Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!att!chinet!ignatz
From: ignatz@chinet.chi.il.us (Dave Ihnat)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.elm
Subject: Tagging...
Summary: Yes, there are decisions that would have to be made about behavior.
Keywords: tags, behavior, elm
Message-ID: <9737@chinet.chi.il.us>
Date: 3 Oct 89 23:08:14 GMT
References: <1169@ispi.UUCP> <440@hades.OZ> <9705@chinet.chi.il.us> <142@limbo.Intuitive.Com>
Reply-To: ignatz@chinet.chi.il.us (Dave Ihnat)
Organization: Chinet - Public Access Unix
Lines: 85

Dave Taylor brought up some good questions prompted by my request for an
expanded role for the 't'ag operation.  Perhaps I may be permitted to look
at them here:

>The reason that Elm doesn't currently support tagged/mass replying, forwarding,
>etc, is that it isn't at all obvious how one would want that to work.  In other
>words, if I have, say, three email messages in my mailbox that I'd like to
>forward to you, Dave, there are a number of possible things that could happen
>if I "tag" them all, then press "meta-forward" [or whatever] to send them all
>to you.  Among the possibilities; each is sent as a separate message to you,
>they are all bundled into a single message and sent to you, or they are added
>to a 'meta' message that contains further information about the group, and
>are then sent to you.  

True; but this is true of any feature you may decide to add to a program.  I'd
suggest that, if others might see this type of feature expansion as desirable,
then some discussion concerning the pros and cons of each of the behaviors you
outlined would be in order.  (I, personally, would opt to send each as a
separate message; this would preserve header and subject information, and
minimize code changes.  Simply enough, behave as if I'd said to forward or
bounce to you for each message...as I have to do now, with a number of
keystrokes and, more importantly, screen refreshes.

>The complexity isn't so much with forwarding, really, as it is with something
>like 'reply'.  What does it mean, for example, to tag two messages from two
>different people, then choose "reply"?  Should you be allowed to compose a
>single message that would go to both of them?  Should they know of each other?
>Or should you be creating a 'template' message that would then be automatically
>sent to each of them, separately?

Well, you're again asking a design question.  All of those could be answers--
what would seem the most useful to the most people would be the behavior that
should be implemented.  (I would think that a "reply" to multiple people would
mean a single message to all recipients--this is one I've wanted for a long
time, rather than having to construct a message and then run down everybody
who needs a response.  I would *not* think, however, that they would need to
know about each other; that's the purpose of CC.  Again, think of just doing
it one-by-one, but let the tag perform the repetition.)

>What if you want to mass reply to a stack of messages, but also want to include
>a separate note to one or two of the people?  The 'template' approach might be
>the best in that case, but if you *don't* want to personalize any, and/or you
>don't care that each learn about the other, it is the wrong solution.  

I think, by definition, that if you want to customize a message, it then isn't
really one of the group you should tag!

>One of the big issues to me was also privacy; if I send personal email to
>someone about, say, a posting they made on the net, just 'cause I'm part of
>a group, doesn't mean that I want OTHER people to read my note to the person.
>If they have a mass-reply '+ include text of message' feature, then it's
>quite easy to do that.  Plus the whole privacy/security issue of knowing who
>else sent mail to the person on a specific subject.

Huh?  You're saying that giving a powerful feature to people may allow them to
make powerful mistakes.  I think, however, that we've already seen answers to
that dilemma; look at the USENET "lotsa machines, lotsa bucks, do you mean
this" warning for replies and postnews, a kind of "this means that everybody
sees this--do you mean it?" warning if that makes you nervous.  Also, I note
that another potentially dangerous action--mailbox editing--has been made
a conditional in the current version of ELM; a similar approach could be made
to tags, if it's an issue.  And finally, why would anyone know who else
sent mail to the person?  As I envision it, 'tag' is simply a replacement for
manually running through the message composition and sending dialogue N
times.  I wouldn't want or expect a special indication that this was a part of
a mass mailing.

>It really seemed to be a can of worms at the time I added the 'tag' 
>capabilities, which is why tagging only affects local operations, including
>printing, saving to files, &c.

I think a lot of the problems go away if you think of tagging as a macro to
repeat the same operation for a lot of messages, rather than a new type of
action in and of its own right.

>	I would be interested in hearing more thoughts on this subject.

You've got it here.  I appreciate your response on this, and really do think
that it's a very useful feature that can be greatly enhanced with a little
design and relatively little coding effort.
--
		Dave Ihnat
		Analysts International Corporation
		ignatz@homebru.chi.il.us (preferred return address)
		ignatz@chinet.chi.il.us