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From: msirota@ee.rochester.edu (Mark Sirota)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.mush
Subject: Priorities in 7.2.0
Message-ID: <1990Nov27.215502.25496@ee.rochester.edu>
Date: 27 Nov 90 21:55:02 GMT
Reply-To: Mark Sirota <msirota@galaxy.ee.rochester.edu>
Organization: University of Rochester Department of Electrical Engineering
Lines: 63

I have a couple of suggestions regarding the priority-setting mechanism
introduced in 7.2.0.

I am using this to sort my mailbox according to the To: header; I'm on
several mailing lists and want to sort accordingly.  I wish to assign the
following priorities:
(1) Mail addressed To: me
(2) Mail addressed Cc: me
(3) Mail addressed to one mailing list (autox), To: or Cc:
(4) Mail addressed to another mailing list (porschephiles), To: or Cc:
(5) Mail addressed to a third mailing list (info-vw), To: or Cc:

My initial thought was to do this with the following script:
> pick -t msirota | mark -A
> pick -h cc msirota | mark -B
> pick -t autox | mark -C
> pick -h cc autox | mark -C
> pick -t porschephiles | mark -D
> pick -h cc porschephiles | mark -D
> pick -t info-vw | mark -E
> pick -h cc info-vw | mark -E
> sort -rS -p -d
> headers

However, there are two problems with this.  First, messages without a
priority wind up last, rather than first, as they probably should.  So I
solved that by reversing the priorities E-A, and sorting -rp.

The other problem with this is that something that's addressed To: msirota
and Cc: info-vw winds up with the info-vw priority instead of the personal
priority, so I had to switch the order in which priorities are applied,
info-vw first.

These two things are both counter-intuitive, in my opinion.  Do others agree?
What I wound up with is:
> pick -t info-vw | mark -A
> pick -h cc info-vw | mark -A
> pick -t porschephiles | mark -B
> pick -h cc porschephiles | mark -B
> pick -t autox | mark -C
> pick -h cc autox | mark -C
> pick -h cc msirota | mark -D
> pick -t msirota | mark -E
> sort -rS -rp -d
> headers

My other problem is that the sort -S appears to just sort alphabetically by
the Status: header or something.  This is not right; whether or not the
article has been replied to should not matter.  I may be wrong about this,
but the 'r' in some of my messages does seem to be relevant according to the
order they get sorted.  Also, the default sort order does seem to be -rS,
not -S, as the manual page suggests.

One last suggestion - is running all these separate pick commands slow?  It
seems it.  It would be nice if I could combine a search on both the To: and
Cc: headers in one pick command.

Enough for now.  I look forward to seeing your comments.
-- 
Mark Sirota - Department of Electrical Engineering
University of Rochester, Rochester NY
 Internet: msirota@ee.rochester.edu
 UUCP:     {decvax,harvard,ames,rutgers}!rochester!ur-valhalla!msir