelly is rumored to have typed:
Is it possible to stop the repeated addition of RE:[listname] to
the
front of the subject title everytime it is answered? just
leaving
one? (even with all my reminders people still forget to get rid of them!!)
Yes; check the FAQ for a recipe that will do what you want (you
want to
only re-munge the Subject: header if [listname] doesn't appear in
it
already...trivial, really).
Might seem trivial to you Charlie but to me its so difficult I had to ask here!!! Could you point me to a part of the FAQ...I have been through a few and have not seen anything that has helped me to get to the answer...(Could be the wrong FAQ's, but more surely my lack of knowledge rather than the information not being there!)
As regards your opinions about munging I'm sure you are 100% right in cursing it, a massive proportion of people use unmentionable email clients that dont do what they should, and people dont/wont change ....they dont care ...they just want to recieve and send mail without reading manuals I have tried moving the mountain...but with very little luck....there are more than 2000 people on this list ...people come and go daily, trying to educate them is less fun than banging my head against a brick wall!!
Best wishes to all David
David Kelly wrote,
| As regards your opinions about munging I'm sure you are 100% right | in cursing it, a massive proportion of people use unmentionable | email clients that dont do what they should,
It's more of a case that the client can do it but the user refuses to learn how to set it up, as you went on to say.
| and people dont/wont change ....they dont care ...they just want to recieve | and send mail without reading manuals
I handled it by making the tags optional on my list, sorely disappointing the few whiners who were demanding them: they were getting what they wanted but failing in their goal to force it on everyone. Eventually they all ended up removed for bouncing and the only person remaining in that mode when the list closed was one who joined much later. (I also cut them off at the knees by giving them a four-character tag instead of the eleven-character one they were clamoring for.)
That could be possible with SmartList; it would mean adding yet another pseudo-list such as the -d list for those who want digest mode. Also, the tags have to be removed from incoming posts so that, when members in tag mode reply to posts and don't change the subjects, members not in tag mode (inlud- ing those in digest mode) won't get subjects with tags.
FAQ Entry:
"8.3: How can I add "[listname]" to all of the mailing list messages for easy filtering?"
http://www.hartzler.net/smartlist/SmartList-FAQ.html#Section_8.3
Let me know if this doesn't cut it. The recipes cited first check for the pattern before inserting the tag...
Pete.
On Mon, 12 Feb 2001, David Kelly wrote: ...
Is it possible to stop the repeated addition of RE:[listname] to the front of the subject title everytime it is answered?
...
Could you point me to a part of the FAQ...
[snip]
Peter Hartzler wrote:
FAQ Entry:
"8.3: How can I add "[listname]" to all of the mailing list messages for easy filtering?"
http://www.hartzler.net/smartlist/SmartList-FAQ.html#Section_8.3
Let me know if this doesn't cut it. The recipes cited first check for the pattern before inserting the tag...
I'd actually been meaning to write in about this...
No, unfortuately these recipes won't take care of what David's having problems with. I've been using Leigh Wolenczak's recipe myself for the last few years and had constant problems with multiple re:s and listnames appearing in the subject.
This recipe adds the listname if the original subject does not begin with the "[listname]" or "Re:". That's it. It doesn't take care of multiple listnames or Re:s in the subject. (Just one example of problems this caused for me: people removing the Re: at the beginning of the line, but not the listname, causing the recipe to add a new "Re: [listame]" in front of the [listname] that was already there. That's just one of many possible subject lines that aren't cleaned up by this recipe.)
I've not used Tim Pierce's recipe, but it doesn't look like it would solve the repeat problem, either. (And I'm told by another SmartList user that it doesn't.)
Last month, after a bout of "Re: [listname] [listname] Re: [listname]"s on one of my lists, I asked my serveradmin to help me fix the multiple problem. He wrote me a new recipe that cleans up extra listnames and Re:s in the subject. It's fabulous and works very well. We did extensive testing with as many complicated subject lines as we could think of and it cleaned the repeat crap right up.
Anyway, I had intended to post this new recipe here and send it to Peter for inclusion in the FAQ, but I need to hang on to it for a bit -- the recipe currently contains some notes and questions intended for me during testing, and my serveradmin doesn't want it passed around until it's neatened up.
I'll try to do that shortly.
Violet xoxox
* Wed 2001-02-14 violet@torithoughts.org list.procmail-smartlist | Peter Hartzler wrote: | | >"8.3: How can I add "[listname]" to all of the mailing list messages for | >easy filtering?" | > | >http://www.hartzler.net/smartlist/SmartList-FAQ.html#Section_8.3 | > | >Let me know if this doesn't cut it. The recipes cited first check for the | >pattern before inserting the tag... | | I'd actually been meaning to write in about this... | | No, unfortuately these recipes won't take care of what David's having | problems with. I've been using Leigh Wolenczak's recipe myself for the | last few years and had constant problems with multiple re:s and listnames | appearing in the subject.
May I suggest this procmail module, which I haven't touched long time, but I will update it if it doesn't work. I'm busy elswhere, but I'm planning to put the Procmail development to sourceforge in this Spring.
Especially see this note at the end:
to remove that list prefix, you simply match it
JA_SUBJECT_KILL = "(list-xxx|list-yyy)"
Jari
Pm-jasubject.rc -- Subject field cleaner and canonicalizer (Re:)
File id
.Copyright (C) 1998-2001 Jari Aalto jari.aalto@poboxes.com .$Created: 1998-01 $ .$Contctid: Jari Aalto jari.aalto@poboxes.com $ .$Keywords: procmail, subroutine, subject clean $
This code is free software in terms of GNU Gen. pub. Lic. v2 or later Refer to http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html
Description
There are many different Email programs out there that add their own `reply' characters to the subject field. The most sad programs come usually from PC platform. Eg. Microsoft has gained a lot of bad reputation due to it's own standards.
o MS Explorer can use localized reply strings, Eg `Vs:' or `vast:' seems to be finnish `Vastaus'. o MS product Outlook (??) can be configured similarly. I have received swedish `Sv:' `-Svar' for `Svaring' (eng: reply) o MS mail uses `FW:' in forwarded mails. o Intelligent MUAs try to keep count of replies with `Re2:' or `Re[2]' o Japanese MUA Denshin 8 Go V321.1b7 has sent Re^2: o Some mua uses `Re>' o Lotus notes (in French version) uses `Ref:' o Some MS product sends `UQ:' o XXX uses `-reply' o Forwarding schemes: (fwd) [fwd] <fwd> fw: [FWD: [FWD:]] o Subject references: -subj subj- subj:
There already is a de facto standard where message should contain only single `Re:' if message has been replied to (no matter how many times). This makes it possible to do efficient message threading by only using Subject and date fields. And grepping same subjects is lot easier than from this horrible mess. Note that all text is on one line, the subject has been broken only for visual reasons:
Subject: re- Re^2: Re[32]: FW: Re: Re(15) Sv: Re[9]: -reply (fwd) [fwd] <fwd> fw: [FWD: [FWD:]] -subj subj: subj: subj- test
This recipe standardizes any subject (like above) that has been replied to, to de facto format below. That is: "Any number of RE will be converted to *single* RE and any number of FWD will be converted to *single* FWD."
Subject: Re: test (fwd)
About In-Reply-To header
If there is `In-Reply-to' header in the message, but there is not *Re:* in the subject line, one is added automatically. Some broken Mailers forget to add the *Re:* to the Subject line.
Variable JA_SUBJECT_SAVE
This is by default `yes' which makes the original subject saved under header field `X-Old-Subject'. If you don't want that extra header generated, set this variable to `no'
Variable JA_SUBJECT_FWD_KILL
This is by default `yes', which will kill extra forwarding indication words like (fwd) [fwd] <fwd> <f>. If you set this to `no', then all the fowarding words are preserved. The de facto forwad format is:
Subject: This subject (fwd)
Code note
This subroutine's intention is to make your Subject like more expressive by deleting redundant information. I have taken a simplistic aproach where the Subject consists of list of WORDS whose each attribute can be either `ok' or `delete'. There is no attempt made to investigate the structire of the Subject. I'll explain this better with examples:
Re: New subject (was Re: Old subject)
should be treated syntactically like "New subject" and forgetting anything between parenthesis. This is however not respected and not even tried. The rule applied here is "One Re: is tolerated", so the subject won't change. It doesn't matter where "Re:" is.
But here the subjject is changed. The rule applied is "Delete all unwanted words and then add one Re: to the beginning if OLD content had any Reply indications"
Re: New subject (was Re: Old subject) --> Re: New subject (was Old subject)
Now you understand how the Subject changing works.
IMPORTANT notice
Please check that your SHELL variable setting for procmail is `sh' derivate, /bin/sh or /bin/bash. This module won't work well with other shells.
Awk usage note
`awk' is a small, efective and much smaller than perl for little tasks. See the verbose log and make sure your awk understands VAR="value" passing syntax. Change it to `nawk' or `gawk' if they work better than your standard awk.
AWK = "nawk" # you may need this, try also gawk
Example usage
You need nothing special, just include this recipe before you save message to folder.
INCLUDERC = $PMSRC/pm-jasubject.rc
Customizations: Let's say Polish M$Outlook uses `ODP:' instead of standard `re:' and you want to handle that too: Then set:
JA_SUBJECT_KILL = "odp:" # NOTE: all lowercase JA_SUBJECT_SAVE = "no" INCLUDERC = $PMSRC/pm-jasubject.rc
You ca use JA_SUBJECT_KILL to kill any additional words from the subject line. Eg. if you have good newsreader, you don't need the mailing list prefixes that some mailing lists add to the beginning
Subject: [LIST-xxx] the subject here
to remove that list prefix, you simply match it
JA_SUBJECT_KILL = "(list-xxx|list-yyy)"
Inportant: The regexp must be _all_ lowercase, because when match happens, the word has been converted to lowercase.
Debugging
You can dry-run test this module with following command and wathing output. Substitute variables as they are in your system. You feed the content of entire example mail where the Subject that needs correction is found.
% procmail SHELL=/bin/sh AWK=gawk VERBOSE=on LOGABSTRACT=all \ PMSRC=txt JA_SUBJECT_KILL="(ace-users)" txt/pm-jasubject.rc \ < ~/test.mail
Thank you
Thanks to Tony.Lam@Eng.Sun.Com for his creative improvement suggestions and sending code that this recipe didn't catch at first.
On Wed, Feb 14, 2001 at 03:57:17PM -0800, violet@torithoughts.org wrote:
Peter Hartzler wrote:
This recipe adds the listname if the original subject does not begin with the "[listname]" or "Re:". That's it. It doesn't take care of multiple listnames or Re:s in the subject. (Just one example of problems this caused for me: people removing the Re: at the beginning of the line, but not the listname, causing the recipe to add a new "Re: [listame]" in front of the [listname] that was already there. That's just one of many possible subject lines that aren't cleaned up by this recipe.)
I've not used Tim Pierce's recipe, but it doesn't look like it would solve the repeat problem, either. (And I'm told by another SmartList user that it doesn't.)
At this point I don't recall what recipe I brought to the party. Here's what we're using here. (This assumes that a `subject_prepend' variable is defined in rc.custom.)
:0f * subject_prepend ?? . * !digest_flag ?? y * $!^Subject:.*\[${subject_prepend}\].* * ^Subject:/.* | formail -I "Subject: [$subject_prepend]$MATCH"
This looks for [$subject_prepend] anywhere in the Subject line, not just at the beginning. So the prepended tag doesn't get repeated. It is possible to get
Subject: Re: [listname] Re: stuff
but not
Subject: [listname] Re: [listname] stuff
smartlist@lists.rwth-aachen.de
-
Charlie Summers -
David Kelly -
David W. Tamkin -
Jari Aalto+mail.procmail -
Peter Hartzler -
Tim Pierce -
violet＠torithoughts.org